Ireland’s Green party went into government in 2020 determined to bring Ireland from laggard to leader on the climate crisis. Public opinion was with us, and we won more than 7% of the national vote. This mandate allowed us to negotiate a coalition agreement with Ireland’s two large centrist parties that was recognised by European Green colleagues as one of the greenest deals they had seen.
Over the past four and a half years we worked flat out to implement that programme. I think most independent experts would say the impact has been transformational. Last year Ireland’s emissions fell 6.8%, despite having one of Europe’s fastest growing economies and record population growth. The Greens switched spending in favour of public transport, cycling and walking. We rolled out a new rural bus service every week, while cutting young people’s fares by 60%. Passenger numbers took off immediately and we are only at the start of the transformation. A pipeline of big new projects is coming through our planning system, ready to go.
In cloudy Ireland, solar panels are being put up on 100 roofs every day and 1,000 houses are being retrofitted every week. We introduced a basic income scheme for artists, halved the cost of childcare and cut the use of fertilisers in agriculture by 30%. With our government partners, we stood up for Palestine and we were centrally involved in agreeing the EU’s nature restoration law and the loss and damage fund at Cop27.
Despite, or perhaps because of, all the above, we lost all but one of our seats in the national parliament in last month’s general election, after losing both our seats in the European parliament elections in June. Green parties who had been in government in Belgium and Austria have experienced similar electoral reversals in recent months, and all eyes will be on the German election in February to see if the Green party there can buck the trend.
I feel sure that our party can come back stronger, but we do need to ask questions about what lessons can be learned, as we face the climate action leap we know we all still have to make.
The first lesson is that delivering change is easier said than done. Around the world, achieving targets, not just setting them, is imperative. But it is hard because the things you think might be popular are sometimes seen as unwelcome change. What we saw as wonderful new cycle lanes, making it safe for children to cycle to school, were seen by many people in the same communities as worsening the gridlock that Ireland’s car dependency has caused.
Stopping the commercial strip-mining of turf on our precious bogs was twisted as a slight on family traditions, rather than a measure of how we were improving our air quality and protecting our children’s future and the natural world.
Perhaps we underestimated the backlash we were to receive from the vested interests that want to maintain the status quo. Ryanair, Ireland’s biggest polluter, was in constant campaign mode to “weed out” the Greens, while a band of keyboard warriors swamped our every social media post with the most vile commentary imaginable. You brush it off at the time, but in truth, I think it did poison the well of public thinking on what we are about.
It did not help either that the tide of public interest in climate breakdown receded as Covid and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza filled our screens. Most of all I worry that a younger generation may have become disillusioned and disheartened. The slogan of the school strikers, “We are unstoppable, another world is possible”, might be ringing slightly hollow six years on from the early days of their campaign.
But I think there is one other lesson from Ireland, which might restore some hope. Just as there are dangerous climate breakdown tipping points that we risk crossing, there are also tipping points happening that can give us optimism. The renewable clean energy revolution has taken off in the past five years in Ireland as well as elsewhere, and I don’t think it will be stopped.
Despite climate ranking low in every survey of voters’ priorities before the recent election, we now have detailed research that shows that the vast majority of Irish people want to be part of the climate solution. Less than 5% are what you might call climate sceptics.
The question now will be whether the new Irish government continues on the course we have set or whether it will change tack to reflect what the polls seem to say about the public’s priorities.
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We are engaged in what is in effect a war on climate breakdown, and there will be many battles won and lost. The vital thing is to believe that change is possible and not just to give up when you lose on one particular day.
As my successor as party leader, Roderic O’Gorman, the sole Green to keep his seat in the Dáil, put it: we have no regrets. We had political capital four years ago and we spent it on delivering real climate action that has improved people’s lives. That capital needs to be built up again, but we will do so inspired by the knowledge that you can change things even if the odds seem set against you.
We have no future by being good at burning fossil fuels. We learned a valuable lesson in recent years – that there is a better way that can be achieved. The key question is how that level of climate ambition will be politically sustained. I am glad that we still have a voice in Ireland’s parliament ready to ask that question every day.