They could have been a party handing out cookies and free house, and the Irish electorate would still punish them ‘cos that’s what happens the junior coalition partners.
Seems like the Greens did a pretty poor job of tackling emissions when you look at this graph.
Maybe they should have focused more on good governance rather than increasing ineffectual taxes during a CoL crisis.
The greens couldn’t have done a worse job snob tackling this issue. Increasing carbon taxes does nothing but damage the poorest of society if you don’t have any alternatives. If we want to tackle this we need functioning public transport. An underground in Dublin would probably Ben enough alone to bring us way down that list
Good, why should someone that tries to make me out to be a climate villain for just living my life represent me in government? Go sort out polluting companies, improving public transport and addressing the key issues as to why we’re so dependent on dirty energy as a nation.
Why do people assume that the green party have sole ownership and responsibility of the green agenda? Even if you look at the Dublin commuter coalition review of all the party manifestos, they’ve shown that other parties are actually trying to do better than the greens.
You cannot call yoursrlf a green party and expect people to blindly vote for you because of climate change.
I am a Green Party voter and this election I was thoroughly disappointed with their candidate.
Greens won’t get that emission figure down, a good government will, doesn’t matter what party.
The greens were doomed from the start. They never had any real clout and got the blame for eveything.
I remember seeing data on this also for 2023 a couple of months ago and it was desktop research based on GDP change as a proxy rather than actual measurement data, with the obvious problems that has for accuracy in relation to Ireland. Is this the same study?
The Green Party are also the party that vehemently opposed the measures which would have reduced this figure, which is gas exploration and CCGT power plants to replace solid fuels decades ago and nuclear to reduce dependence on fossil fuels in general.
They lobbied for and received a country powered by imported fossil fuels, often purchased from States where those funds fuelled nightmarish human rights abuses.
They massively increased particulate matter in residential areas by subsidising diesel cars for 12 years.
The Green Party have exactly one place to look for the cause of their downfall, and it’s inwards. A party with no vision who consistently picked the worst option for the State. A party who, on an island abundant with natural renewable resources, focused on endless behaviour shaping via taxation instead of focusing on building out energy infrastructure. A party who, when in power, managed to deliver more of their promises than any other party in the history of the State, but still left their electorate worse off.
Continental Europe benefits from their nuclear power plants that essentially emit 0 greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They can sell excess power from those plants to each other, Ireland cannot.
Also solar isn’t as good up here as in southern/central Europe.
Also this is just Europe, compared is to the US,China,India and we’re a drop in the ocean.
We still should be trying to reduce it, but we’re an island nation with supply chain issues, our power grid is harder to refine than most other EU countries.
I mean, look… Climate crisis exists, is a very real threat, and we should be doing more.
HOWEVER.
The way to fix this is not to tax and penalise the average citizen to the breadline without providing alternatives. I have to drive to work, even though it’s only 6km away. Why? Because quite often, when I’ve tried to get the bus, it either doesn’t arrive or is late, making me late. If I miss that one, the next one doesn’t arrive for about an hour. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of people around the country.
Dublin airport is another prime example. No easy transport to/from, so you end up driving. Yes, you pay a little bit more for parking, but the convenience (and the guarantee you’ll get there! Looking at you, Dublin Coach) just makes the green alternatives impossible.
If they decided to spend a large part if the Apple money on giving every house solar panels, I’d be completely here for it! But they won’t, and even if they did, it’s a drop in the bucket – households are not the real issue either.
That’s the problem with green policy in this country. They aren’t building or investing in alternatives. Additionally, they won’t penalise big tech or data centres (where the majority of there are coming from), because we are so ridiculously reliant on the for our falsely inflated GDP.
Who would have though, taxing poor people didn’t fix the problem or get them reelected.
Clever bunch those guys.
We’re mostly that high because we are a low population country, with an above average industrial base (those data centres and pharma factories), very rural so high individual car usage.
We’re mostly that high because we are a low population country, with an above average industrial base (those data centres and pharma factories), very rural so high individual car usage.
These stats are worthless. They don’t take any ‘imported’ emissions into account.
For example our agricultural emissions are massive relative to our population but we export the majority of the output produced to other countries. So is it fair to count them as Irish emissions?
