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

We are in the middle of a severe cost-of-living crisis. We are also facing a climate catastrophe and experiencing the sixth mass extinction event brought about by the unsustainable use of land, water and energy. These two crises are not unrelated. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin. The root cause of both is the capitalist system. In other words, it is the organisation of our economy and society around profit and maximising profit for the fossil fuel companies in particular, without any regard to people's needs, including people's need to live on a habitable planet. In dealing with the cost-of-living crisis we need to take measures that simultaneously tackle the climate crisis and avoid the catastrophe that is otherwise coming towards us.

Unfortunately, while there is much in the motion with which we would agree, a big part of its response is to go for a deeper entrenchment and reliance on fossil fuel infrastructure, tying us into more and more years of environmental damage and increasing carbon emissions. This is not the answer. Some of the solutions put forward in the motion include acquiring an LNG terminal in either Cork harbour or the Shannon Estuary, repowering the controversial Derrybrien wind farm, and reopening power plants in the midlands to burn biomass, with this biomass sourced from brash through suspending the licensing regime for the thinning and selling of forestry. It is utter green-washing to suggest that scraping out every last piece of organic material left from felling, which is environmentally damaging in its own right, will somehow represent green energy. It is destroying material that otherwise would be populated by fauna, filling in some of the destruction left by deforestation. Using brash to create biomass indicates a desire to leave a completely barren wasteland that would only make it easier for industrial machinery to come back to replant the next forest being grown to cut down.

The Derrybrien wind farm was built in 2003 without an environmental impact assessment. Excavation resulted in a landslide that caused extensive environmental damage, severe water pollution, changing the course of a river and killing approximately 50,000 fish, not to mention the impact it had on the everyday lives of locals since. Calling for an LNG terminal when we have just learned this week that global emission reductions would need to be at least seven times higher to have any hope of staying under 1.5° C warming seems to be the height of contradiction to some sort of environmental benefit. Instead, the sort of demands we need to see are eco-socialist demands that would reduce energy usage while improving people's lives. Such measures include free and frequent green public transport that is massively expanded to get cars off the road and bring down our reliance on fossil fuels as a matter of urgency and investment in full retrofitting for all homes in the country. Let us prioritise the roll-out of attic insulation at zero cost to people, giving them warmer homes and reducing energy use. Other measures include, as Deputy Bríd Smith said, taking the energy sector out of private ownership and bringing it into public ownership and running it on a not-for-profit basis to provide energy for people and to drive a rapid and just transition. We should not simply take the relatively minimal measures proposed in terms of data centres. We should say there will be no more data centres while we are in this crisis. A total of 14% of our electricity goes to data centres. We cannot go any further on this. We need to have a full stop on data centres now. The way to achieve all of these things is to get out, mobilise and put feet on the streets at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday, 24 September, in Parnell Square.

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