Congratulations then to Roderic O’Gorman, the new leader of the Green Party. He won a leadership contest that was characterised as pitting the urban progressive wing of the party versus the rural ideologues as represented by Pippa Hackett, the Offaly-based Senator and organic farmer.
The result was close, 984 votes to 912, but the Dublin West TD and Minister for Children and Integration is probably the right choice as the evidence mounts that the Green Party has lost the national dressingroom as far as battling climate change goes.
The evidence for this comes from the Government’s annual Climate Conversations which have been run every year since 2021. They are a combination of large online surveys and smaller focus groups and workshops spread over a six- or seven-week period. Their purpose is to take the national pulse regarding climate change.
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The first one was carried out in the first half of 2021 – during Covid – and found a very wide degree of support for climate action. More than nine out of 10 respondents ranked the seriousness of climate change between 8 and 10 on a scale of 1-10 and 85 per cent called for a “big increase” in climate actions from Government.
“People expressed a high level of ambition for more climate action, by government, business and themselves – as individuals,” according to the first report.
People are beyond needing to be convinced of the seriousness of climate change and want to take action, but are facing structural, social and economic barriers
It also found a “strong sense that protecting future generations, creating vibrant communities and a healthier society, protecting our landscapes and natural environment, and moving away from a throwaway culture are issues that matter to the public”.
When it came to specific actions, people seemed to be willing to put their money where their mouth was. More than two-thirds of the roughly 3,800 people surveyed said they shopped in a climate-conscious way, by either buying less or buying products that could be recycled or reused. Similarly, some 60 per cent said that they plan, buy and prepare meals in a way that reduces climate impact and avoids waste. Similarly high numbers said they avoided wasting energy and tried to use their car less. People are beyond needing to be convinced of the seriousness of climate change and want to take action, but are facing structural, social and economic barriers, said the report.
Fast forward to the Climate Conversations 2023 report which was published last week. It’s clear the national mood has hardened. Almost half of people say they don’t believe climate change is harming people in Ireland. As the report put it, people see climate change as occurring to someone else, somewhere else and at some time in the future.
When looking at a study of 29 countries, including a combination of developed and developing countries, people in Ireland ranked as among the least likely to describe seeing the effects of climate change in the area where they live, the report found.
People here are more concerned about issues such as inflation, crime, violence, poverty, social inequality and unemployment, and are less than keen on doing much about climate change. They don’t want to stop eating meat, fly less, give up cars or buy a heat pump.
Superficially at least, the surveys would appear to have been taken in two separate countries – and to a certain extent they were. The intervening period has seen Ireland experience a dramatic increase in the cost of living, including spikes in mortgage rates and energy prices. Paradoxically, the latter don’t seem to have engendered support for the green agenda.
It is worth noting that although the surveys were carried out in the same way, they are not identical and differ in emphasis. A deeper dive shows the disparities are not as great as they might seem. But that said, the 2023 survey is very much the glass-half-empty to the 2021 survey’s glass-half-full and speaks to an underlying shift in public appetite for confronting the reality of climate change.
This presumably played a part in the party’s poor performance in the local European elections and the subsequent decision of Eamon Ryan to step down as leader.
It does suggest O’Gorman – who appears to lean into the Green Party’s positions on social justice as much as he does into climate change – may be the right choice for the party. His election pitch made much of his achievements in the areas of childcare, refugees and adoption. Hackett adopted a much more traditional environmental approach.
He also made it clear that, in his view, for the party to be electable it has to speak to people’s day-to-day concerns. If the latest Climate Conversations report is any guide, climate change is not one of them.