Same way how we pontificate about China being a big polluter, but we are happy to ship over all our dirty manufacturing requirements.
Consumption/usage per person is the only metric that should be used.
The Greens did exactly what the mega corps would have done and pushed for individual responsibility rather than changing of the system itself.
“Recycle and don’t throw away plastic” great but how about get plastic out of the system all together, “everyone should have a car sharing pool and switch to electric? “ how about doing massive upgrade to the train lines and set up a bus/train connection/hub systems.
Also Cold countries produce more CO2… yes Ireland needs to become more efficient and change to alternative sources of energy such as the “giant ocean of potential energy and off-shore winds yet tapped into” but general usage per person is always expected to be higher especially when the quantity of population isn’t high enough for massive nuclear projects.
I genuinely wonder if we just had more renewables in the grid how much it’d reduce our emissions. If a significant amount is from data centres and industrial energy use, then it could make a huge difference
Well we’re busy tying ourselves in extremely expensive knots and not actually doing very much about any of the things that might actually have a positive impact like heavily investing in public transport and off shore wind, because doing so is mildly inconvenient.
I honestly don’t think we’ll do anything until the fines start hitting.
We enthusiastically sign up to international agreements and don’t mean any of it. It’s just sound bites and virtue signalling. When push comes to shove, we basically don’t do very much about any of this.
We’re also great at the odd climate change protest and a bit of performative student politics – but things like facing down NIMBYs —not a hope!
We keep inexplicably chasing data centre projects that create minimal employment, despite having no spare electricity capacity and driving ourselves into burning fossil fuels. No doubt we’ll end up bending over backward to pay the fines for the multinationals’ gas and oil burning energy plants too. Can’t be having the likes of them paying bills!
I mean ffs we can’t even get people to stop burning coal fires and choking their neighbours in smoke after about 40 years of policy making.
There’s always a long list of excuses, but simple reality is most of us simply don’t give a fuck, but unlike the Americans, we don’t like being seen to be like that, so we do a nice PR campaign about how green we are, but it’s mostly just our lakes…
A couple unpopular facts:
Here’s why the greens got decimated:
* primarily because they’re the junior party. Most of the things people blame the greens for, were in fact fgg (why didn’t they spend billions on huge capex projects…)
* secondarily because they were anti motorist, and motorists responded to this with vitriolic and passionate haters they’ll simply never let go. In many places, but absolutely not everywhere, there are very valid alternatives to driving, but people are simply too lazy to leave the car behind. This kind of person is the majority of the country and will not change overnight. For some there is no service reliable and convenient enough, they’ll never leave the car… but for others the difference in cost is enough. The greens were right, but right won’t win you seats
There was a reporter on the 6:1 news last night saying ireland can expect to be fined over 8 billion for missing climate targets.
We would want to start sorting ourselves out one way or another ….
Well yeah, the Greens were utterly useless as a party, so they were voted out.
IF they gave a shit about green policies and the environment, they wouldn’t be so quick to sell out those policies just to get a sniff of the benefits of being in government.
Things they should be doing – pushing green policies, attacking farmers who won’t take steps to limit methane production in cattle, subsidising farmers who do take those steps, funding and pushing the “Spirit of Ireland” energy independence project, etc.. etc..
We have fuck all public transport rurally so everyone has to drive
I’m a green party voter. I never heard of our candidate, hadn’t seen anything from her on social media, signs, leaflets etc. Zero presence. I vote green because climate change is my biggest voter issue. I am lucky to own my own house, or maybe that would be different.
Most of my friends are all farmers. They hate the greens with a passion, and they are not overly passionate people. The farming community hates the greens. The greens will never be a real power until they bridge that divide.
The lazy solution is to bully people into changing by adopting expensive unsupported technology, the proactive solution is to build the solutions and have people enthusiastic to embrace them
Also, this isn’t soviet Russia or McNuke ™ america …. Nuclear would be a great solution to stem the tide of climate change while we work on improving our green technology
I have zero satisfactory solution for agriculture XD, methane nappies for cows?
I’m not sure how Ireland can be 2nd in this list, when so many other nations have much higher emissions per capita?
Why were these countries selected for the graph? Just random choice?
