Good Evening,
The Taoiseach was right last night, when he said we face a huge challenge in our society in tackling climate change
Tony Killeen is right, tonight, when he says that that’s primarily a cultural challenge as well as being an opportunity
Our emissions are roughly 70 million tonnes per annum – we know that Kyoto means we need to bring it down in five years to something like 63 million tonnes per annum
The European 20% target – roughly 55 million tonnes
But we have to expect – and I’m pleased to see the American presidential election heading in the direction that it is – that we are going to see international agreement and we’re going to be committing with the European Union to a 30% reduction, which brings us down to 48 million tonnes in 2020.
Recognising what Fiona says, that that is only the start – to listen to what the scientists are saying, to do what we need to do within my lifetime - we have to get it down into the single-teens and that’s a huge challenge.
When we look at what’s happening in this regard – and there’s a lag in this issue because in energy it takes a long time to have an effect – SEI have done a detailed study on where our energy future is going (and energy counts for 2/3 of our emissions). And rather than that 30% reduction in energy use, which we need to meet our targets, it’s forecasting the increasing energy use by 30%. That is the scale of the challenge we face.
To get to 48 million tonnes if we take it from today’s levels, year in year out, over those 14-15 years, it takes 3% reduction every year. That’s where that figure comes from, that’s why it makes sense.
The Green Party is proud to be in Government, and I think our place in Government is symbolic of a change in political culture. It’s not just because we were put in coalition with Fianna Fáil – we could as easily and as happily been in coalition with Fine Gael and Labour. All those parties accept and recognise that there is actually change in political consciousness.
We are trying our best; we are working our hardest, to bring in real change with a sense of urgency increasingly the issue. Immediately, we started changing the building regulations to a 40% better performance in buildings on emissions, with a rolling programme towards a 60% reduction towards passive housing.
We changed the car taxation system. We changed the regulations to bring in more efficient lighting.
I have been able to make a series of changes in ocean energy, in biomass energy and a whole range of different renewable technologies, where I sense a huge opportunity, and a huge willingness from the state bodies and the private industry to play their part.
But as I said, that is not going to be enough. All those changes are taken into account in the SEI study that I mentioned, so we’re going to have to go a lot further. And there is no buy-out on this.
Anders Piebalgs said yesterday, certainly we can look at changing how maybe one country adds to the overall mix, but there is no change in the European position, in the overall 20% or 30% reduction we’re going to make.
We cannot expect to go to Europe and plead that we can’t do it – “will you let us opt out?” We’re not going to be able to buy our way out of this one. The regulations that have been put in place are strictly locked down to a small percentage of the overall reduction.
So we need change.
What change?
Well I’m first of all glad to hear Simon Coveney say loud and clear, Fine Gael is now in favour of carbon tax. I think we do need to put a price on carbon and I think we need to do that – we are inhabiting the emissions trading sector – we need to do it in the rest of the economy.
Everyone is saying we need to change transport. But let us be honest politically, the scale of change, the scale of that problem – transport emissions are at 14 million tonnes at the moment. The Department of Transport at the moment is predicting, that while up to now, they were reducing down, they’re now going to increase to 20 million tonnes by 2020.
So we need radical change if we’re going to meet that target.
That needs us to be politically honest and say “well we have to switch money out of the Roads Programme into the sort of public transport projects that may actually deliver some of that reduction.”
Dublin City Council is here tonight with their Climate Change Plan. They talk on page 5 about our intelligent transport system in the city centre. Their proposed actions say nothing about getting rid of the totally unintelligent transport system we have in the city centre.
For ten years, and I was councillor myself, we have been saying we should change the one-way traffic system because it really does make it a miserable place for pedestrians and cyclists. Let’s set that in target for political change that all political parties can agree on with Dublin City Council, so we start here in our city centre showing what is possible in terms of change. I think it would make for a better Dublin city centre and an intelligent transport system.
Are we so blind to change or the need for change that we can’t see that reliance on the mass-production of livestock for export or intervention, is a sacred cow that we can’t touch?
Can we not start debating in the political system, the possibilities for change, and provide Irish agriculture with a sense of pride and future and promise in terms of delivering alternative products that we can grow, alternative carbon sinks that we can store in our Irish farms?
So we need those changes. We need changes in our planning system.
Again, it’s not politically palatable or easy, to say that this dispersed form of population growth is allowed to continue, compared to what we know we need – which is a much more compact, high-quality urban planning system.
We need that. We need it quickly. We’ve already lost the opportunity in the many years of not making the change. But that’s no excuse not to start changing now.
It’s interesting the reaction to this issue has changed recently. For so long it was doubting science – because people are fearful of change – they doubted it and the scientific detail. They’re not doing that anymore because it doesn’t stack up. The Irish people are not stupid – they can sense that there hasn’t a single frost effectively this winter. We can see it for ourselves and that argument no longer stacks up.
What’s now happening is that some people who are afraid of change, are saying, “Oh it’s a huge cost, it’s going to be difficult, it’s going to be too expensive”, and that’s what you see in all the papers – this obsession. That it’s going to cost 500 million for this or 1000 million for that.
As if the alternative cost isn’t far greater? As if there’s a country which consumes 165,000 barrels a day, that’s 10 pints of oil for everyone of us, each and every day – we don’t have huge cost and economic incentive to switch away from those fossil fuels? And it’s the same on gas.
But I’ll go back to this issue of change and cultural change. I think Tony is right. We’re not there as a people yet and we need to urgently get there. We have a Cabinet sub-committee on Climate Change. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste are saying that we need to put every effort into looking to see, “what are we going to do, how are we going to do it?” - in all those areas like transport, planning, building regulations and so on.
But really what we need as politicians is to lead a cultural change so that people actually see this as a positive opportunity – so that they see it as something that is a natural development in ourselves as a people, as something that we can do.
I think we can do it. I have no problem in seeing the way forward in the energy area so we can have a good quality of life – but it will only come when the conventional wisdom changes, when the majority of our people change.
Tonight is important because to achieve such a cultural change, we need to start talking about it, start discussing it among each other politically, so that people actually understand the complexities and understand the opportunities.
Thank you .