Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

The Swedish eco-activist Greta Thunberg famously described COP 26 as a load of "blah, blah, blah". She went a bit further with COP 27 describing it as a sham that provides a platform for "greenwashing, lying and cheating". There is also plenty of blah at COP 27, and none better than from our Taoiseach. If you were to believe the Taoiseach, you would think Ireland is leading the world in addressing climate change. The reality, however, is very different. While Ireland may have very ambitious emissions reduction targets, we are nowhere near to meeting them. Ireland has the third highest emissions per capitain the EU. The official statistics do not give the full picture. As said by my colleague, the ESRI report says our greenhouse gas emissions are up to 70% higher than calculated. This is when we take into account what we actually consume, as opposed to producing. We have bought very high levels of emissions from countries that produce chemicals, rubber, plastics and so on. When it comes to carbon impact, of the high-tech products we import, we import 55 times more than we produce but it is the emissions that are embedded in imports for households that make up the imported emissions. This is because under existing international rules to combat climate change, a country's emissions are based on what it produces. This allows richer countries, in effect, to export their emissions to poorer countries in the global south. This penalises those countries who are involved in a more carbon-heavy stage of the global supply chain. It is an extreme example of greenwashing and the hypocrisy of events such as COP.

COP 27 was sponsored by Coca-Cola, which says a lot, and was supposed to be the African COP but the Africans and those suffering the worst of climate breakdown to date were not the key players in this event. As usual, the biggest group were the lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry. According to one NGO, there were at least 636 lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry. This figure was greater than the combined delegates from the ten most climate-impacted countries. The United Arab Emirates had the biggest delegation with more than 1,000. The UAE has a population of just nine million but is a major oil and gas exporter. Oil and gas lobbyists were included in 29 national delegations. These figures give a very clear indication as to who has the real say at these gatherings.

It was no surprise, then, that several commitments made at COP26 in Glasgow, such as the target for global emissions to peak by 2025, rather than being reinforced, were actually dropped from the final text. There was no mention of fossil fuels and hardly any mention of the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Next year's COP will be held in Dublin - enough said.

Climate breakdown does not affect just the future; it is happening now, with calamitous effects on those countries and communities least responsible for it. We are in a catastrophic situation now, with global warming at 1.2°C, and we are heading for double that within decades. Large parts of the planet will become uninhabitable. This is inevitable unless we bring to an end the social and economic system based on the needs of major multinationals, the fossil fuel investors and the 1% and replace it with a democratic planned economy based on the needs of people and their environment. We need climate transformation.

I congratulate the Civil Service on getting the loss and damage package but, as Clare Connor of Friends of the Earth said, the gain in loss and damage is undermined by the failure of COP27 to phase out fossil fuels.

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