I voted for Green, we aren’t taking the Climate crisis seriously at all. Disgraceful.
It’s too late, the only way to have a meaningful impact on CO2 from a global warming perspective would require wholesale changes to how we live.
And they aren’t going to do that.
Also voting Green Party ain’t it either.
“Green Party” is not synonymous with good environmental policy, reminder.
What i get from this graph is I pay a tax on plastic bottles and all the other nonsense that was introduced like the dry fuel ban and removing the elec car grant scheme yet were still the highest co2 emissions, party cant blame anybody but themselves for being voted out
The same Green party that approved of a record number of data centres and prospecting licenses to mine in rural Ireland, while propping up the parties responsible for the crash /bailing out the banks, the childrens hospital fiasco and the housing/health crisis’s.
The Green party in government just means more taxes for the poor of this country, this time around it was the return programme that was implemented in the most unuser friendly way possible.
What is the climate impact of a load of immigrants travelling to the very last island in Europe?
I’ve been rather disappointed about the Green Party on environmental issues. Their support for EVs and residential solar PV has been less than stellar. Electrifying public transport has been slow. Expanding public transport has been anemic.
Some work on retrofitting our awful housing stock has been ok-ish, but they should have done something to train asylum seekers in those trades. Some already have credentials from their home country. Others have a patriotic drive to reduce revenue for petrostates.
Wind energy progress has been pathetic. We’re surrounded by a shallow windy ocean. We should be exporting electricity.
There are also a few companies servicing older EVs and keeping them current (sorry). A friend doubled the capacity of their decade old Leaf and repurposed the old battery for home energy storage. Did the last government invest in companies like that?
Did they change rules for tenants and folks in flats and in terrace houses to make it easier to install EV chargers? No.
The Green Party alienated a lot of people with the carbon tax, and set unrealistic targets on sectors, which resulted in the government discussing voluntary culling of herds because of methane emissions. While the beef and dairy industry are big contributors to emissions in Ireland, its also a very important part of the economy.
They also helped implement some great things like the National Tree Area Scheme, cheaper public transport and more cycle lanes. But people hardly heard about that and instead focused on the very real impact of rising energy costs and the carbon tax. I knew plenty of people who love nature and care about climate change, but they hated the green party because they didn’t seem to them to be doing anything besides making life harder for ordinary people.
The policy changes and targets should have been less ambitious and more practical. They should have focused on more visible positive changes, like new parks or tree planting or rewilding projects. They should have consulted and involved farmers and rural voices in the policies that were going to impact them. With carefully planned incentives and financial support for disproportionately affected people, they might have won people over instead of alienating them.
I wonder how much of their handling of other issues played a part in their downfall. I definitely know people who were disgusted by their handling of the mother and baby home records and redress issues and refused to vote for them based on that alone.
The leader of their party was a fucking clown who came out with some ridiculous quotes over the years his party had members in the dail.
Villages sharing one car, introducing wolves, growing vegetables on your window sill.
Grants were introduced in the last few years to make your house more efficient and greener.
Have you ever tried to use these grants?
The one stop shop is a joke, and you have to pony up all the money first and get the work done and pay for a BER before you get your grant.
Not everyone can afford this.
And guess what? You can still spend a lot of money on an old house and it’s still very hard to get a good BER rating and heat it with heat pumps without getting massive electricity bills.
Coal and oil is still unfortunate the cheapest way to heat older houses.
Older people can’t afford to retrofit their houses but the price of coal goes through the roof.
Nox tax introduced, pushing us away from petrol/diesel cars.
But have you seen the price of public recharging points? Plus we don’t have the infrastructure.
People will reply that it wasn’t the greens that introduced these, so don’t bother.
The point is, people HAVE blamed the Green Party for this, and remember their leader being a massive tool.
37 comments
They could have been a party handing out cookies and free house, and the Irish electorate would still punish them ‘cos that’s what happens the junior coalition partners.
Seems like the Greens did a pretty poor job of tackling emissions when you look at this graph.
Maybe they should have focused more on good governance rather than increasing ineffectual taxes during a CoL crisis.
