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“POLITICIANS, REGARDLESS OF political persuasion, donning wellies and standing around looking sympathetic will not serve much purpose.”
So said Simon Harris, then in his first term as a TD, in 2015 in the midst of a winter of “exceptional and widespread flooding”.
As the minister of state with responsibility for the Office of Public Works at the time, he said that recent floods and the “possible impact of climate change” would inform flood risk management plans that were underway. He promised the government would spend more on flood relief in the following five years than it had in the previous twenty.
Nearly a decade later, Ireland has seen not only flooding but heatwaves and storms wrack damage around the country. The climate crisis and the threats it poses to lives, livelihoods and nature are coming into ever-sharper focus.
As Simon Harris takes over the leadership of Fine Gael, and soon, most likely, the country, is he ready to face the climate crisis?
‘This is his responsibility’
A Fine Gael convention last weekend to select its candidate for the Midlands-North-West constituency in the upcoming European election turned into Harris’ soft inauguration.
Speaking to reporters at the convention, he was quizzed on many issues, including climate.
“I think this is an important point and I make it strongly and I believe in it: climate action is really important,” he said. “I’m absolutely committed to addressing the climate emergency. We all are.”
He will need to be.
Human activities have unequivocally caused global warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and widespread and rapid changes have already been observed in the atmosphere, on land and at sea.
Every incremental rise in average temperatures will intensify the climate hazard that the world faces and “deep, rapid, and sustained reductions” in greenhouse gas emissions are crucial to avert total catastrophe.
At the same time, Ireland is on track to blow through the carbon budget that is supposed to set a limit on the greenhouse gas emissions the country produces.
Ireland produces fewer emissions than larger heavy polluters like the US or China, but it still has an important role to play in climate action.
On a per capita basis, Ireland is one of the highest emitters across the European Union.
In addition to stopping global warming, there are also more immediate and local benefits to taking climate action, like reduced air pollution, better public transport options, and improved health and wellbeing.
During this Dáil term, Harris has been Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and briefly stood in as Minister for Justice while Minister Helen McEntee was on maternity leave. Previously, he was Minister for Health, and, before that, Minister of State at the Department of Finance with responsibility for the OPW.
He has engaged with some climate action policies in those roles, but has not yet faced a thorough testing of his climate credentials.
“A lot of politicians, unless they’re directly in the Department of Environment, the environmental and climate issue just passes them by, and I think that that remains the case for most of our political parties,” said campaigning journalist John Gibbons, speaking to The Journal.
“I think it’s much more difficult for a politician in 2024 to take over the leadership of a party and become Taoiseach without grasping that, on their watch, there is a full-blown ecological emergency,” Gibbons said.
His job as a leader is to flag upcoming threats and there is none bigger and none more salient than the climate emergency, so I would certainly be hopeful that his advisors will get him up to speed.
“The idea that climate is a Green issue that is owned by one small political party is very outdated and I certainly hope that the new Fine Gael leader and the new Taoiseach will understand that this is his responsibility.”
Friends of the Earth chief executive Oisín Coghlan agreed that it’s perhaps not surprising, given the roles that Harris has been in to date, that climate hasn’t been a central part of his remit.
However, he added that Harris is “a politician that prides himself on being in touch with the younger generation and being tech-savvy, and he will know in that case that it is a critical issue for younger voters”.
“If Fine Gael wants to position itself as the party of the progressive centre, climate is an issue that is squarely on the agenda of those voters. Particularly among young people, it is an issue that they want to see action on,” Coghlan said.
“I hope he will appreciate that, and, now that he has a role that encompasses all of the government’s responsibilities, that he will see climate as being central to that.”
Security challenge
Harris’ first contribution to the Dáil that referenced climate – if only briefly – was in 2015, four years after he became a TD.
In a discussion about European security policy, he made the point that “competition for scarce resources and the steady creep of climate change increase the risk of instability”.
That link between security and climate change surfaced again in Harris’ remarks last weekend soon after he was officially named the new Fine Gael leader.
