New Cork Green Party councillors, from left: Lorna Bogue, Dan Boyle, Collete Finn and Oliver Moran
You mean Councillor Dan?
Newly-elected Green Party Cork City Council representative Dan Boyle’s column will not appear today.
Dan is busy at the Ireland South re-count in the European Elections where The Green Party’s Grace O’Sullivan is in contention for a seat.
Or maybe he doesn’t need us anymore?
And this is his subtle ‘green wave’ goodbye?
Only time will tell.
It’s a waiting game.
Previously: How Green Was My Tally
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Remember boys and girls…
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide is necessary for life on earth.
…those parish pumps wont shine themselves…
I would like to be the first to congratulate Dan and wish him well in Cork City Council. I would like to think The Green Party have learnt from their mistakes. The main one complicity backing Fianna Fáil In 2007-2011.
I hope Dan and everyone in the Green Party signs this petition. So no one has to pay a dreaded carbon tax. Make the main polluters responsible and that will be enough.
https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/no-carbon-tax
Oh and implement the Amsterdam model on cannabis cafes and the like that ye proposed recently.
From that petition:
“There must be no tax on individuals who merely want to keep their homes and families warm in winter!”
This is very broad. Do you realise that there is both Duty and VAT already charged on home-heating oil/gas? (I’m sure about duty on coal – but there is VAT)
it goes on to say And the 100 companies who create over 70% of all CO2 emissions most likely will pay no fines, it will be you and your family that pay fines for them. ?? WTF ?? This is blaming the oil companies that are extracting the oil for all the emissions that happen when people actually use the oil. bonkers.
Cian all I’m saying is just go after the big guys first and then we will do our bit.
If they are not seeing to go after them they can’t expect the plebs to pay.
I’m not saying it’s not fair.
I’m saying it’s impossible to expect a broken down country with broken down people to continue to pay for corporate greed over human need.
I’m sorry I even have to explain that.
Are you living in #Ignoreland aswell
Would you have any suggestions of how to apply taxes or fines to a large CO2 producer in a way that wouldn’t be passed on to the consumer?
(Um. This rant may not be entirely directed at you personally, Johnny. Sorry.)
Can you do me a favour? Can you get the electorate to stop voting for FG/FF? Because so long as they keep doing that it pretty much ensures that any efforts to keep carbon taxes off the less well-off and focused on the rich and the corporations will be an uphill battle. You can put on a yellow jacket and break a few windows if you want, but if you actually changed the way people voted you might have a hope of adressing the increasingly urgent climate and biodiversity crisis in a way that is just and fair. Otherwise go feck yourself. Everyone complaining about the carbon tax can go feck themselves because if you’re not actually changing how people vote you are fecking useless.
I finally have some sense of why it is people don’t vote for the Irish left in numbers large enough to make a difference: because so many on the left don’t really want to make a difference. It’s sickening. Repeal the 8th united a huge swathe of the country for a progressive cause and showed the irish left up for how bollok-useless they are, politically. Now the resurgent Greens have done the same. You WANT the Greens to go in with FF/FG and make compromises and concessions with senior right wing coalition partners because it’ll prove you right! I mean, in the interests of the poor and the vulnerable and the less well-off you could be learning the lessons of Repeal and the Greens and driving left-wing candidates and parties on social, economic and environmental issues to form a progressive left-wing coalition instead of abdicating your responsibilities and stewing in your own cyncism.
@Johnny, we **are** the big guys. The Irish per-capita CO2 is one of the highest in the EU (I can’t find recent figures, but we were #3 in 2013 – CSO).
We don’t have any heavy industry here, but we do have a lot of agriculture.
Agriculture – 33%;
Transport – 19%;
Energy – 19%;
Industry – 16%;
Residential – 10%;
Waste – 3%
The “big boys” are the farmers, and then public consumption.
Congrats Dan-JK the cafes are prohibited currently from growing/cultivating and as far as I know you can’t get a growers lic. now in Holland.As such your forced buy your supply from the black or at best grey market.When I say ‘now’ it’s because they been changing or revising the laws there.But a seed to sale model for cafes is a better way to go,with micro or craft growing licenses awarded to cafe owners/operators.One the unintended consequences of legalization (or is it)is the disproportionate effects on poorer/minority communities,that have relied and lived off the proceeds from the currently in most places illegal weed business.Legislators need keep this in mind and assist poorly educated,minorities or those ‘off the grid’ transition to licensed participants in this ‘new’ industry.
Spot on Johnny
These guys recently got some Canadian investors/partners-basically BigPharma and a close eye should be kept on them and Canopy/Aurora.There is no reason Ireland needs import weed,make the big companies grow it there.
‘GreenLight, which was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is a vertically-integrated medical cannabis company with a clinical research and development operation led by Dr. James Linden, a seed genetics program, cultivation operations, and CBD brand and distribution operations.‘
https://greenlightmedicines.com/
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sol-global-announces-investment-in-and-strategic-partnership-with-european-medical-cannabis-and-cbd-firm-greenlight-pharmaceuticals-ltd-300771782.html
@Johnny Keenan
See below -I meant to reply to you…
What do think of REVENUE NEUTRAL carbon tax that punishes the polluters big and small while rewarding those who make the changes, however slowly or incrementally to a sustainable future?
How is there a better way that won’t be gamed more by the energy industry?
:-J
Dan would remind you of that frog in frogger, where he has to cross the road avoiding the traffic and then catch logs in the river and avoid the crocodile. Dan’s made it across the road and got his seat on the Cork council, phew! Now, with a Green senator looking like she’s bound for Europe, creating a Green-hued vacancy in the Seanad, Dan might be too busy eyeing up the logs and wondering if he can get from one side of the river to the other before anyone notices and behold! SenDanBoyle, I’m back baby!
Or maybe he just wants to take a break from the weekly putting-him-straight on Broadsheet.
Congratulations Dan. Great to see this surge in green support. It could have been bigger and it annoys the crapola out of me that so many have voted crooked (Monaghan, Tipp etc. im looking at you) FF/FGrs back in t BUT its a good message to send out and i hope things start to go up a notch or two in pace with regards to us destroying our planet less.
The carbon tax needs to be revenue neutral so that all taxpayers are focused on the problem together and the main offenders pay more while the average taxpayer pays less overall through a reduction in income tax vat etc. equalling the same amount of carbon tax so it balances out overall.
If you only apply carbon tax to one group of society then it will be be even more hap-hazard to manage than if everyone accepts it as a necessary, inevetible and totalogical shift in thinking to a sustainable energy future.
We have no choice but to get off fossil fuels, so why not do it faster and more efficiently to avoid a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering that will affect the less fortunate people of the planet the most.
If you’re against or not for a REVENUE NEUTRAL carbon tax then you’re just slowing down progress, guaranteed to increase suffering and increasing the risks against the future of the human race.
REVENUE NEUTRAL CARBON TAX EXPLAINED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DddPNrzpkw
:-J
CO2 is life – it’s brings us great things like, you know, food.
Fossil Fuels = Freedom Molecules (Haven’t you heard?)
Freedom molecules is not the problem, too much of a good thing(according to your analogy) in the enviroment is the real problem…
:-J
How much is too much?