In 2019, the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced the government’s action plan on climate change for the next five years at the Grangegorman TU campus in Dublin. In 1830, the campus was known as the Richmond District Lunatic Asylum. Varadkar’s plans to end Ireland’s dependence on fossil fuels were closer to the ranting visions of one of the campus’s earliest inmates than the reality of Ireland, nearly two hundred years later.
Naturally, Varadkar and twelve members of his cabinet, arrived at the Lunatic Asylum in a hybrid bus. His dozen colleagues then spoke in tongues about how Ireland was going to make itself virtually carbon-neutral by the time of the asylum’s 200th birthday. We are now as far from 2019 when Varadkar “rolled out” (government initiatives are now always spoken of as if they were carpets) his plans as we are from 2030, and we are barely closer to the paradise of “net zero” than we were then. The Environmental Agency reports that our carbon dioxide emissions are down by just 29% instead of the obligatory (by EU law) 51%.
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