A ‘people’s campaign’ for faster and fairer action on climate change wants election candidates to be challenged on their policies on global heating, saying that the government’s policy of a 2% annual reduction in emissions is inadequate. 

The One Future alliance unites a broad cross-section of Irish society and is made up of faith groups, development, aid, environmental and civil society organisations.

The campaign has nine key policy ‘asks’ for candidates, which focus on “accelerating a transition to a sustainable society in a way that ensures no-one is left behind”. These include:

• Reduce Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 8% every year
• Support the rural economy as farms reduce emissions and become more sustainable
• Ban new fossil fuel projects
• End peat and coal burning for electricity and ensure fair treatment of workers
• Deliver an ambitious State-backed home insulation programme
• Advocate internationally for faster and fairer climate action and justice
• Restore and protect nature and wildlife
• Ensure affordable and accessible public transport for all
• Enable and support community-owned renewable energy projects.

Spokesperson Oisin Coghlan said: “Recent studies show that 89% of Irish adults say we need to take action now on environment, while 60% say prioritising climate action is very important. With One Future, we want to highlight how great a priority climate action is for the electorate, to election candidates.

“Every party is paying lip service to climate action in this election. One Future will help people test whether politicians are promising to do enough and whether they are promising to make sure what they do is fair.

In Association with

“Climate action is not a trade off with better public services. Climate action is about better public services. It is not a trade off with job creation and economic opportunity; it is about job creation and economic opportunity.”

The lead organisations involved in setting up One Future involved are the National Women’s Council of Ireland, the Union of Students in Ireland, Dóchas, the Irish Association of Non-Governmental Development Organisations, Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, Fridays for Future Ireland and the Environmental Pillar, the advocacy coalition of national environmental organisations.

They and the other organisations behind the alliance are also concerned that policies be fair. 

“We know climate change exacerbates existing inequalities and discrimination, hitting those with less power and money harder. It is also the case that badly designed climate policies can exacerbate existing inequalities and discrimination,” the group says.

It slammed the state for relying on taxes and subsidies to incentivise individual behaviour change, “rather than investment in low-carbon infrastructure and regulatory measures to deliver systematic decarbonisation throughout the economy”.

People on lower incomes or suffering from other forms of social exclusion are hit harder by taxes, and as a result “are less likely to be able to afford to invest in electric cars and solar panels, subsidies notwithstanding”. 

Photo: Peter O'Brien, a supporter of the One Future campaign (Pix: Marc O’Sullivan)