“The world is burning, and the world is unfair”, declared Minister Eamon Ryan this week, channelling every annoying brat you ever knew. When I was an adolescent communist I only ever had the unfairness part. My being denied a fiver to buy the new Clash album was to me exactly the same as the injustices levelled against the world proletariat and its allies among the toiling peasantry.
I doubt that the folks would have been any more likely to succumb to my demands had I told them that the world was burning as well as being totally unfair. Nonetheless, “the world is burning” has become the theme track of the Woke Summer, such as it is.
As Brendan Behan might have said of the burning parts of the globe had he been still here for our own season, and as he once responded to a clerical promise that he was destined to join the tormented souls in Hell, “at least they’re fucking warm.”
The world is burning, and the world is unfair. Development has to be focused on protecting the most vulnerable from the impacts of climate breakdown.@UN @irishmissionun #HLPF23 #COP28 pic.twitter.com/6W2qKG16GL
— Eamon Ryan (@EamonRyan) July 20, 2023
The world is not burning of course but do not hold your breath waiting for the sweating ranks of fact checkers and misinformation spooks to haul Ryan and the rest over the burning coals of veracity and truth saying for what is not only alarmist but false. Nor will any of them be writing fevered opinion pieces for the national dailies explaining how it turns out that the fires on Rhodes are strongly suspected to have been started by arsonists.
At least one person has been identified by the Greek police as a suspect in setting the fires. One wonders if he too will turn out to out to be of among the leftie Woke as were Caltech environmental sciences Phd Alexandra Souvernevna, who also described herself as a “shaman,” and former University of California sociology Professor Gary Maynard, Both of whom were charged with setting fires in California in 2021 which were then cited by other leftie extremists as reasons why letting people like them take power was the only way to stop the world burning.
If there is a serious aspect to #theworldisburning in an Irish context, if you suspend your critical faculties long enough to accept any degree of seriousness on the part of the Greens, it may be that it seems to have become a bit of a theme in their sniping at their partners in crime within the coalition.
Which perhaps begs the question as to whether they might be planning an early exit. As they effectively did following their contribution to the disastrous bank bailout in 2010 when they served notice on Taoiseach Brian Cowan. Some of the twittering of late might suggest that this may be so.
It was certainly curious that this week, several prominent Greens came out to take Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to task for his reaction to the publication of the report on expanding rail travel. Varadkar had generally welcomed the plan, which was compiled under the auspices of Eamon Ryan’s Department of Transport, but pointed out that even an expansion of rail would still require an upkeep of the roads which will still, even on the most optimum forecast, cater for 90% of transport demand.
The world is burning. There is no justification for infrastructure that adds fuel to the fire.https://t.co/S1F1rW214q
— Brian Leddin TD (@BrianLeddin) July 26, 2023
Limerick Green TD Brian Leddin was not impressed, and was moved to remind Leo that the world is, like, fookin burning man, and that building more roads is on about the same level of helpfulness as California professors and shapeople setting fire to forests.
Dan Boyle, who has navigated his way down the ranks from TD and Senator to humble Councillor for the County of Cork, took similar umbrage. The Green Party in Cork posted an even more aggressive tweet making it clear that they are extremely vexed over the “fuckers” not realising that the world is burning down around our ears, as we speak.
The Fine Gael leader’s comments sparked a backlash in the Green ranks, with one source asking: “do these f***ers not read the news? Do they not see that the world is burning?” https://t.co/Yv78vQSfdx
— Cork Greens (@CorkGreens) July 27, 2023
No it does not. You can't have a policy of reducing the level of motor traffic while building new roads.
All-island rail plan ‘makes the case’ for more road projects, Taoiseach says https://t.co/MABPua8gwG— Cllr. Dan Boyle/An Comhairleoir Dónal Ó Baoill (@sendboyle) July 26, 2023
So the road is barred. Which makes no sense even within the context of the rail plan, which has quite a lot of merits, because rail and other forms of public transport will never completely replace the car, whether diesel, petrol or electrically propelled.
So, unless the Greens envisage the country reverting to something on the lines of Cambodia in the late 1970s, and some of the extremists on their side clearly do, then roads and private transport will always be a requirement. I spent a great week in Corca Dhuibne recently and much as I enjoyed walking 6 or 7 miles a day for that week, it is just not practical that people living in rural areas, and not just the more isolated parts, should be basically denied the ability to travel freely.
Anyway, we are not going to win that argument here. What I am proposing as my contribution to the silly season of political speculation is that at least a faction of the Greens are starting to plan their exit policy. They are perhaps doing so mindful of the fact that when they stayed too long the last time, they were wiped out as a Dáil party and no one would touch them with a barge pole.
Now they have options. Chief of which is that the main opposition party and the rag tag of other tiny parties like Labour that would be required to put Sinn Féin into government in the 26 counties are just as besotted with climate extremism as the Greens. Or rather, in the case of Sinn Féin, are content to appear to be just as besotted because at the end of the day, if the Shinners get a sniff of power then zero carbon will join all the other stuff like Irish unity and socialism and retaking national sovereignty from the EU on the bucket list of stuff that is handy to mention from time to time, but which they have no intentions of ever getting around to.
So if they need to pretend that the world is burning in order to get them where they want to be, then so be it. The Greens, in fairness, probably do believe in it all. Lambs among wolves, again.