Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the Labour Party's carbon labelling Bill. In general, I support introducing carbon labelling on products as a way of educating citizens on the carbon footprint of each product. Ms Mary Robinson's prediction that anyone under 60 is likely to face a less liveable world and that anyone under 30 is sure to live in that world is incredibly concerning. It is clear that we need to start shifting our focus more directly to the climate crisis to try to reverse the damage done and make the world somewhat more liveable for the generations to follow. Carbon labelling on products will help us to identify which producers are the greatest carbon emitters and this has the potential to educate citizens on the environmental impact of the products they are buying. It would allow them to compare the sustainability of products and I support any attempt to encourage the purchase of locally-produced goods.

As a Bill that aims to tackle climate change, however, it is incredibly weak and does not even begin to address the systemic problems that we face and need to address in this country. The Bill is nothing more than tokenism in that regard. The idea that we all need to take personal responsibility to effectively address the climate crisis is ridiculous and demonstrably false, especially when we have data centres using up an incredible amount of energy. If we are to address the climate crisis in a real and impactful way, we need good environmental and just transition policies that target the largest producers of emissions and not the working classes. Families on lower incomes are more likely to buy products with a higher carbon footprint because they are cheaper. We cannot begin to penalise those who can only afford to compare price instead of carbon footprint. This Bill is just one of the many climate Bills that disproportionately affect lower-income families instead of targeting the real problem of high emissions from farming and industry and the macro-structures of unsustainability such as capitalism and colonialism.

In this instance, the Labour Party is just assisting the Government in leading the population to associate environmentalism with unfair taxation, causing an understandable resistance and resentment towards the green movement. In fact, the very idea of the carbon footprint was invented by oil companies. The notion of focusing on individual responsibility was popularised by British Petroleum, BP, the second largest, non-state owned oil company in the world to shift the blame away from itself and to suggest instead that climate change is the fault of individuals and not of fossil fuel companies. Does that not tell us everything we need to know? In the context of the terrible climate crisis that we face, it is incredibly important that climate legislation should be our primary focus but we must step away from the greenwashing and do this in a real and just way. We must make sure that our actions will benefit the future of society.

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