Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

That deal is the first policy proposal in history to unite farmers and environmentalists. It is quite an achievement if one thinks about it that way. Having said all of that, I simply do not buy into some of the more extreme rhetoric surrounding the issue of climate change. For example, during the recent children's climate change protests I was struck by the comments made by many of the children in attendance. Many seemed to think that they, along with the rest of us, will literally be dead due to climate change within the next 20 or 30 years. No reputable scientist anywhere has made doomsday claims such as these and yet the idea appears to have gained some currency among younger people. What kind of society are we fostering if children can have such a profoundly depressing and scientifically inaccurate view of where our world is heading? While Greta Thunberg may be a very admirable young person in many ways, I wonder about the Greta Thunberg phenomenon.

I also wonder about the general phenomenon of people who govern us, while being adults in years, lacking maturity. This may be partly due to many of them having no experience of a world outside politics. There is a deference to children which does not really allow them to grow. By all means, children should provoke us to thought but a failure of adult responsibility is evident in much of our public discussion, although the issues the children are prompting us to think about are important. That is an aside.

There is also a small but vocal movement which advocates that humanity should start to voluntarily scale back our presence on the planet. It suggests we should almost feel guilty for our own existence and that people should have fewer children. Any debate on climate change in the media will usually have at least one reference to the supposedly exponential rate at which the population is increasing around the world. I heard what Senator Norris had to say and I think that too was a load of Bolsonaro in some respects. This movement ignores the fact that the populations of most European countries are now falling, particularly those in eastern Europe. Birth rates in all parts of the developing world have plummeted in recent decades. I recently read a book by Darrell Bricker, the current global CEO of the polling company Ipsos, and John Ibbitson, one of the most respected journalists in Canada, in which they suggest the global population will peak in 2050 and fall consistently thereafter. The facts of this issue rarely get any proper focus. They are certainly not ad idemwith Senator Norris's comments.

To properly tackle the climate issue and our environmental problems we need to retain a sense of perspective. That is all I am saying. Overblown rhetoric does not help in the long run. We need to exercise caution about accepting any one measure or set of measures as dogma that must be adhered to. One of the extraordinary features of the debate on the environment over the last ten years has been that the path behind us is strewn with policies and measures which have had consensus support but have since been abandoned because they proved to be unrealistic or counterproductive. I do not mean to single out the Green Party because on some issues, although only on some, it can act as our conscience or provoke us to necessary reflection. I do, however, recall its past enthusiasm for bioethanol as an alternative to petroleum fuels. The international green movement and governments have since abandoned this fuel because it diverts production away from food for human populations. Diesel cars were once encouraged as an alternative and, accordingly, taxed at a lower rate but this stance has since been abandoned. As the Minister knows, this State once gave generous grants for wood pellet boilers. This has also been abandoned and many such boilers have been ripped out of homes. I believe the company which carried out most of this work has gone bankrupt. The list of past mistakes goes on. My point is that we should be very slow to adopt any one measure or set of measures as an orthodoxy which must be followed unquestioningly because we risk making the same mistakes again.

Many of the 183 action points in the climate action plan are laudable but I worry that some of the proposals are unrealistic and risk becoming the broken promises and abandoned plans of the years to come. For this reason, it does the Government no credit to advance them. The proposal to have 1 million electric cars on our roads by 2030 seems very unrealistic. There were fewer than 1,400 electric cars sold in 2018 and I do not see how that number will increase to more than 50,000 in the coming years, which is what would be required to meet this target. This policy brings with it environmental concerns of its own. More electric cars means higher demand for the lithium, cobalt and copper needed for their components. We have heard about this already today. These metals are mostly mined in Africa, often in very harsh conditions. Tesla is already warning of a shortage of these materials. As with bioethanol in the past, are we running the risk of adopting a policy which could lead to unintended consequences in poorer and developing countries?

Is it really possible to cut our carbon emissions by 30% by 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2050 in light of the national development plan which foresees growth in agriculture and transport? These targets seem to be impossible to meet. The action plan also seeks to retrofit 500,000 homes to a B2 building energy regulation, BER, standard. This will involve massive expense which will be unaffordable for ordinary households. Similar previous schemes for retrofitting insulation had relatively low take-up for that reason. Would it not make more sense to demand minimum standards for new builds rather than expecting costly retrofitting of existing dwellings? This has the hallmarks of an unrealistic Green Party policy of a decade ago, which may end up being abandoned.

This is an extremely important agenda but we do not gain in the long term by making claims and setting targets out of a sense of panic which deep down we do not intend to meet or believe we can meet. That is the challenge I pose in what I have to say today. While I commend the Government on its intentions, as policymakers, great and small, we all have a duty to be truthful and realistic about what can be done. My fear is that many aspects of this plan seem intended to give the appearance of radical action which our political system has no capability of delivering in the long term. Rather than pretending that we can make radical changes to our way of life, we should instead work to achieve the best we can to alleviate the impact of climate change on those who will be worst affected. Many people are much more comfortable with the idea that we will have to make great sacrifices to live in solidarity with the people who will be most affected by changes it is not possible to avoid. That is where many people are and it is where our focus should be. That is another way in which we could live simply so that others may simply live.