Everyone in support of climate change until it hurts the pocket

World of Politics with Harry McGee

I’m on a WhatsApp group with friends I have known for a long time – and one of the main things exercising them in the past few weeks have been the big increases in the prices of petrol and diesel at the pumps. Some have been fuming as the price of petrol has inched to €1.70 a litre.

When the blame game starts, the Government is the number one culprit, especially with the baleful influence of the Greens, and its hated Carbon Tax.

No tax is popular. And this, even by those standards, is an unpopular tax. No wonder Sinn Féin and other parties have opposed it.

But the thing is it’s only a small bit responsible for the hike in fuel prices. The main reasons are global (such as supply shortages, Covid-generated demand, and some temporary closures of gas and oil fields).

The lesson from all of this is that all the changes in society that will be necessary to curb climate change will be hard fought, and hard won. We did a recent opinion poll in The Irish Times asking people about what climate taxes they were willing or happy to pay. Admittedly, that’s like asking a turkey for his views on Christmas.

Of course, they will say they are all for climate change, but once it comes to paying taxes, that’s a different story.

The biggest surprise for me of all the questions was smoky coal. I was working in the Connacht Tribune when the first ban on smoky coal was introduced 30 years ago. Mary Harney was then the junior minister for the environment and the ban was in Dublin.

I remember around that time she came down to launch a wind turbine in Camus Uachtar in South Connemara. The windmill was to be used to power the local water scheme.

Climate change wasn’t really a topic back then. It was more about the widening hole in the ozone layer. But I think the main benefit from banning smoky coal was the health benefits – there was a link between it and respiratory conditions and lung disease.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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