Taoiseach Willing to Sacrifice Ireland’s Future to Avoid Hard Work on Climate

The Taoiseach Micheál Martin can’t be arsed with doing the hard work of effective climate action, judging by his comments at the opening of Stripe’s new Dublin offices on Wednesday:

“I don’t think we can mitigate for climate change, … This might be controversial, because I believe in addressing climate change. But if we get into a position where we’re going to challenge every single thing, saying it’s against the climate, we’re going to divide society fairly fast and we’ll then get a negative reaction against good, progressive policies that seek to address climate and very serious issues.”.

Let’s try to unravel this mess of circular half-truths. Firstly, we absolutely can mitigate for climate change, by meeting our own legally binding emissions reduction targets, which his government is way off track of meeting.

Secondly, you can’t believe in addressing climate change and think we don’t have to challenge every single thing. To recap, the climate emergency is a code red for humanity, and CO2 levels are still rising beyond the level needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, breaking another legally binding target, this time from the Paris agreement. Every single thing about how western society currently operates contributes to climate change. Of course it all needs to be challenged in order to drastically reduce emissions in this decade, as outlined by the IPCC.

Thirdly, to admit that the only path forward is one of polarisation is a clear indication of not actually believing in addressing climate change. There are no good, progressive policies that seek to address climate change that don’t include climate justice and system change.

To actually enact good climate action policies that are just and don’t cause polarisation, large subsidies and investment are needed by government to protect industries and the parts of society that will incur costs during a transition to net-zero, such as moving society away from heavy car dependence towards electric public transport for example.

Unfortunately for us, Micheál Martin and successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments have wedded themselves to the neoliberal ideology of abdicating more and more state responsibility to the private market, which rules out them even being able to imagine a large scale societal shift backed by massive state investment. Ardnacusha would never be built by the government today. This lack of ambition, and the austerity mindset that goes with it, leaves us with polices that tinker around the edges of the market, like changes to the VRT rate on electric vehicles, when what we need is rapid expansion of a nationalised electrified bus and rail network.

These short-term small scale policies have quickly run out of road and the government now find themselves in a policy cul-de-sac. Either the Taoiseach isn’t willing to reverse course, or he’s not even capable of seeing that the option is available. By raising the white flag just when the country needs climate leadership, Micheál Martin is telling us he is willing to sacrifice the country’s future to avoid doing the hard work. He doesn’t want to put in the hard work of making sure that no one in society is left behind, and that the burden of vital climate action is shared by all of Irish society equally, even though 79% of people think climate change should be a priority for the government.

(If you want know more about the climate action Ireland needs to take, I recommend reading John Gibbon's excellent book The Lie of Land).

I find it odd that Micheál Martin is worried about enacting policies that could polarise Irish society when he has spent the last few years taking decisions that actively alienate large swathes of Irish society at a time.

His government has overseen 15,000 plus people into homelessness, including deliberately causing homelessness overnight by lifting the eviction ban in 2023 to placate landlords. His government has refused to take any action on the housing crisis that would risk the reduction of house prices, alienating thousands of people stuck living at home or paying extortionate rents.

He refused to recognise Michael Lowry and his group of supporters as government TDs even though they co-wrote the programme for government and instead pushed through the speaking rights changes in the Dáil, alienating opposition voters by reducing the speaking time of their representatives. He said Mary Lou was “ag insint bréaga” and then lied about what it meant, alienating anyone who can speak Irish and heard him say it.

He has refused to enact the Occupied Territories Bill, alienating everyone that thinks Ireland should abide by International law and not trade with illegally occupied areas of The West Bank. He has refused to put procedures in place to search U.S. planes landing at Shannon airport to ensure they are not carrying arms, alienating those who think a neutral country shouldn’t be participating in American wars. He has refused to act against airlines that traffic arms through Irish airspace on their way to be used in Gaza, alienating those who think Ireland should abide by the Genocide Convention and attempt to prevent a genocide taking place.

He refused to entertain internal Fianna Fáil candidates for the presidential election and anointed Jim Gavin, alienating his parliamentary party colleagues, and then the Fianna Fáil voting base when three grand Gavin crashed out of the race. Most recently, his budget on Tuesday gave a raft of tax breaks to property developers, alienating older people and children whose rates of poverty will increase.

Micheál Martin doesn’t want to work hard to mitigate the worst of the climate emergency and adapt to the climate change already guaranteed, alienating us all.