Delivering a manifesto-style speech to the packed room at the Fine Gael convention, Harris mentioned climate change briefly, once, saying: “Fine Gael stands for supporting the family farm and helping farmers to transition to meet the challenges of food security and climate change.”
He raised the idea of security multiple times throughout the speech; national security, but also security in housing, care, health and public spaces.
Later, speaking to reporters, Harris was questioned about why climate hadn’t appeared to feature strongly in his speech.
In response, he said: “When I talked about security, I specifically talked about security relating to our planet.”
(The speech can be read in full here.)
“Climate action and our planet being on fire, and taking action on that, is an absolutely integral part of our security,” he said, adding that, if it could have been interpreted that climate was not a priority for him: “Let me clarify that on my part, and you’ll hear more from me on that in my Ard Fheis speech.”
“It’s not, though, rural versus urban, farmer versus science. We need to stop this idea that you can either be on the side of farmers or on the side of putting out the fire on the planet,” he continued.
“I mean, farmers get climate action. They get it a lot better than some people who just talk about it. What we need to do and what I tried to say in my speech today is we need to support farmers and agriculture in the transition in practical ways.”
Responding to Harris’ speech, John Gibbons said that climate change is a key security consideration and that he hopes the new Fine Gael leader has “got the memo” in that regard.
“The greatest threat to our national security in every sense of the word, from food security to wider security issues over the next decade, without a doubt is coming from climate and ecological impacts,” Gibbons said.
He said the agricultural system is already “lurching from crisis to crisis” and Harris needs to work with the industry to push it towards reducing its emissions. “I think it’s a great challenge for any politician.”
Oisín Coghlan of Friends of the Earth said that there is no greater threat to security than the climate crisis, whether it’s local security issues – like floods affecting small businesses – or wider questions of international security.
“Floods affecting small businesses and which is slap bang in the middle of the kind of voters and constituencies that, by the sound of it, Simon Harris wants Fine Gael to appeal to,” Coghlan said.
The impacts of climate breakdown very squarely affect that whole range from local impacts to global international security. International risk assessments identify climate breakdown as an existential threat to global security and to trade and relations and everything that we now take for granted.
“I hope Simon Harris realises that and I hope that in his future speeches, whether it’s at the Ard Fheis or whether it’s in the Dáil when he takes office, assuming everything goes as expected, that he recognises that more explicitly.”
Carbon tax
On the deeply divisive carbon tax, Harris has fallen in step with the longstanding Fine Gael position in favour of levying the tax on fuels like coal, oil, natural gas and peat and allocating the revenue towards climate-related project like agriculture supports and retrofitting.
In 2019, he defended the tax in the Dáil, saying: “The moment of truth is about to happen in this House soon on carbon.”
“It is very easy to back the fluffy, nice-to-do measures that we are in favour of in taking action on climate change. It is quite different to face up to the truth and to say that if we want to do it, it will involve a carbon tax.”
It led to a bit of a verbal scuffle between Harris and the Rural Independents and People Before Profit, with the latter two groups accusing him and Fine Gael of being out of touch with the public and failing to tackle energy poverty.
“In breaking news, climate change affects rural Ireland,” was Harris’ response.
“When I was Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW, I visited Kerry and Cork South West, which Deputies Danny Healy-Rae, Michael Healy-Rae and Michael Collins represent, and we watched parts of our country begin to fall into the sea and begin to flood,” he said.
“The idea of dividing the country into rural and urban Ireland and that climate change does not affect rural Ireland makes the Deputies out of touch on the issue. They do not speak for rural Ireland.”
Retrofitting and research
In his role as Minister for Higher and Further Education, as well as Science, Research, and Innovation, Harris has been the face of a number of funding grants and support for college action plans that are linked to climate.
Major day for research across the island of Ireland as we announce the development of new research centres.
— Simon Harris TD (@SimonHarrisTD) October 24, 2022
Working with colleagues in the UK, researchers & educators will work to address major global challenges such as climate change
Find out more here: https://t.co/5JqCS8WQzj pic.twitter.com/ZOVXXNuw15
Most significantly, he was responsible for upskilling and reskilling programmes aimed at equipping more workers with the skills necessary to carry out retrofitting.
