MICHAEL COLLINS and Éamon de Valera, once rivals, have been drafted into the fight against climate change and global warming by Minister for the Environment John Gormley.
The two leaders will feature prominently in a new television advertisement to kick-start the changenow.ie campaign, which will be first aired on RTÉ and TV3 tonight.
The advertisement is "but a small part" of a €12.5 million public information campaign that will be unveiled over coming months in an attempt to educate the public about climate change, the Department of the Environment said last night.
Designed by Cawley Nea, climate change is presented in the advert as "this generation's challenge", as the fight for Irish freedom and emigration were for earlier ones.
The presence of Collins and de Valera would not cause controversy, said a Department of the Environment spokesman last night: "Not at all. This is about trying to get people to thinking, about understanding that this challenge is as big as anything that was faced by previous generations of Irish people," he said.
Mr Gormley will officially launch the one-minute advertisement at a conference organised by the Environmental Protection Agency, shortly before it goes on air.
As part of the Change Now campaign, the public will be encouraged to "play their part in cutting down" on carbon emissions, reducing waste at home and at work, and to support wide-ranging reforms.
The five-year campaign, which was formally launched last November by Mr Gormley and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, will see the Government working together with business, farming, forestry, the tourism sector, the public sector, local communities and the general public to increase awareness of the threat posed by global warming.
