It was very amusing to read, this week, the latest pronouncement of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). Here’s a flavour of it, if you missed it:
The SEAI, which is the State body responsible for promoting sustainable energy use, said carbon emissions returned to the same level as 2019 after a temporary reduction due to pandemic restrictions.
Car use was “a significant contributor” to the increased emissions last year while demand for transport rose by 8.3 per cent after energy use was suppressed significantly during 2020.
The SEAI said that while the new figures may be expected, they underlined “the urgent requirement for a change in transport sector with a necessary shift to cycling, walking, public transport and electric vehicles and eliminate unnecessary car journeys”.
Here’s a state-funded, taxpayer body, essentially bemoaning an increase in economic activity post lockdown. Say what you want about the old lockdowns, after all, but damnit, they were good for the environment. Stay Green, Stay at Home.
Thank the good lord in his green heaven, then, for the forthcoming energy crisis. He’s many things, is that Vladimir Putin, but he sure is good news for Irish climate change activists. He seems certain to achieve what Eamon Ryan has been trying to do for his whole life: Getting you to sit around in the cold and the dark this December with no Christmas lights on.
I write this not because I am a conspiracy theorist, but because it would be entirely naïve of the public not to realise that there is a significant strain of thought within the apparatus of the Irish state which is quietly eager for the high prices and supply crunch which, with great serendipity, is arriving during an era of Green Government. See that line above about “eliminating unnecessary car journeys”? Keep it in mind, and think of it, dear readers, if and when the Government announces that it has sadly become necessary to ration the supply of diesel at the pumps. They want this. They are hungry for it. They believe it is for your betterment, and that of blessed mother Earth.
Consider too, that this is not a crisis of the moment. To some extent, it suits some of my fellow, but perhaps more uncompromising, right wing populists to pretend that all of our woes are, as the Government insists, a function of big bad Vlad sending the tanks into Ukraine. There’s much traction to be gained on Telegram these days, if you’re an edgy radical, by going along with that: The true patriot on Telegram would put Ireland first (TM), toss the Ukrainian refugees back to where they came from, house the Irish first, and ask Putin nicely to turn the gas back on when he’s finished the overdue pacification of the Nazis in Kiev and the exposing of Barack Obama’s bioweapon labs, or whatever the latest Russian line is.
That this all conveniently ties in with the Government’s narrative that this crisis is primarily because of the war seems lost on those who believe it.
But this is not a crisis caused by war. It is a crisis caused by several decades of abominably poor policy, both at Irish and European level. Consider for a moment that for most of the present generation, the Irish state has invested enormous sums in energy infrastructure which is proving useless in the teeth of the present crisis. We have a country covered from head to foot in windmills, and we’re facing the possibility of blackouts. Those two things, my friends, are not unconnected. It was always likely to be stupid to bet the house on a technology which depends on the compliance of the Irish weather. Our approach to the war may or may not be foolish, but it is not the cause of the crisis, or even the crisis itself. The crisis has been with us for some time: An insecure supply of energy, driven by an ideological crusade to purge the country of unclean things.
We are dependent on Russian gas, at the end of the day, because we would sooner keep our own gas in the ground, and thumb our noses at that American gas which is villainous on two grounds – that it is fracked, and perhaps worse, that it is American. It is too late now to drill for it in time to solve this crisis, which also provides a convenient excuse not to drill for it to solve the next crisis. Even though there will be a next crisis.
It is important – essential – to remember a basic fact about Irish energy policy. That fact is that it is the official and consistent position of the Irish Government that we should have less energy.
When you have less energy, prices rise. This energy crisis that we now face is simply the official end goal of Irish policy, but delivered, thanks to Putin, on an undesirably accelerated timeline.
The entire set of policy measures on energy that we have introduced since about the turn of the millennium have had one end goal: To progressively increase prices in order to discourage use. That is what the carbon tax was for: To push up costs to make you use less. That is what the higher taxes on first petrol, then diesel, cars, were for. That is what the plastic bag tax was for.
At the same time, we have dramatically and consciously increased the size of the population, increasing the demand for energy. And the only – literally the only – investment in new supply has been in “green” energy, which, well. We’ll see how that works out for us, come December.
None of this is a secret. It has been openly and repeatedly stated by every Government since Bertie Ahern made the unconscionably stupid decision to make John Gormley his Tánaiste. There is no reason to suspect that the agenda or policy has suddenly changed because Vladimir Putin has inconveniently advanced the timeline.
Voters, by the way, have only themselves to blame for all of this. Democracies only work when the public pays close attention to the things that their rulers are saying, and the decisions that they are taking. It was not simply eminently foreseeable that Government policy would lead to higher prices – it was the stated goal of the policy. None of this is some conspiracy concocted against the poor unsuspecting public. The public voted for it and tolerated it.
And if the public wants cheaper energy in the long run, it must vote for people who pledge to deliver it. That means reversing the idiotic suspension of Irish oil and gas exploration, and the mind-numbingly stupid decision to oppose the Foynes natural gas terminal. If you really want to be Green and still have cheap energy, it means acquiring more access to Nuclear Generation, either here or from some other country like France which doesn’t have our aversion to generating it.
Ultimately, we must realise something: We do not have this energy crisis because our politicians broke their promises. We have it because they kept their promises. The Irish Green Party is not like Charlie Haughey’s Fianna Fáil: It is neither corrupt, nor especially dishonest. It does what it says it will do. They’re not to blame, because they did what they’re supposed to do, in a democracy: What the public voted for.
And the majority of us have repeatedly voted to be poorer.
Now we are. Congratulations.