The greens couldn’t have done a worse job snob tackling this issue. Increasing carbon taxes does nothing but damage the poorest of society if you don’t have any alternatives. If we want to tackle this we need functioning public transport. An underground in Dublin would probably Ben enough alone to bring us way down that list
Good, why should someone that tries to make me out to be a climate villain for just living my life represent me in government? Go sort out polluting companies, improving public transport and addressing the key issues as to why we’re so dependent on dirty energy as a nation.
Why do people assume that the green party have sole ownership and responsibility of the green agenda? Even if you look at the Dublin commuter coalition review of all the party manifestos, they’ve shown that other parties are actually trying to do better than the greens.
You cannot call yoursrlf a green party and expect people to blindly vote for you because of climate change.
I am a Green Party voter and this election I was thoroughly disappointed with their candidate.
Greens won’t get that emission figure down, a good government will, doesn’t matter what party.
The greens were doomed from the start. They never had any real clout and got the blame for eveything.
I remember seeing data on this also for 2023 a couple of months ago and it was desktop research based on GDP change as a proxy rather than actual measurement data, with the obvious problems that has for accuracy in relation to Ireland. Is this the same study?
The Green Party are also the party that vehemently opposed the measures which would have reduced this figure, which is gas exploration and CCGT power plants to replace solid fuels decades ago and nuclear to reduce dependence on fossil fuels in general.
They lobbied for and received a country powered by imported fossil fuels, often purchased from States where those funds fuelled nightmarish human rights abuses.
They massively increased particulate matter in residential areas by subsidising diesel cars for 12 years.
The Green Party have exactly one place to look for the cause of their downfall, and it’s inwards. A party with no vision who consistently picked the worst option for the State. A party who, on an island abundant with natural renewable resources, focused on endless behaviour shaping via taxation instead of focusing on building out energy infrastructure. A party who, when in power, managed to deliver more of their promises than any other party in the history of the State, but still left their electorate worse off.
Continental Europe benefits from their nuclear power plants that essentially emit 0 greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They can sell excess power from those plants to each other, Ireland cannot.
Also solar isn’t as good up here as in southern/central Europe.
Also this is just Europe, compared is to the US,China,India and we’re a drop in the ocean.
We still should be trying to reduce it, but we’re an island nation with supply chain issues, our power grid is harder to refine than most other EU countries.
I mean, look… Climate crisis exists, is a very real threat, and we should be doing more.
HOWEVER.
The way to fix this is not to tax and penalise the average citizen to the breadline without providing alternatives. I have to drive to work, even though it’s only 6km away. Why? Because quite often, when I’ve tried to get the bus, it either doesn’t arrive or is late, making me late. If I miss that one, the next one doesn’t arrive for about an hour. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of people around the country.
Dublin airport is another prime example. No easy transport to/from, so you end up driving. Yes, you pay a little bit more for parking, but the convenience (and the guarantee you’ll get there! Looking at you, Dublin Coach) just makes the green alternatives impossible.
If they decided to spend a large part if the Apple money on giving every house solar panels, I’d be completely here for it! But they won’t, and even if they did, it’s a drop in the bucket – households are not the real issue either.
That’s the problem with green policy in this country. They aren’t building or investing in alternatives. Additionally, they won’t penalise big tech or data centres (where the majority of there are coming from), because we are so ridiculously reliant on the for our falsely inflated GDP.
Who would have though, taxing poor people didn’t fix the problem or get them reelected.
Clever bunch those guys.
We’re mostly that high because we are a low population country, with an above average industrial base (those data centres and pharma factories), very rural so high individual car usage.
We’re mostly that high because we are a low population country, with an above average industrial base (those data centres and pharma factories), very rural so high individual car usage.
These stats are worthless. They don’t take any ‘imported’ emissions into account.
For example our agricultural emissions are massive relative to our population but we export the majority of the output produced to other countries. So is it fair to count them as Irish emissions?
Same way how we pontificate about China being a big polluter, but we are happy to ship over all our dirty manufacturing requirements.
Consumption/usage per person is the only metric that should be used.
The Greens did exactly what the mega corps would have done and pushed for individual responsibility rather than changing of the system itself.
