The Irish government is asking people to take a survey on climate change action. If you live in Ireland, this affects you. It took me about 20 minutes including the screed I had to cut down because it was too long, because apparently you’re only allowed to have a certain amount of opionion on the climate crisis. It’s worth filling out.
But then, why would I let a good screed go to waste? I wouldn’t, so here it is in a blog post. Feel free to adapt any of it as you see fit to your own needs as you fill out the survey, but I’d suggest adapting it rather than copying anything because copy-pasta isn’t going to drive the point home the way a lot of individually aggravated responses will.
To the Irish Government:
It’s vitally and critically important that governments, who are the only institutions with enough power to do so, actually hold corporations, who are the greatest offender in terms of creation of climate-affecting emissions, to account in terms of combating climate change. Individual efforts are fine, but we cannot fix a systemic problem through individual action. Governments *must* choose the long-term health and well-being of the people–*everyone’s* people, the global population–over short-term profit and greed, and force corporations to do the same.
It is critical that governments fund massive public transportion initiatives and move forward with those despite the short-term inconviences of putting those initiatives into place. If Ireland can’t find enough bus drivers, then the government needs to ensure that the pay for those jobs is enough to draw people to them. This is a country with mild weather year-round; there is no reason that you cannot cycle safely on bike lanes literally anywhere in Ireland, save that the government hasn’t funded massive works to support that. These projects must not only be funded generously but fast-tracked; the speed at which Ireland builds anything is mortifyingly slow. I was incredibly excited about the Transport for Ireland scheme and plans until I realized the government’s plan was to roll out these changes by *2040*, which is absurd: the proposed scheme is barely adequate for 2025, and massive effort should have been, and should be being, made to put those schemes into place much, much more quickly. It’s a genuine embarrassment as it stands.
Working from home should be the default choice for any corporate position, with any necessity to travel to an office being striken from corporate bottom lines in taxes and fines. A universal basic income needs to be implemented so that people can afford to take meaningful work outside of huge population centres and reduce the stranglehold major corporations have on so much of the economy.
We should be rapidly investing in broad scale ferries, train transportation, and ideally modernized sailing ships for international travel instead of flights, which are one of the greatest personal offenders for climate change. Furthermore, annual holiday time should be increased across the board to allow for the slower forms of transport so that people *can* travel while also being more environmentally responsible.
I recognise that literally every single thing that I’m asking for here is a major and therefore terrifying expense to governments, but it’s incredibly clear from the minor mitigating efforts that have been put in so far globally that it’s much, much cheaper to spend money now mitigating climate change to as great a degree as possible than it is to try to retrofit a fix later. The *planet* is going to survive. It’s humanity, and every other creature unfortunate enough to be on this earth with us at this time, who are, and will, suffer for our short-term, power-and-profit-for-the-few, greed-oriented capitalistic culture.
I am barely touching on what needs to be done, but Ireland is known around the world as the Emerald Isle. We should as a country be leaning into that ‘green’ imagery in every possible way. We are a small country, capable of great change with comparatively little effort, given our resources of wind and water. We should be world leaders in the green revolution, not putting it on the long finger and hoping someone else will fix the problem.
Do better.