“We want to retrofit hundreds of thousands of homes. We cannot do that unless we have the skills we need to do it,” Harris said in late 2020.
The job is not yet done; thousands more workers are still needed. As Taoiseach, Harris will need to make sure that he appoints a successor to the ministerial role who can pick up the mantle.
“It is really welcome that the government has been emphasising and promoting apprenticeships as an authentic and positive path after school. Also, practically, we need more technical crafts people and tradespeople if we’re going to do half the things we need to do in Ireland, whether it’s building houses or the energy transition,” Coghlan said.
“There’ll be lots of jobs in retrofitting in wind, in solar over the next few decades. It’s a very solid career path now and it’s great that they’ve made a start on that. Could they do more? Yes. But it’s good that they have started on that. I hope he continues to champion that from the office of Taoiseach.”
Future
Gibbons and Coghlan both pointed to Ireland’s food systems as a key area of concern that Harris should address for the sake of the climate and the country more broadly.
“At the moment, our food systems are highly insecure and they haven’t been stress tested against serious breakdown. My concern is that we’re basically continuing down a pathway that leaves us incredibly vulnerable nationally to global food shocks – and global food shocks are absolutely coming down the path,” Gibbons said.
“The job I would see of the Taoiseach is to help to shift that discussion away from an industry-led model towards what do we, the public, need from our food system,” he added.
Coghlan described that the “current business model of Irish farming is dedicated towards providing premium products for premium markets abroad, more than actually for food security in Ireland”.
“You sometimes hear from lobbyists suggesting that Ireland is feeding the world. We’re not. We’re feeding premium products for premium markets. If food security was top of our agenda, we’d be looking for the Irish agricultural system to supply more of Ireland’s food because we know the fragility of supply chains,” he said.
Great to visit Shinagh Farm today in West Cork. Working with them to help adapt to climate action. We must partner with the farming community, work with them, support them & not climate-shame! A core industry and a core part of our communities pic.twitter.com/9QqHzKAx0L
— Simon Harris TD (@SimonHarrisTD) November 8, 2021
In 2016, Harris spoke in the Dáil to nominate Enda Kenny as Taoiseach.
He identified in that speech that Ireland’s governance system is often too focused on the short term at the expense of long-term thinking, and said the Dáil needed to work harder on developing long-term plans to address major challenges – one of which, he said, was climate change.
“One of the weaknesses exposed in the Irish governance system is that it is all too often focused on the short term and does not easily accommodate long-term thinking. There will be an onus on the Government and on all of us in this House to work to build action plans and to get the input of all Members – nobody has a monopoly on wisdom – to develop long-term action plans to address the challenges we face,” he declared, ushering in what would become Enda Kenny’s last stint as Taoiseach before Leo Varadkar took over in 2017.
Now, on the precipice of leading the country himself, it is Simon Harris’ turn to be tested on whether he can use the next twelve or so months to make inroads on a crisis that is make or break for Ireland’s future.
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The climate change agenda continues unabated.
Constant sensational articles spreading doom and gloom. Incessant scaremongering facilitated by Green Party propaganda.
@Patrick Presley: And there’s never any mention of how scientists have been interfering with Mother Nature for over 70 years or more!:
@Patrick Presley: I want a safe and pleasant future for my children. What will they say about our generation after we’re gone? I want them to say that we made reasonable sacrifice and effort to preserve the planet for future generations, not that we denied proven scientific consensus, scapegoated and vilified those making an effort, and promoted misinformation and lies for our own selfish short-term gain. The Green Party has an environmental agenda because they’re the bloody Green Party, the clue is in the name. You might not love them but they were elected by the people of this country and they play a role as part of an elected coalition. All I hear in the comments on here is ME, ME, ME. NOW, NOW, NOW. Where did our compassionate, selfless, generous nation go? Why are those voices not heard? Just this relentless, toxic, ignorant drivel.