“Recycle and don’t throw away plastic” great but how about get plastic out of the system all together, “everyone should have a car sharing pool and switch to electric? “ how about doing massive upgrade to the train lines and set up a bus/train connection/hub systems.
Also Cold countries produce more CO2… yes Ireland needs to become more efficient and change to alternative sources of energy such as the “giant ocean of potential energy and off-shore winds yet tapped into” but general usage per person is always expected to be higher especially when the quantity of population isn’t high enough for massive nuclear projects.
I genuinely wonder if we just had more renewables in the grid how much it’d reduce our emissions. If a significant amount is from data centres and industrial energy use, then it could make a huge difference
Well we’re busy tying ourselves in extremely expensive knots and not actually doing very much about any of the things that might actually have a positive impact like heavily investing in public transport and off shore wind, because doing so is mildly inconvenient.
I honestly don’t think we’ll do anything until the fines start hitting.
We enthusiastically sign up to international agreements and don’t mean any of it. It’s just sound bites and virtue signalling. When push comes to shove, we basically don’t do very much about any of this.
We’re also great at the odd climate change protest and a bit of performative student politics – but things like facing down NIMBYs —not a hope!
We keep inexplicably chasing data centre projects that create minimal employment, despite having no spare electricity capacity and driving ourselves into burning fossil fuels. No doubt we’ll end up bending over backward to pay the fines for the multinationals’ gas and oil burning energy plants too. Can’t be having the likes of them paying bills!
I mean ffs we can’t even get people to stop burning coal fires and choking their neighbours in smoke after about 40 years of policy making.
There’s always a long list of excuses, but simple reality is most of us simply don’t give a fuck, but unlike the Americans, we don’t like being seen to be like that, so we do a nice PR campaign about how green we are, but it’s mostly just our lakes…
A couple unpopular facts:
Here’s why the greens got decimated:
* primarily because they’re the junior party. Most of the things people blame the greens for, were in fact fgg (why didn’t they spend billions on huge capex projects…)
* secondarily because they were anti motorist, and motorists responded to this with vitriolic and passionate haters they’ll simply never let go. In many places, but absolutely not everywhere, there are very valid alternatives to driving, but people are simply too lazy to leave the car behind. This kind of person is the majority of the country and will not change overnight. For some there is no service reliable and convenient enough, they’ll never leave the car… but for others the difference in cost is enough. The greens were right, but right won’t win you seats
There was a reporter on the 6:1 news last night saying ireland can expect to be fined over 8 billion for missing climate targets.
We would want to start sorting ourselves out one way or another ….
https://www.rte.ie/news/environment/2024/1023/1476919-greenhouse-emissions/
Well yeah, the Greens were utterly useless as a party, so they were voted out.
IF they gave a shit about green policies and the environment, they wouldn’t be so quick to sell out those policies just to get a sniff of the benefits of being in government.
Things they should be doing – pushing green policies, attacking farmers who won’t take steps to limit methane production in cattle, subsidising farmers who do take those steps, funding and pushing the “Spirit of Ireland” energy independence project, etc.. etc..
We have fuck all public transport rurally so everyone has to drive
I’m a green party voter. I never heard of our candidate, hadn’t seen anything from her on social media, signs, leaflets etc. Zero presence. I vote green because climate change is my biggest voter issue. I am lucky to own my own house, or maybe that would be different.
Most of my friends are all farmers. They hate the greens with a passion, and they are not overly passionate people. The farming community hates the greens. The greens will never be a real power until they bridge that divide.
Taxes don’t reduce greenhouse emissions weirdly enough
The lazy solution is to bully people into changing by adopting expensive unsupported technology, the proactive solution is to build the solutions and have people enthusiastic to embrace them
Also, this isn’t soviet Russia or McNuke ™ america …. Nuclear would be a great solution to stem the tide of climate change while we work on improving our green technology
I have zero satisfactory solution for agriculture XD, methane nappies for cows?
I’m not sure how Ireland can be 2nd in this list, when so many other nations have much higher emissions per capita?
