Gerard Howlin: There is a reason this RTÉ soap opera eclipsed the heatwave in Europe

Two controversies occupied public attention over the past weeks. One, in RTÉ, sucked up almost all the oxygen. The second, the new Nature Restoration Law which faced cliff-edge votes in the European Parliament, was the subject of a historic vote in the Dáil. When enacted, the law will increase biodiversity and secure the future of the things nature does for free, like cleaning water and air, pollinating crops, and protecting us from floods.

It arrived at an ominous time of soaring temperatures propelled by climate change.

However, in a Tubstalk world, dependent on entertainment for distraction, media and political priorities were elsewhere. It is a recurring phenomenon that people at the edge of disaster ignore it. Live beside a volcano and you are likely to think it will never explode. In contrast, entertainers are like religious idols and their difficulties are a scandal by our standards. So we were gifted a major source of national distraction and turning to the real unfolding crisis would have been unbearable.

Humankind cannot take too much reality; events at RTÉ provided a welcome soap opera. We could all be part of the cast and feign intimacy with the “stars”.

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But the real scandal is that the national broadcaster and media across the board gave comparatively far less attention over recent weeks to the reality of climate change. The RTÉ story broke in the hottest Irish June on record. However, even at record-breaking levels, our weather is relatively temperate. Southern Europe is suffering unbearable heat. The Middle East and Africa are in crisis. China has just experienced its highest temperature ever, at 52.2°C.

Ironic, then, that it was the actions of some Irish politicians which changed the outcome of the Nature Restoration Law in the European Parliament last Wednesday. If what is coming is a modest version of what was hoped for, that it is coming at all is in part to the credit of the Green Party Minister of State for Heritage Malcolm Noonan.

The tactical change that shaped events strategically was the insistence of the Greens that the Government table a countermotion to the one put down by Michael Fitzmaurice TD and his group colleagues. They demanded that Ireland reject the European Commission draft regulation. It is increasingly the habit to allow Opposition motions and Bills to quietly pass, albeit into oblivion. Noonan ensured Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin put on record their position in favour of the version of the law advocated by the European Council, as distinct from the European Commission and Parliament respectively, and that the Dáil would vote accordingly. This is the sort of legislative sausage-making that makes a barter account seem simple.

Fitzmaurice and his Dáil colleagues, Marian Harkin and Thomas Pringle, had a relatively nuanced position that was not far away from the European Council proposal. Having opposed the stronger European Parliament version, Sinn Féin had already changed tack once. The Dáil vote of 121 for the Government amendment with nine against and six abstentions crystallised their position regardless. That left Fine Gael’s five MEPs, members of the European People’s Party (EPP), with a big decision to make.

The EPP is a disciplined group led by Bavarian Manfred Weber. He was bested by fellow German Christian Democrat Ursula von der Leyen to become commission president. Under pressure from his own members in the Netherlands and elsewhere — fearful of populist parties on his right in next year’s European elections — he took a hard line against the commission proposal. The EPP defeated it in a critical environment committee vote, walked out of negotiations, and set out to defeat the Nature Restoration Law completely in the final vote in the parliament. It came within 12 votes of doing so. Of the 12 votes short, seven were Irish — including the five Fine Gael MEPs, Sinn Féin’s Chris MacManus and Fianna Fáil’s Billy Kelleher. All moved from opposition to the more expansionist commission proposal, to ultimately support the council’s final version.

If a modest beginning, the ultimate criticism of which is its restraint, it represents real change. And it is a European story where, unusually, Irish votes provided the margin of victory in the European Parliament. Seven Irish MEPs moved politically on the issue. They didn’t move in concert, but movement by one gave comfort and permission to another. The Dáil vote made staying put impossible.

The intellectual argument around biodiversity and climate has been won, albeit long after the science was clear. The Nature Restoration Law marks the limit of how farmers can be used as catspaws against decarbonisation when they are in the front line of the damage done by climate change. It draws a line under how far Fine Gael can use the Greens as a buffer against agreed Government policies. Climate denial, having no capacity to win big arguments, is now tactical — it seeks to shift goalposts so that responsibility is always somewhere else, for someone else.

The self-referential news cycle that prioritised the RTÉ story over climate breakdown — and other issues — is a colourless, odourless, deadly extension of fake news. On climate, we are facing disaster.