@Radical Centrist: Everybody hears that, but rich renegade politicians don’t help the matter in hand. Maybe that’s where our compassionate, selfless, generous nation went
@Radical Centrist:
Are you sleeping in a wet doorway tonight ? We have more pressing issues to deal with.
@Regular John: It’s not one thing or the other. Caring about the environment doesn’t mean not caring about homelessness or housing. It’s possible to tackle social, environmental and economic issues in balance, at the same time. That’s why we have government departments and ministries.
@Paul Gorry: Who exactly is a rich renegade? Seriously, we elected these people to represent us. They have a mandate. It lasts 5 years and then we get to elect again. Why do we insist on abusing and obstructing people who have a job to do on our behalf?
@Radical Centrist: Stephen Donnelly health minister is one. Can you not see the disturbing signs coming in the future? Can you not see the fact that ff got into bed with fg?Abusing and obstructing people that have a job to do? Well their not doing a good job at the moment infact they are making it worse.” People who have a job to do on our behalf ” is that going well for you at the moment? Just vote for eamonn so!
@Radical Centrist: There is no such thing as a mandate.
That is a contrivance of political groups to pretend we have given them our permission to do what we do not want them to do.
@Radical Centrist: If you want a safe and pleasant future for your kids then The Green Party will not bring you that.
Their policies do more to harm than help the environment.
Their policies do work to improve the profits of businness though.
@Radical Centrist: you would drink the cool aid in a second.
@Radical Centrist: Might you be someone connected to this article under a pseudonym. I carry out many different green actions from recycling, reducing journeys, reducing our energy usage, biodiversity initiatives. I would love to own an electric car, I would love to retrofit my home, I would love to have PV panels, but under a Green Govt with 2 of us working, we are living month to month & can’t afford any of these initiatives. Indeed, I have working adult children living at home because they can’t afford exorbitant rent, let alone buy a home & they watch as ROG accommodates thousands arriving daily. I now despise the Green Party, they didn’t bring the people with them & have failed the Green issues in Ireland, just enabled big business such as Energy companies. You reap what you sow.
@Radical Centrist: If you have a home and children and the means to support them, then lucky you. But for the tens of thousands that haven’t that present-day luxury (used to be a given), their priority is to get a home and a normal settled life.
NOT helped by the Green minister inviting half the world to move here and sample our generous housing giveaways – just as long as you’re not indigenous working Irish.
It’s not the Grens’ environmental agenda that bothers people. It’s their uncontrolled immigration policy, their tax tax tax policy, ie take from the middle workers and give to the rich for their expensive home upgrades as well as the welfare brigade. It’s their addiction to long-distance flights,
It’s their indifference to the housing crisis
@Roy Dowling: Like many commenters here, I don’t want to give my name for obvious reasons. What would you do if I did? There’s quite a sinister tone to your question.
@SV3tN8M4: I’m not connected in any way to this article. I’m not sure why the Green Party is being discussed in relation to an article about Simon Harris. I don’t think the Green Party is responsible for all of society’s ills, like many people seemingly do. I think their limited minority role in the coalition is a positive balance to their coalition partners, and they have stuck to their convictions, at the expense of populist approval. And if people hate them so much, they’ll get an opportunity within a year to vote for other candidates. As you say, you reap what you sow.
Jesus, we have 4 thousand homeless kids at the moment and he’s going on about the climate nonsense. The guy is nothing but a tool.
@Regular John: We have 4,500 children homeless. You can double that number to include just the mothers, & a lot more when you include both parents! Then we have a huge number of single people who will be retiring & the elderly who just won’t have the pension to cover the cost of today’s rentals.
@Regular John: The articles about our Taoiseach elects record on environmental issues in his time in office, by an environmental journalist. Why would you say he’s “going on” about “climate nonsense”? None of the quotes are recent. I’m sure there are many other articles about his attitude towards homelessness, if you want to read more about that side of things.
