This week is proving to be a master class in the group think of the Irish establishment.
Having once more capitulated to far-left abortion extremists, there will be an undignified scutter to see who can out breast-beat them over the failure to meet arbitrary targets for carbon emissions.
The occasion for this latest national wailing and gnashing teeth is the publication of the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest doom-saying report that ought to serve as a running kick in the arse for every last one of us, apparently.
The EPA says we as a people are going to be letting someone – they never say who, curiously – down by missing “our” target of reducing carbon emissions by 51% by 2030.
And no use anyone of you shower of yokes – even those of you who have made an effort and are crying into your bowl of insects – promising to buck up your ideas. Oh no. Too late for that my friends.
The reason for that is because everything you do that you might consider normal living is seen as a two fingers to the projections and models and what not of the climate alarmists.
This is made perfectly clear by the way, because the only time we were ever really batting against climate change was during the Covid Panic induced lockdown. That is all you really need to know about what sort of lives these characters want us to have.
Now they are chastising us because “sectoral emissions ceilings for 2025 and 2030 are set to be exceeded in almost all cases, including Agriculture, Electricity, Industry and Transport.”
In other words, the reason for the Irish state falling short is because the economy has recovered from the impact of the lockdown. Now, it can validly be argued that there are aspects of that growth which are pretty much artificial given that much of GDP growth is filtered away in external transfers, but the point remains that any normal economic activity is going to undermine the obsessive pursuit of meaningless carbon emissions targets.
Not only that, but as we have seen once more this week, one of the key targets of the obsessives is the agriculture/food sector. This is also emphasised in the EPA report where a normal projected 12% growth in the dairy herd between 2022 and 2030 is identified as one of the culprits for the failure of agriculture to meet the targets.
You may be certain that this will be focused on by those seeking means to make amends. The bottom line is, as we pointed out the other day regarding the plans to drastically reduce cattle numbers, the solution offered will ensure that this country’s food production will be radically reduced.
The same applies to all other sectors that are tied to the economic growth that they otherwise wish us all to give them credit for.
That includes transport and construction and data centres, and reflects the lack of “joined up thinking” that is a key theme in the world view of our rulers and aspirant rulers.
You simply cannot have all of the above, much of it driven by or reflective of the needs of international capital and its consequent demands for “free movement of labour,” and at the same time expect to simultaneously fulfil their other obligations to reduce carbon emissions.
For the truth is that this could only even begin to be achieved either by abandoning their dependence on data centres and mass immigration and a cut of corporate revenue – which they have no intentions of doing – or alternatively forcing the native population to take a hit. That, of course, causes them barely a moment’s hesitation.
That lack of hesitancy, at least so far, is because there has not been the kind of popular kick back here as there has been in other European countries that might force the main political parties to jettison left liberal extremism on all of the core issues – abortion, mass immigration, climate extremism: on which all of them – Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Greens, Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, Labour, People Before Profit – agree.
The reaction of the climate extremists has been predictable. Friends of the Earth have described the report as a “kick in the backside” of the state and the taxpayer who pays their bills.
At time of writing, there was little or no political response which given that it is a Bank Holiday weekend and a non-sitting day, most of the “expert” opposition spokespersons and staffers in Leinster House will not yet have digested what to say from the NGOs. So, the FOE reaction can be safely taken as a summary of what to expect.
The opposition reaction will be similarly framed; around the failure of the government to “do more”, leavened – depending on the source – with references to “equal transition,” “all Ireland dimension,” “diversity” and how climate change adversely impacts upon people of colour, women, transgender people, refugees, people/beaches/snails/trees/tropical rodents in their own constituency, and so on.
Some of the mainstream media comment is so pathetic that it would be an insult to any of you reading this to retail it.
Some of their authors would be well advised to take some time out and read Gulliver’s Travels on the folly of elevating fallacious fads into overarching and all consuming obsessions to be pursued at all costs, and despite all consequences.
Our “climate change” intelligentsia are the soul mates of the sages of the Land of Balnibarbi where the Grand Academy has embraced nonsensical “science” and forced everyone who dissents to go along with it all or be silenced.
Although given that one of their experiments was to turn human excrement into food, perhaps this is a book that ought not be recommended reading for our own “projectors.”