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

I wish to share time with Deputy Barry.

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward the Bill, which we support. We support anything that will enable people to take the action that they want to take. The evidence strongly suggests that people are in favour of doing everything they can to try to contribute to the collective effort to avoid the climate catastrophe we are currently hurtling towards. That attitude of ordinary people obviously contrasts sharply with the attitude of the global leaders seen, unfortunately, over the past two weeks, at COP26.

The failure of COP26 also highlights the thrust of the approach. We have no problem in agreeing with the Bill. However, the thrust of the approach of focusing on the question of carbon footprints and people's individual choices is pointing in the wrong direction as the main direction of what needs to be done. That is highlighted by the fact that the Bill is using the phrase "carbon footprint" but it was big oil that invented the phrase. It was the brainchild of an advertising agency employed by British Petroleum precisely to point away from the main responsibility of global corporations and global capitalism for the climate catastrophe we are experiencing. To quote Mr. Mark Kaufman:

British Petroleum, the second largest non-state owned oil company in the world, with 18,700 gas and service stations worldwide, hired the public relations professionals Ogilvy & Mather to promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals. It's here that British Petroleum, or BP, first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term "carbon footprint" in the early aughts. The company unveiled its "carbon footprint calculator" in 2004 so one could assess how their normal daily life – going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling – is largely responsible for heating the globe.

That covers up the very important truth that by the time the individual gets to the shop, work or wherever, many choices have been made such that he or she is not able to take the most important choices on the nature of food production, the nature of energy production, etc. Those are political choices and economic choices that are made by the capitalist class and its political representatives. There is a danger of assisting them in avoiding the truth that the climate catastrophe is being driven by a handful of major corporations, which have names, addresses and headquarters. They are who we should target.

Ordinary people have, and will, over and over again, show that they want to take whatever actions they can. This is fundamentally a systemic problem that requires systemic solutions. Focusing on personal responsibility will not solve the climate crisis. There is a parallel with Covid where, of course, personal responsibility is very important and so on, but it is not enough such is the scale and the nature of the problem that we face. Rather than just labelling products with their carbon footprint, which we should do, we need to tackle the polluting major corporations directly. Simply put, we need to ban any further data centres in this country and not just put out a sign stating how bad they are. We need to force fossil fuel companies to keep the oil and gas in the ground even though that will come at a cost to them of $5 trillion in respect of the assets currently on their books that simply cannot be realised, as well as the various investment in fossil fuel infrastructure that will have to be stranded.

We need to transform our transport system such that people have the real option of availing of free green and frequent public transport, safe cycle lanes and walking to overcome their reliance on private cars either of the petrol or diesel variety, but also of the electric variety, which is also not the answer. Fundamentally, as the slogan goes, which has been widely taken up, we need system change to stop climate change. The system that needs to be changed is the system of capitalism, production for profit and the exploitation and treatment of nature as something taken for free, as well as the exploitation of labour. The type of change we need is socialist change.

Individual actions that we can all take are welcome, but the crisis is beyond individual action. It requires transformation not only of our public transport, but our energy system, our housing system and, fundamentally, our economic system. That way of organising society of private ownership of the core sections of the economy and production and private for-profit must go. We need an alternative eco-socialist system that puts people and planet before profit. We need the current big polluters in democratic public ownership and then we need to plan for a society, which prioritises the quality of people's lives and which centres the idea of a good life for people as opposed to the drive of consumption that capitalism pushes onto people.

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