@Radical Centrist:
He is quoted more than once from last weekend at the FG convention. Read the article again…
@Radical Centrist: a Taoiseach elected by fianna gael members. Ye can’t make it up….
@Regular John: he is not the housing minister
@Regular John: a FG convention that didn’t even happen? Where you reading your comics? Oops, The Journal
@Paul Gorry: elected TDs elected by the democratic process of electing TDs who, in Parliament, vote on electing the leader of the country. It’s unbelievable how we elect TDs
@Fintan Pox:
So what if he isn’t the housing minister ? He is about to become leader of the country.
Also, it actually states where and when the convention took place if you bothered to read the article.
@Regular John: that’s nothing that number will continue to rise guaranteed especially since the growing trend of landlords are now evicting families to rent rooms individually. Makes more for them naturally and best of all nothing will be down until it’s too late still lets increase homelessness and immigration will help aswel for everyone involved so what to those who suffer I suppose.
@Colette Kearns: don’t worry our government will have thought that all out had plenty of time to and was more than extremely obvious to see it coming down the line. Wait until the problem is bursting at the seams and there is continued influx of people coming in aswel well thought out indeed.
Ireland needs to banish NGOs
@Oh Mammy: A certain amount of them, yes. Alot of taxpayers money being swindled on wafflers – articles like this are a prime example.
Politicians are pushing the climate scare. Politicians aren’t scientists yet they speak as if they know the facts. They don’t. The moment you start asking tough questions. The whole argument starts to fall apart
@Washpenrebel: 1) It not a scare. Just simple fact.
2) The last thing we’d need is a government of scientists.
3) The real issue is that these politicians are doing what they do to ensure the benefits come to business interests. That generally means the people suffer for their policies.
Policies which all too often have the opposite effect to what is required, i.e. cause harm to the environment or do little or nothing to address the cause of climate change.
The Greens in particular need to be sent the way of the PDs.
If its not one thing its another. Whether it be economic, conflict, immigration , housing ,health, now climate. Mostly created by the people in power. End result is to penalise the ordinary people to scare, to cause concern. I believe climate change its a natural process in our ecology. Happened 6000 yrs ago proven by ice core samples. its a cycle and theres nothing can be done to avoid it. I just want to live a quiet life and stop being constantly bombarded with doom and gloom
@M: Show me a politician and I’ll show you a crisis of some sort – usually of their creation.
@M: Climate changes.
Until humankind caused it, it was driven by we we loosely call natural processes.
We know that Greenhouse Gasses cause these climate changes.
We know that we humans have increased atmospheric CO2 by 50% in a mere couple of hundred years.
The planet is heating up as a result.
And the planet is developing – working towards – new climate norms. That process will continue until the warmer planet is back in balance again.
How long that will take, and how much different our climates will be, depends on when we stop adding Greenhouse Gasses. For it will take the planet many, many decades – maybe a century or so – for the planet to adjust for the extra Greenhouse Gasses we have already added.
The more we add from this point, the longer it will take, the more the planet will warm, and the greater the planet’s climate will change.
@jak: prophet
Simple Simon should start getting used to the fg crisis that’s looming first methinks..
@Paul Gorry: Wipeout in the Local & European elections will concentrate his mind & the minds of all parties in Dail Eirinn. His failure to rein in Helen Mc Entee & her solo run on Hate Speech legislation & ROG buying up every property in Ireland for Migrants whilst 4170 Irish Children are Homeless, will see him in the history books as the Taoiseach who served the shortest ever term in office.
Typically continually the climate change, where the country is in a poor position in many different areas that need sorting
There’s more than enough being done in Ireland. We are simply nowhere on the emissions league. All the environmental damage has been done before this country ever got going. People are just fed up with career environmentalists preaching and posturing before us all the time. Go to China or India with ye and preach there.
@JP: Much easier to preach here where there is a gullible audience.
Ineptitude somes him up and the rest of the freeloaders in the government
@DJ D: *sums
… ‘climate-shaming’ – right, okay.
