"Green" policies are destroying this country

We've done many debates, from the influence of social media, to should homework be banished, of which we had to argue against, no indoctrination or brainwashing in any of those motions, these competitions are to encourage the students, get confident in public speaking, learning how to frame an argument, counter another argument and work together as a team in all of these things. In fact when we told the students the side they were on, they weren't happy. No interest in having fun in striking fear in the moderators, Sinn Fein etc. etc. Just asked the question as thought people could give their own examples of how the GP policies have improved their lives. I'll bow out now and leave ye all to it.

Based on the fact the you are asking for examples, the title of your debate "The policies of the Green Party are improving living standards in Ireland" is not going to yield you an answer since every political party has policies that overlap in the case of the current political setup. You need to change policies to actions. If you want real world examples, bicycle importers and salesmen have materially improved their standard of living, investors in wind turbines and battery storage have materially improved their standard of living as have those who maintain them. Some Green NGOs have improved their standard of living. People who have invested their time and resources supporting the actions of the Green party are more likely to have seen some benefit from the legislation driven by the Green party. The sheer volume of press releases has been a boon for environmental correspondents. Kingspan and its employees are direct beneficiaries of Green party actions.

The problem you have on this thread is the cost benefit analysis of those actions are being challenged and Green party supporters are unwilling to quantify who the primary benefactors are (in every gold rush the supplier of picks and shovels makes the money). Greater insulation would in theory improve peoples material comfort, the upfront cost may have a long payback period and may not be affordable.

On the downside, restricting access to energy, food and travel is not likely to yield an improvement in general standard of living, the Green party does not dare explain this, instead they resort to magic thinking about technology that cannot work or scale to deliver their idea of utopia.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear and if I didn't I apologise, this is for a debating team, three students in each team debating against three other teams, two for and two against the motion, the motion is the motion, I don't like it at all, I think its too broad as @Pa ElGrande mentioned, we can't change the wording of the motion and we have to stick rigidly to it, unfortunately. I'm not a teacher but an SNA who has been volunteering with the debating team for a good while now, this one just has me in a negative frame of mind about it, Im stumped, yeah I can outline all the good work but I know we're gonna get hammered by the opposing teams arguments, I guess I'll have to stick to statistics and facts about health, environment etc.

I live in a rural area where people still cut turf, there's very limited public transport, everyone relies on cars, and where a friend had to spend thousands to get PP because of an issue with some sort of fauna, small farmers etc etc. So I don't see much improvement in the standards of living here based on the GP policies, I'm all for having a better greener world, but at what cost to us already stretched workers and I do see that, around here, green policies could affect peoples standard of living in the future and not for the better. The GP wouldn't be too popular around here

As mentioned, every party now has green policies so how does the GP differ from the rest, and as they're in a coalition government it's not them singularly implementing these policies. Anhyoo thanks for those who offered helpful advice, I'll have another go at it now to see how I get on, I think it's a pissy motion and would love to be on the other side but that was the luck of the draw, I'll not derail the thread any longer, wish everyone well 😊

Why are you going over the same ground again? You are reading the data displayed ant the link incorrectly.

This is not suprprising. Earlier in the thread you mixed up kV with MW and started adding up numbers from all over the place

This may well be deliberate rather than ignorance.

More tangents.

You are talking about hundreds of billions like it is a lot. Irish households alone will consume 10m wholesale megawatts of electricity this year. That’s billions of euros. Industry and commerce will spend even more.

a Norwegian power company building offshore can deliver to Ireland as easily as they can deliver in the North Sea. It really makes very little difference to them or their pricing. With floating offshore it matters even less. The equipment is operated on a barge, floated in from wherever it was constructed without much ado at all

Nuclear’s LCOE will be way higher because a small suboptimal plant would be required, or alternatively the plant would only run at half power or would be dependent on blocking the interconnector to provide backup. That’s before we say anything about construction costs. Nuclear construction and operation from a standing start would be difficult. You would need to rebuild the engineering education sector for starters, to address the ignorance about the realities of nuclear power that is manifest on this thread for example.

I wonder if you've come across the paper which attributes half of the 2020 increase in atmospheric methane to reduction in NOx emissions? NOx removes OH radicals from the air, which are the main pathway for methane decomposition. Any leaks from hydrogen production will have the same effect as it also combines with OH.

If you look at the supposed decreases in costs from Hornsea 1,2 & 3, they largely occur before the period in which our onshore costs increased by over 30%. Do you have any curiosity about why Irish costs are rising in this era of supposed falls in cost of renewables? Might this be important for estimating the future trajectory of offshore wind prices?

So why is the Irish state making such a big fuss about the investment it intends to make in our ports infrastructure, seen as vital to the viability of offshore wind?

Vessel hire costs range from €8k/day for the smallest survey boats to €250k/day for a semi-submersible. Are you genuinely trying to claim that the 800+ nautical mile / 4 day each-way trip from, say, Stavanger to the Moneypoint offshore wind farm would make no significant difference to costs compared to travlling 12 nautical miles from the proposed Moneypoint green energy port? I don't see how that could be credible unless they're using sailboats and slave labour (which sounds quite in line with Green policies but I still don't believe it).

To steel man some of the Green party policies, and just pretend that they aren't achievable without completely ripping up our current economic model or infrastructure, I'd go with the following:

Greater emphasis on recycling, which has reduced waste to landfill.

Rewetting of bogs to increase biodiversity.

Supporting a higher UBI (let's pretend 50 billion a year and an increased tax rate of 60% aren't a drawback)

Going all in for wind and solar to meet 100% of our energy needs by 2050 (never going to happen and actually can't right now because a lot of it is based on vapourware)

Grow your own lettuce on window sills.

Deindustrialization of Ireland

Outside of that I'm really struggling with being positive about anything they are proposing because unfortunately very little is actually based on reality.

You must be new here if you think you'll get a reasonable response from the conspiracy theorist pro trump climate change deniers who have nothing better to do all day than go round and around in circles in this thread

Green policies improve environmental conditions.better air quality, better water quality, more public transport, parks, cycle lanes, greenways, blueways etc.

Green policies also improve the standards of accommodation. Warmer houses, better insulation make for a better quality of life. Grants to reduce energy consumption reduce the cost of living, reduced anxiety for people on lower or fixed incomes

In the long term, Ireland will transition from energy importers to net exporters. Our economy will benefit, we will become world leaders in renewable energy and help reduce the negative geopolitical influence of despotic regimes in Russia and the middle east

Failing to tackle climate change and plastic pollution will have severely negative consequence globally and locally and while the Irish green party on their own cannot win that battle, as part of a global movement it is essential if we want a sustainable civilisation for current and future generations

We need to build the infrastructure before we can switch off the gas turbines

Infrastructure is an investment

It's the best I could do with the material at hand.

Gript are signed up to the Press Council of Ireland so if you think any of their articles are incorrect, feel free to make a complaint. Or you could just continue to stick your fingers in your ears going "nah nah na nah nah, can't hear you!".