How come kids love Greta Thunberg and the national cattle herd?

In a recent speech to the UN Security Council, Taoiseach Micheál Martin described climate change as “the defining challenge of our generation”. In response, Ireland has embedded in legislation a target of only nine years to reduce carbon emissions by 51 per cent and has set a raft of ambitious measures to meet this target.

Unfortunately polling has highlighted a disconnect between the electorate’s green ambitions and its willingness to help foot the bill for a carbon neutral future with a notable reticence in Ireland’s youth for difficult but necessary measures.

An Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll published earlier this month reveals little appetite for the action necessary to tackle climate change across all age groups.

The climate crisis cannot be addressed by words alone

Participants were asked to indicate which measures they would be willing to support in order to mitigate the climate crisis, some of which included tax measures and penalties such as higher prices on both fuel and energy inefficient homes, and increasing the purchase prices for both petrol and diesel cars – all of which were roundly rejected.

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In some instances, there was a marked increase in backing from older demographics, who voiced support for higher taxes on air travel as well as bans on the building of new data centres, picking a hole into the narrative that Ireland’s youth are the generation energised around the crisis, and determined to enact change.

The only measure to secure majority support was that which would see an increase in land allotted for the use of wind turbines – a measure which notably would also have no personal impact on participants.

Meanwhile, a survey conducted by the Climate and Nature Summit involving over 1,000 Irish school-aged children found that 87 per cent consider climate change important to them, with two-thirds in favour of seeing the subject taught as a standalone course.

Yet only 14 per cent had heard of Cop26 – the upcoming UN conference on climate change – despite the event’s high profile, drawing together world leaders each year for the purpose of remedying the climate catastrophe.

This contradiction raises the question as to whether young people are truly attuned to climate action, beyond the superficiality of identity politics.

Climate emergency

The reignited focus on the climate emergency spurred by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg led to some of the largest global demonstrations involving young people on record.

In September 2019, six million people took to the streets, uniting across time zones, cultures, and generations to demand urgent action on the escalating ecological emergency.

Such was the level of protest that the term “climate strike” was declared word of the year for 2019 by the Scotland-based Collins Dictionary. Climate strikes became so frequent in large parts of the world that the usage of the term increased a hundredfold, according to the dictionary publishers.

This level of participation and protest has shown no signs of waning with thousands of young campaigners, including Thunberg, converged on Milan last month to have their voices heard and put an end to what she described as “30 years of blah blah blah” in the almost three decades of climate talks.

With only three years before the next general election, Ireland's Coalition Government faces a Herculean challenge to meet expectations

A common attribute found throughout political and social movements is that, as well as serving to bind the more active participants together to form powerful collectives, they often also serve as incredibly effective teachers, proving to act as a baseline of morality for future generations.

But the climate crisis cannot be addressed by words alone; that young people in the Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll were opposed to any measure which proposed higher taxes indicates that young people may be either unwilling to pay the toll or unaware of what reaching carbon neutrality will actually cost. Agriculture, for example, accounts for 35 per cent of Ireland’s total greenhouse gas emissions. And yet, 53 per cent of those aged 18-24 oppose reducing the national cattle herd.

An aversion to carbon taxing or penalties-based measures is perhaps unsurprising for a society already buckling under economic pressures in areas such as housing.

But another factor which is particularly pertinent to young people is education. More than half of school-goers in the Climate and Nature Summit survey stated that climate change was not covered in a manner that inspired them to act, despite 86 per cent of respondents learning about it in class.

Perhaps the key to transforming green ambitions into actions lies in better education around the sacrifices we must all make for carbon neutrality.

Ambitious targets

Cop26 aims to secure more ambitious climate action from nearly 200 countries who signed the 2015 Paris Agreement and agreed to try to limit human-caused global warming to 1.5 degrees.

With the Climate Change Performance Index ranking Ireland as 39th out of 57 developed countries in pertinence to progress in climate protection, the scale of the transformation required to make Ireland a greener country is, in no uncertain terms, gargantuan.

With only three years before the next general election, Ireland’s Coalition Government faces a Herculean challenge to meet expectations, not just in reaching emissions targets but in how they address other significant climate concerns such as biodiversity and marine conservation. And Opposition parties face an equally daunting challenge in presenting a feasible and appealing alternative.

All parties will need to plot a course which better aligns with public ideals if they hope to realise Ireland’s green ambitions and Ireland’s young people need to decide if their commitment to climate change is more than skin deep.

Emma DeSouza is a writer and citizens’ rights campaigner