“ to anybody who thinks this party is tired, to anyone who thinks this party lacks energy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” Wow
Enough about this nonsense and get rid of that fo ol Eamon ryan
There’s no climate crisis and if there was the leadership of clueless Harris wouldn’t get us through it.
This is a cheap rip off of monty python, does anyone remember sending Dustin the turkey to the euro vision, citizens be citizens
Can nobody see the idiotic elephant in the room?
Was reading about Bankman-Fried, and on “ethics stuff”, he said it was “mostly a front” and described ethics as a “dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us”. I think that is also true of Simon Harris, Eamon Ryan, and Micheal Martin, and all the other commentators and NGOs who preach.
Bad summer, wet and windy according to long range forecast, May, June, July very wet. But who cares, Fianna Fail will brighten up your days
If EVERYTHING is a f@cking crisis… then nothing is a crisis. Sick and tired of this rhetoric.
What a waffler
If we’re honest Money is winning here, well paid, hard working people are broke af in Ireland with no services and nothing to show from the first ‘good years’ the country has ever known, the ‘cead mile failte’ has been 100% eradicated. People are not inclined to give 2 f’s about anything other than themselves, and they’re right.
Harris is the ultimate crisis
Spain and Portugal drenched since October what drought ?
Simon Harris is just more of the same. He has sat at the cabinet table for 8 years as home ownership collapsed, as rents sky rocketed and as our health system crumbled.
He is part of a government that is out touch, out of ideas and out of time.
It’s time for new people with new ideas. It’s time for a general election.
I have listened to John Gibbons & Oisin Coghlan articulate their views many times & Oisin comes across as reasonable & genuine in wanting to bring people with him on the Green journey. He even admitted he couldn’t afford an electric car & drove diesel, which I felt was important for him to say as it puts him in the category of most people. We all want to do our bit & and actually do it, but those of us working cannot afford electric cars, to retrofit our homes, or even Green loans.
John Gibbons on the other hand comes across as an arrogant extremist who wants to impose his views on everybody no matter at what cost. His support of some of the Green extremists who carry out very questionable actions is disgusting.
You must bring people with you & you cannot cut people’s livelihoods off !
Climate crisis? A pox on that. On the list of priorities for mankind, that shouldn’t be in the top 2000. People are getting blown to pieces in wars across the globe, human beings are being sold as slaves in Libya and at the United States southern border, old folks in Ireland can’t afford to heat their homes and there isn’t a single, solitary minute advantage to this planet warming up a couple of degrees for the umpteenth time in history? There is no ‘climate crisis ‘. Follow the money, thats were the true answers are. People love money more than anything.
Like the other Earth sciences of geology and biology, the Earth science of climate covers many research topics, so forcing climate into long-term weather for predictive purposes is childish. Long-term weather is cyclical and represented by the seasons.
Ireland’s maritime climate is one topic of research, with all the influences that make our climate mild and wet for our latitude and because the island sits in the Atlantic.
Climate at its broadest includes the daily and annual motions of the Earth as a research topic. Climate at this level is the rate of change in atmospheric, oceanic, and surface conditions across latitudes as the planet turns daily and orbits our parent star.
@Gerald Kelleher: So what should we do?
@Thesaltyurchin: Retreating to more balanced perspectives for cleaner air, water, and countryside would be a good start.
“When we wish to correct with advantage and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.” Pascal
Climate is not long-term weather.
@Gerald Kelleher: So ignore it and carry on? ‘Believe what I believe’ kinda thing, (science and ‘god’ is a tricky place to be)… while I agree there are several reasons why people want to do this mostly those uber rich (and the ones dumb enough to support them) who have very established ‘revenue streams’ attached to all of this. Change is the only certainty in life, those who resist it always have an agenda.
always amazes me the so called “journalists” ranting about the climate crisis ..seem to be the same people ranting about the “me too” movement ..have the gotten bored of this and moved on to even more ridiculous drama
Simple drop out Simon ffs
The impact of climate change is clear for those that have their eyes open.
SH et al (our government) need to come forward with the strategy to counter the elephant in the room.
have your say