"Green" policies are destroying this country

It’s is I Dura Ace..

I always get a chuckle from these type who seem to assume that cyclists are a unique group and are not in fact a large overlapping portion of the transport Venn diagram that contains car owners.

What is the real reason they get so upset? Is it because it reminds them that they are unfit? A childish opinion that an alternative mode of transport is 'uncool'? If you vocalized these opinions out loud in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy you'd be looked at as a moron.

All of the scare stories that you heard about are true and we managed to tackle Acid rain and we banned CFCs which has prevented the hole in the ozone layer from growing as big as it would have had we not acted.

Do you know why we barely hear about acid rain or the hole in the ozone layer anymore is because we largely solved those problems by taking appropriate action to scrub SO2 emissions and ban CFCs. The reason we still hear about Climate change, is because we have not taken action to prevent it, and it's getting worse and worse with every passing year.

You're almost 40, you've seen leaded petrol banned in Europe, you've seen the ban on 'smoky coal' in towns and cities, The ban on Aspestos for fireproofing, When the age for smoking was 16 and pretty much everyone was addicted to nicotine by the age of 18, you likely remember what it was like before the plastic bag tax, where every tree and bush had plastic bags stuck in them, you remember being in pubs where your eyes stung from the smoke and when the water at the beaches was filthy from raw sewage being dumped into it

When the worlds scientists come together and call for action because something has been identified as a serious threat, they don't do it for the laugh. And when they've consistently been talking about the same threat, gathering more and more evidence and data that consistently points to the same conclusion for decades, you need to pay attention

The only organisations who oppose climate change action are doing so because it is in their financial self interest to muddy the water on climate science.

Those two plants have only been shut for 15 months, so I would not see it as unsurmountable that they could be re-opened relatively quickly.

Is it not time for the Green Party and their supporters to wake up and smell the coffee ?

We are staring an imminent energy crisis in the face that wind or solar power are not going to make even a dent in, yet they are opposed to LNG and turf burning power plants. Nuclear power flowing through imaginary interconnectors,, even if these interconnectors were there is not going to happen anytime soon, as no country will have a surplus to export.

All that is left to prevent the lights going out is coal and oil and they are still having wet dreams on closing the largest coal burning plant in the state by 2025 and the largest oil burning plant by 2023.

Attempting to promote a politically agenda in a democracy by means of coercive taxes is never a great idea. The day will come when the rubber meets the road and that day has arrived here with fuel prices.

Then those tenders should be rescinded and they should be kept intact. If need be I would not see any great problem in re-opening them and their capability of producing 400 MW sneezed at.

Just 15 months after they were shut down it should not be that difficult to re-staff them and the harvesters would not be a major problem either as that was mainly carried out by local seasonal part-time workers.

Is the equipment itself still in a serviceable condition though? Could be anything from needing just a little oil to needing reassembly.

"Pro-oil brigade", "pro-oil agenda", think of the children - god I hate the influence of Twitter!

Ireland is indeed a small country with a lot of significant problems in housing, health, an increasing cost of living (before Putin decided to invade his neighbour), and all of these issues have gotten worse in the last 2 years (Covid merely took them off the front pages) to where many people are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and pay their bills, face long commutes to work every day with no viable public transport alternatives, and now are struggling to even do that with the massive increases in fuel costs.

How exactly do you expect people already living paycheck to paycheck to bear more direct costs on themselves or through taxation or other charges to fund this notion of a carbon free country - and how do you plan to sell it to them when the countries you mention are doing what they want while you ask them to give up whatever luxuries they can afford, own nothing, put up with a vastly reduced standard of living etc .... for what? Social media kudos? Oh and that's not including massive national debt that amounts to 47k per person at this point!

What will address the climate "crisis" is technology advancement in industry and manufacturing in the countries that are responsible for the highest levels of pollution, not crippling some poor sod in an island of 5 million people (less than the population than many major cities) travelling 2 hours to the office with even more taxes.

If global average temperature only increases by 1.5c we'd be extremely lucky (and even still, experience quite severe consequences), Unfortunately we're on track now to increase global average temperatures by more than 2c with the possibility of increases up to 3-4c

For context, the average surface temperature on Earth is about 14c, so a 1.5c change is huge in this context, and a 3-4c change would fundamentally change every system on our planet and cause extreme disruption to human civilisation. I'm not saying it will drive us to extinction, but major cities would need to be abandoned to rising seas, Other Cities would completely run out of water, storms and rainfall will be more extreme than anythng we have experienced since humans evolved as a species, and areas that currently are inhabited by billions of people would experience deadly, (unsurvivable) heatwaves on a regular basis.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/02/climate-change-to-cause-humid-heatwaves-that-will-kill-even-healthy-people

With the government saying it can’t reduce fuel costs anymore as it’s needed for taxation etc

How are they going to replace all the lost money they get from petrol and diesel when we all have to go electric?