Dan Boyle (Green Party)

I first became an elected public representative in 1991 in the local elections, when I was given the honour of representing people on what was then Cork Corporation, now Cork City Council. It was an interesting time for environmental politics because much of the world's media and international governments were exercised with many of the issues we have continued to talk about in nearly 20 intervening years.

Within a year there was a major international conference at Rio de Janeiro, which was meant to be the starting point for solving much of what was then identified as an impending difficult situation as regards life on this planet. While Rio was the largest gathering of world leaders and governments since the Second World War, it failed in many respects and no agreement was reached. Much of what could have been done was avoided. It was not until the Kyoto summit, unfortunately, that some form of international agreement was put in place. This introduced measurements on how to deal with the major problem affecting life on this planet, namely, the creation of high levels of carbon, which are affecting climate and questioning the viability of life itself. This should be treated as the most important issue on the planet today. In the difficult economic situation in which we find ourselves nationally and globally it is hard to put forward a political argument in this regard. Economies rise and fall but viability of life on this planet is something we tend to take for granted. The willingness of mankind as a species to believe nature can be disrupted and overcome is something from which we have continued to learn lessons, in particular in the past month.

The Kyoto summit put in place an international agreement and measurements, which while modest, were at least a signpost towards where we should be going. What was unfortunate about Kyoto was that agreement was not subsequently achieved by those who should have participated and agreed. The largest carbon polluters on this planet in the form of the United States and emerging countries such as China, India and others, including Australia and Japan which are large in their own right in terms of geographical size and often population, did not buy into what was an emerging international consensus.

The European Union prior to and since Kyoto has behaved honourably. As a country, we have had our own responsibilities to live up to in the context of a common European Union approach. It is fair to say that for most of the time since the Kyoto Agreement was signed and subsequently ratified by the EU, we have not played our role effectively. We were given a generous allowance for carbon that was over and above 1990 baseline figures but have regularly exceeded it, often by up to two and a half times that allowed. We have in recent years begun to pull this back, in part owing to an economic slowdown and, thankfully, a new Government approach towards dealing with many of these issues. We now have commitments in the programme for Government to try to average reductions during the lifetime of this Government and beyond and to climate change legislation. We have put in place measures across several Departments in terms of energy conservation, better insulation of homes and how we deal with transport that will have a long term effect in terms of how we in this country play our role.

A key measure in this regard was the introduction yesterday in the budget of a carbon levy. Its phased introduction will help it being an effective tax. Not alone does it put a proper price on carbon and how it affects our economy and environment, it also allows us to have a fund to assist us to invest appropriately to ensure we avoid a build up of carbon in our environment in the future. I look forward to it being implemented to a greater extent in the future. The difficulty we have is that nearly 20 years on expectations in terms of the Copenhagen gathering have been raised. The Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, will attend that summit as will many Irish NGOs. It appears political agreement will not be achieved by the time Copenhagen finishes in a number of weeks, which is a serious setback. At best, political agreement might be achieved within the next year. There needs to be political agreement within the next six months because of the two important summits that follow, the Bonn summit and Mexico summit in 2010. The longer we leave these decisions the harder they will be. The EU as an organisation has given a commitment that in the absence of international agreement we, collectively as a grouping of countries, will seek to reduce our carbon levels by 20%. If international agreement is achieved we will seek a reduction of 30% in this regard. The reaching of international agreement places upon us a new onus to consider how we are reducing our carbon load and how this can be done in the quickest possible time to maximum environmental benefit.

An area in which the debate has not really taken off is in the context of the belief during the past number of decades that somehow the notion of environmental politics is esoteric in that it is beyond the people and has little impact on their everyday lives. The reality is different. If we do now what needs to be done a win-win situation for the planet and those people living on it in terms of how we structure local, national and international economies will result. We are looking at a fundamental way of doing things differently. We have lived through 200 years of industrialisation fuelled by a diminishing fuel source in the form of fossil fuels. If we want to continue to live life as we have lived it we must do so fundamentally differently. We must seek a better fuel source, one that is less polluting and more sustainable. We are fast coming to a time whereby the fuels upon which we have relied, oil and gas, are at peak levels. From here on we are on a downward slope in terms of the amount of oil and gas that will be available throughout the world. There will be a rising demand for these products in countries like China, India and Brazil. On those grounds, we should be concerned.

I am optimistic for Ireland and the role it can play. Also of concern in terms of the debate - this could perhaps have been predicted - is the counter arguments in the international press in terms of the validity of climate change and whether individuals are being conspiratorial in even arguing for its existence, which is unfortunate. The reality is that the international panel has verified that climate change is real and is most probably caused by human activity. Facts already mentioned in the debate are that this year has been the warmest on record and this decade has been the warmest on record in the history of this planet. On a local basis, in November we had three times the average rainfall we have ever experienced previously in November. These are extraordinary events and different from the nature of weather and climate we have ever experienced. If we do not recognise them as realities we will suffer the consequences.

In dealing with this problem, it is important we have empirical evidence and that this is taken on board. It was cheap and nasty of the leader of the Opposition in the Lower House to refer to the scant amount of money being spent on ecological measurements in terms of what types of plant and wildlife we have in this country when this is important information in terms of measuring the viability of life. When one considers that similar amounts of money, approximately €100,000, is often spent by town councils sending their entire membership to conferences on coastal erosion-----