Paul Murphy Urges Eco-Socialist Shift, Opposes LNG and Biomass

We are in the middle of a very severe cost of living crisis. We are also facing climate catastrophe and experiencing the sixth mass extinction event brought about by the unsustainable use of land, water and energy. And those two crises are not unrelated. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin. The root problem and root cause of both is the capitalist system. In other words, the organisation of our economy and our society around profit, maximising profit for big fossil fuel companies in particular, without any regard to people's needs, including people's needs to live in a habitable world. planet. And we need to take measures in dealing with the cost of living crisis that also simultaneously tackle the climate crisis and avoid the catastrophe that is otherwise coming towards us. And unfortunately, while there is much in this motion that we would agree with, a big part of the motion's response is to go for a deeper entrenchment and reliance on fossil fuel infrastructure, tying us into more and more years of environmental damage and increasing carbon emissions. This is not the answer. Some of the solutions put forward in the motion include acquiring an LNG terminal in either Cork Harbour or the Shannon Estuary, repowering the controversial dairy brine wind farm, reopening power plants in the midlands to burn biomass, and this biomass being sourced from brash by suspending the licensing regime for the thinning and felling of forestry. It is utter greenwashing to suggest that scraping out every last piece of organic material left from felling, which is environmentally damaging in its own right, is somehow going to represent green energy. It is destroying material which otherwise will be populated by fauna, filling in some of the destruction left by deforestation. Using brash to create biomass indicates a desire to leave a completely barren wasteland that would only make it easier for industrial machinery to come back to replant the next forest being grown to cut down. The dairy brine wind farm was built in 2003 without an environmental impact assessment. Excavation resulted in a landslide that caused extensive environmental damage, causing severe water pollution, changing the course of a river, killing about 50,000 fish, not to mention the impact it had on locals' everyday lives since. Calling for an LNG terminal when we have just learned this week that global emissions reductions would need to be at least seven times higher to have any hope of staying under 1.5 degrees warming seems to be the height of contradiction to some sort of environmental benefit. Instead, the sort of demands that we need to see are eco-socialist demands which will reduce energy usage while improving people's lives. Free, frequent, green public transport massively expanded to get cars off the road and bring down our reliance on fossil fuels as a matter of urgency. Investment in full retrofitting for all homes in the country. Let's prioritise the rollout of attic insulation at zero cost to people, giving people warmer homes. Reducing energy use. Taking, as Breed said, the energy sector out of private ownership, bringing it into public ownership, running it on a not-for-profit basis to provide energy for people and to drive a rapid and just transition. Not simply doing the relatively minimal measures that are proposed here in terms of data centres, but actually saying no more data centres while we are in this crisis. 14% of our electricity currently going to these data centres. We can't go any further on that. We need to have a full stop on data centres now. And the way to achieve all these things is to get out, mobilise, feed on the streets, have to, Saturday, September 24th, Parnell Square. Thank you,