Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

There is a new report from the UN Environment Programme out today and it concludes that fossil fuel production planned by the world's governments vastly exceeds the limit needed to keep the rise in global heating to 1.5°C. In fact, it finds that it is at 110% extra so we would be heading for more than a 3°C rise. In a way, that encapsulates the new form of climate denialism which is dominant throughout many of the world's governments, which is to accept the science and say it is clear that human-generated climate change is having a huge impact, to say we need to do what we need to do, and then simply to fail to do it, because doing so would mean taking on, in this case, big oil. The five biggest oil and gas companies between them have $5 trillion worth of oil reserves. They need to stay in the ground and those companies need to be put out of business, but the world's capitalist governments obviously refuse to do so.

The version of that in Ireland is reflected in the approach of the Government to big agribusiness and reflected in the discussion around the carbon budgets, which is to say, “Do not worry, we will do the hard part of the job after the Government is gone. Do not worry, for the biggest hitting sector, we will not actually reduce the size of the national herd." There is no indication of how we are actually going to bring down emissions. I thought the exchange earlier between the Taoiseach and Deputy Danny Healy-Rae was instructive. Deputy Healy-Rae was accusing the Taoiseach of saying that the national herd has to be cut and the Taoiseach was very defiantly saying that, no, he definitely did not say that. What is missing is some basic honesty that, yes, the national herd absolutely has to be cut if we are to meet our climate targets.

That does not have to mean and must not mean a reduction in living standards for small farmers. Small farmers should be guaranteed a living income and they should be given payments for carbon sequestration and ecosystem services. However, it does mean challenging the model of agriculture which currently operates in the interests of the big agribusiness companies.

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