You Will Be Cold, But You Will Be Happy Fighting Climate Change

Matt Treacy ✒ As people struggle with rising energy bills, and the consequent knock on effects in prices that this is having across the entire economy, they may have overlooked the fact that the solution lies in (drum roll) . . . more taxes.

Yes. So freaking obvious when you think of it really. Well, partly more taxes and partly more other state expenditure which of course also comes from taxation. All washed down with lashings of the ginger beer of moralistic guilt.

How do I know this? Well, because I have read this year’s newly released Annual Review of the Climate Change Advisory Council. Hot off the interstitial presses so to speak. Me and former economics guru George Lee were like the sad persons who queue all night over Christmas so that they can be the first to get a ticket for whoever has replaced the All Ireland finals in Croke Park this month. (And you thought it was so that everyone would be watching the Junior Bs….)

Anyway, I read it so that you do not have to.

The Climate Change Advisory Council gave us a bit of a head’s up yesterday when their press release declared that the real issue is not the difficulty of paying the price for vastly-increased electricity and gas, but to use less of them.

You will be cold, but you will be happy.

And you can help to reduce Ireland’s dependence on fossil fuels. All of which more or less have to be imported. Great, so we might bring the Corrib gas and oil onshore? Or build nuclear stations? Or maybe use turf instead?

Eh, no. As long-time fans of CCAC will know, on their very first album issued to critical acclaim way back in 2017, they called for “a phasing out of coal and peat for both residential heating and power generation.” Indeed, they specifically demanded that the generation of electricity from turf be ended.

And so it came to pass. Along with all the other sins of omission that our guardians have committed over the decades of post-colonial arm chancery – I give you the failure to properly develop the oil and gas resources that lie off our coast, the failure to invest decades ago in tidal power generation, and the failure to build a nuclear power station because a gang of lefties objected – the current government, with the dwindling political faction of the crusty left now a central part, made the genius decision to close down not only the turf generation stations, but to ban even the cutting of turf to be sold for domestic heating.

But let us park that for the moment in the bicycle lane behind the broken-down battery-depleted electric car.

The first thing to be said about the report is that it is heavy on ideology. These people clearly have the ear of government but are still unhappy that their more extreme demands are not being met. They lament that Ireland will fail to meet targets that are, let us be honest about it, completely meaningless in the overall scheme of things.

Ireland is after all a small country completely dependent on the wider world for our energy – in large part for the reasons above – and plagued with a manufactured Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to sabotage Irish agriculture along with other indigenous enterprise and beggar its citizens in pursuit of global emissions targets that some of the biggest economies on the planet wipe their bottom with.

It sometimes seems, indeed, that the only time the natives are supposed to “wear the green jersey” and do their bit for Éire is when it involves doing stuff that helps everyone else in the world except ourselves. A curious form of nationalism.

So, try not to laugh when you read stuff like this: “A Just Transition must take account of the livelihoods impacted by the increasing pressure placed on carbon-intensive economic activities, as well as the need to ensure that poorer households do not bear the burden of policies to reduce emissions, and that the benefits of transition and Government support are shared equitably.”

I’d imagine there are a few families around Lanesboro and Ferbane wondering how all of that is supposed to work for them.

So what will this “Just Transition” of which they speak consist of?

Well, first of all, you will have to pay more tax because they are demanding that vehicle registration tax (VRT) be further increased; to “encourage” you to be good and moon at the Chinese Communist Party by buying an electric car. Road haulage is also targeted for another boot in the genollockers by demanding that subsidies be abolished. Dearer food imports basically being the outcome there.

Hidden among all the palaver about smart meters and discouraging electricity use by imposing tariffs and expanding the allegedly “vast renewable resource” that are wind farms, there are the hard proposals that will be met and are guaranteed to both increase bills and lead to more job losses.

Namely; the demand to ensure that the closures of Moneypoint and Edenderry power stations go ahead as planned. This will further increase the dependence on imported fossil fuels that these guys would have you believe they want to stop. Not to mention that those still employed there will join the many hundreds of others whose jobs are being sacrificed on the altar of climate extremism.

One can imagine that some members of the Climate Change Advisory Council such as Cara Augustenberg, former Chair of Friends of the Earth Europe and failed Green Party candidate, are in their granny’s when it comes to all of this stuff. You only have to look at the self satisfied smirks of her comrades in the Cabinet as their agenda – only supported by 7% of the electorate in 2020 and down to 2% according to an opinion poll last weekend – is fulfilled come hell or high water.

But surely someone like Patricia King the General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions might occasionally mention the fact that members of her own union SIPTU are among those losing their jobs when the stations close. Not to mention that her members are among those on average incomes who are facing further gas and electricity hikes of more than a third, along with all the other backdraft of this activist driven agenda?

Credit: Agriland. SIPTU members protest at loss of jobs at Bord na Móna in Lanesboro
‘Everyone is going to feel the pinch over Bord na Móna job losses’ – Agriland.ie

Or is what was once the sensible actual working class left now too so besotted by this crap that they place the achievement of these targets above all else? Perhaps they might take a leaf out of the book of some of their European comrades in Prague and elsewhere who have decided that enough is enough.

Protests in Prague: beyond the numbers – Atlantic Council

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland.