Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The carbon tax increase is unjustified. It will increase costs on working people and families at the worst possible time. Some will say during the course of this debate that the increase is modest or that it is not the biggest contributor to fuel and energy cost rises. I have to say that these arguments simply miss the point. It is one of the few factors that the Government can control and any increase in fuel and energy costs at this point is simply wrong.

Defenders will say that an increase in carbon taxes is necessary to combat climate change. This has become one of the most unquestioned dogmas of our time. It is the latest example of a groupthink defence of a policy in the absence of any credible evidence. It is no surprise that right wing parties would pedal such market-based measures. What is more surprising is for the Green Party to have been so captured by this neoliberal economic orthodoxy. Carbon taxes emerged in the 1980s, as we know, in strong opposition to Government regulation to tackle climate. The claim was that carbon pricing would allow the market to adjust itself but anybody looking at the market knows that it never adjusts itself.

Thankfully, there is now a growing body of independent academic research to prove this key point. The most comprehensive meta-analysis of the existing literature on carbon pricing and emissions trading was published by the University of Toronto in 2020. Its findings are really significant. It states that carbon taxes have little impact on emissions reductions even when they are at their very highest levels such as, for example, in Sweden. In the main they are not behaviour changing and where they are, the change in behaviour is very modest. If we are to meet the scale of emissions reductions required to avoid climate catastrophe, it is clear that they are the wrong tool. They are a distraction from the necessary regulation required to reduce emissions significantly. They impose real financial hardship on struggling workers and families. Crucially, they generate real public resistance to the other more important policies that are going to be required if we are to tackle the challenge of climate change and the biodiversity crisis. On those grounds I am happy to support the motion.

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