Why were these countries selected for the graph? Just random choice?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&time=latest&country=IRL~QAT~BRN~BHR~TTO~SAU~ARE~OMN~SXM~NCL~KWT~FRO~AUS~USA~PLW~KAZ~MNG~CAN~CUW~GRL~TWN~RUS~KOR~LUX~OWID_NAM~AIA~SPM~ISL~Europe+%28excl.+EU-28%29~OWID_OCE~IRN~TKM~SGP~Europe+%28excl.+EU-27%29~CHN~LBY~MYS~BMU~CZE~OWID_EUR~ATG~POL~DEU~NOR~EST~BEL~JPN~ABW~TCA
I voted for Green, we aren’t taking the Climate crisis seriously at all. Disgraceful.
It’s too late, the only way to have a meaningful impact on CO2 from a global warming perspective would require wholesale changes to how we live.
And they aren’t going to do that.
Also voting Green Party ain’t it either.
“Green Party” is not synonymous with good environmental policy, reminder.
What i get from this graph is I pay a tax on plastic bottles and all the other nonsense that was introduced like the dry fuel ban and removing the elec car grant scheme yet were still the highest co2 emissions, party cant blame anybody but themselves for being voted out
The same Green party that approved of a record number of data centres and prospecting licenses to mine in rural Ireland, while propping up the parties responsible for the crash /bailing out the banks, the childrens hospital fiasco and the housing/health crisis’s.
The Green party in government just means more taxes for the poor of this country, this time around it was the return programme that was implemented in the most unuser friendly way possible.
What is the climate impact of a load of immigrants travelling to the very last island in Europe?
I’ve been rather disappointed about the Green Party on environmental issues. Their support for EVs and residential solar PV has been less than stellar. Electrifying public transport has been slow. Expanding public transport has been anemic.
Some work on retrofitting our awful housing stock has been ok-ish, but they should have done something to train asylum seekers in those trades. Some already have credentials from their home country. Others have a patriotic drive to reduce revenue for petrostates.
Wind energy progress has been pathetic. We’re surrounded by a shallow windy ocean. We should be exporting electricity.
There are also a few companies servicing older EVs and keeping them current (sorry). A friend doubled the capacity of their decade old Leaf and repurposed the old battery for home energy storage. Did the last government invest in companies like that?
Did they change rules for tenants and folks in flats and in terrace houses to make it easier to install EV chargers? No.
The Green Party alienated a lot of people with the carbon tax, and set unrealistic targets on sectors, which resulted in the government discussing voluntary culling of herds because of methane emissions. While the beef and dairy industry are big contributors to emissions in Ireland, its also a very important part of the economy.
They also helped implement some great things like the National Tree Area Scheme, cheaper public transport and more cycle lanes. But people hardly heard about that and instead focused on the very real impact of rising energy costs and the carbon tax. I knew plenty of people who love nature and care about climate change, but they hated the green party because they didn’t seem to them to be doing anything besides making life harder for ordinary people.
The policy changes and targets should have been less ambitious and more practical. They should have focused on more visible positive changes, like new parks or tree planting or rewilding projects. They should have consulted and involved farmers and rural voices in the policies that were going to impact them. With carefully planned incentives and financial support for disproportionately affected people, they might have won people over instead of alienating them.
I wonder how much of their handling of other issues played a part in their downfall. I definitely know people who were disgusted by their handling of the mother and baby home records and redress issues and refused to vote for them based on that alone.
The leader of their party was a fucking clown who came out with some ridiculous quotes over the years his party had members in the dail.
Villages sharing one car, introducing wolves, growing vegetables on your window sill.
Grants were introduced in the last few years to make your house more efficient and greener.
Have you ever tried to use these grants?
The one stop shop is a joke, and you have to pony up all the money first and get the work done and pay for a BER before you get your grant.
Not everyone can afford this.
And guess what? You can still spend a lot of money on an old house and it’s still very hard to get a good BER rating and heat it with heat pumps without getting massive electricity bills.
Coal and oil is still unfortunate the cheapest way to heat older houses.
Older people can’t afford to retrofit their houses but the price of coal goes through the roof.
Nox tax introduced, pushing us away from petrol/diesel cars.
But have you seen the price of public recharging points? Plus we don’t have the infrastructure.
People will reply that it wasn’t the greens that introduced these, so don’t bother.
The point is, people HAVE blamed the Green Party for this, and remember their leader being a massive tool.
Comments are closed.