Irish politicians at risk of ‘delusional’ thinking on climate crisis, activist says

Extreme weather events of the past summer indicate the world is at “a make or break point” in containing the climate crisis, according to environmentalist Oisín Coghlan.

While he believed there was a shift in public awareness of climate breakdown in response to heatwaves, floods and wildfires, and widespread destruction they caused, there was a big question mark over whether that would transfer into a groundswell of action required to address the crisis, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth (FoE) said.

Mr Coghlan told the Environment Ireland conference in Croke Park on Friday “what really matters is what happens next”. He was concerned politicians would not have the courage “to tell voters what has to happen to protect our future”.

“I fear they will be timid and therefore, frankly, delusional,” Mr Coghlan said, especially when Irish politicians were afraid of annoying voters at election time.

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While he had been told the issue was not coming up on the doorsteps, it was part of everyday conversation more than ever. “I think how we handle this breakthrough moment in awareness in the face of what is real and existing climate breakdown is important.”

As a climate campaigner, he said “there’s an unnerving reality to watching the projections from science you read about 10, 15, 20 years ago playing out before your eyes, when we know we could have done more to stop this. And that, to be honest, is a very real source of anxiety and frustration and anger”.

While the world was either teetering on the cliff edge or like the road roadrunner over the edge, it was never past time to act as every tonne of carbon dioxide and tenth of a degree of global warming mattered, he said.

There reality was, however, there was no smooth path from here. “It’s going to be a rocky path... it has to be so fast now that it’s going to be disruptive, it’s going to be inconvenient. And we really, really, really need our politicians to be upfront and honest about that.”

On refusal of planning permission for the proposed Shannon LNG plant, he said: “This is a good day. And timely in that we’re headed into a global weekend of action against fossil fuels in the run up to the UN summits next week on sustainable energy and climate ambition.”

Teagasc director Prof Frank O’Mara said Irish farmers were not in a bad place in gearing up to cut their emissions by 25 per cent before 2030 as required, “but we do need to accelerate the rate of implementation” of measures set out in a roadmap showing how it could be achieved.

FoE protesters joined Fridays for Future activists; Extinction Rebellion Ireland and the Student Climate Coalition in a march to Dáil on Friday and called for Ireland to be the first European country to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Meanwhile Dublin City Council has published its draft climate action plan which is open for public consultation. Covering the period 2024 to 2029 with a target of reducing emissions by over 51 per cent from a 2018 baseline, it aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2030.

It also sets out actions that will be taken by the council to prepare the city for known impacts of climate change – flooding, sea level rise, extreme weather events and drought.

Cllr Claire Byrne, chair of its Climate Action, Environment & Energy SPC Strategic Policy Committee said: “This plan is essential to meeting our national climate objectives. But I’m also confident that the plan will create many positive changes and bring benefits to our citizens”