Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I would like to read out the first few lines of the People Before Profit amendment. I always do this because any debate or conversation about climate change and climate policies has to start by recognising the stark facts that are constantly being put in front of us by the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, and the conference of the parties, COP.

However, we seem to be able as an economy and society to ignore them and continue on our merry way. The amendment states:

- recent extreme weather events are a warning that climate change is accelerating, its impacts worsening, and its consequences are increasingly disastrous for large parts of the earth, its human population and all life there on;

- these ... [extremes] include, record temperature extremes ... unprecedented temperature anomalies at both poles [So that is both Antarctica and the Arctic] and ongoing droughts, floods and storms affecting millions of people;

- current polices, based on market mechanisms, private corporations investment decisions, and carbon taxes on individual consumption are failing and will continue to fail to limit fossil fuel related emissions; and

- attempts to defer action on the premise of future technological advances are fatally flawed [All we ever hear is the phrase "future technological advances". We do not have them yet but we are completely dependent on having them in the future] and have been warned against by eminent academic and climate experts, and further run the risk of delaying real action until catastrophic warming becomes irreversible.

That is the beginning of our amendment.

There has been a pretty large and, by some standards, quite successful campaign by the Green Party, not just here but internationally, and others to say that if you are serious about tackling climate change, then you have to support carbon taxes on ordinary people's consumption, to say the academic debate is settled, to present carbon taxes and their impact as a success and a fact, and to dismiss any alternative. When I say this has been a successful campaign, I mean it has been successful among academics, policy advisers and most political parties in this House, but in working-class areas, which are the type of area I represent, and in rural Ireland, the campaign is far from accepted or successful.

We in People before Profit are serious about climate change and doing the right things to tackle it, but we oppose carbon taxes. In fact, in terms of the climate action plan of 2018, People before Profit issued a minority report on it and went into some detail as to why we do not believe carbon taxes on ordinary people will reduce emissions and, therefore, cannot be the only tool in the box of measures that attempt to deal with climate change. Carbon tax is based on a fallacy and a neoclassical understanding of economics. It seems to be acceptable to the fossil fuel industrialists. Some of the biggest oil companies in the world think carbon tax is great because it does not affect them, just ordinary people. It also puts the most polluting firms in the world first and before the needs of ordinary people. It offers the illusion of action to reduce emissions while permitting business as usual for the entire corporate sector. What it does not do is reduce emissions on the scale needed and in the time we have left to save the planet from being uninhabitable.

Despite reams of academic texts suggesting or hinting otherwise, particularly in terms of where most studies have been done, such as in Norway or Canada, specifically British Columbia, where emissions in any jurisdiction have been reduced, there have been attempts to claim this as proof of the success of carbon taxes whereas there have been other reasons behind the reduction. For example, in one of the studies that was done in British Columbia the reduction in emissions occurred in the middle of a recession. Other reasons included an alternative source of energy or fuel being brought in, or offshoring of the industry to another country, or offsetting, which is never really accounted for when people put forward these arguments as proof in other jurisdictions. A carbon tax sows the illusion that what is needed is a change in the personal behaviour of individuals, but that pushes responsibility away from the biggest polluters on the planet - the fossil fuel industry and the plastics and related industries.

Carbon tax has shifted the policy debate and that is why we constantly debate the matter in this House. The focus and the plans to deal with climate change are away from a systemic approach or any analysis of the underlying reasons CO₂emissions are increasing globally. Since Kyoto, we have pumped 60% more CO₂into the atmosphere. That happened not because we did not impose high enough carbon taxes on ordinary people but because the major fossil fuel corporations continued to explore, mine and burn fossil fuels while amassing vast fortunes and profits. It happened because no one challenged the logic of the capitalist system and its endless drive to expand, accumulate profits and create new markets, an incessant drive to expand that was fuelled by the fossil fuel industry.

Now, as we look into the abyss and at the latest IPCC report, which tells us that the window to avoid climate catastrophe is rapidly closing, we are again offered increases in carbon taxes as a solution, a tough decision and a mature political policy. It is a fraud; it does not work. If the Green Party and the other Government parties do not understand that, ordinary people do instinctively. In my life I have found ordinary people are often way ahead of leaders and political advisers. They know it is a con. They know it is to hike up energy and fuel prices for them while at the same time there is no problem with planning to locate a liquefied natural gas, LNG, operation in Shannon or elsewhere.

In France, the yellow vest movement exploded not because they were climate deniers or because of Russian machinations but because they knew this was a con to drive up fuel prices while at the same time shutting down and reducing rail services people needed and forcing the retirement age up to 68. There are always economic reasons governments decide to pass on the responsibility to ordinary people and not look at what is happening at the top. As I always say in this Chamber, the fish rots from the head. If we do not look at what happens at the top of society, then we will not deal with how things need to change at the bottom. I believe things need to change. We need to be all honest with each other. Whether we drive diesel vans or are some of the biggest corporate landlords in this House, we need to be honest with each other. While doing so, we need not to deny the facts of climate change but to demand support for those of us who say we need to reduce consumption and that giving permission to more data centres or LNG operations to locate off our coast is much more damaging to our environment and possibilities for the future than arguing against the increases in carbon taxes, which, by the way, I remind everybody, although everybody knows this, are coming at a point in time when the cost-of-living increases are crucifying ordinary people. If the carbon taxes increase on 1 May, that will just embitter and embolden people who want to fight back and say they are not taking this any more.

I sincerely hope we see, and I will help to advocate and plan for, feet on the streets in response to the rise in the cost of living in the same way we saw feet on the streets in response to the attempt to introduce water charges or, indeed, to force women to live in the dark ages. These are things ordinary people can change, but they can only do it together in big numbers. Us standing here in the House is not going to make all that much difference except that we can point out the contradiction between going after the ordinary people while allowing corporations and fossil fuel industries completely off the hook.

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