Climate Before Everything

at

This morning.

Buswells Hotel, Dublin 2.

Solidarity/People Before Profit launch their Environment Policy – Planet Before Profit – with above from left: Richard Boyd Barrett TD, Paul Murphy TD, Bríd Smith TD and Ruth Coppinger TD.

Including promises to:

introduce a free public transport system by tripling investment and subsidising journeys… it would do this by adding 500 electric buses every year

and reduce the dairy herd by 50% and compensate farmers with a New Green Payment.

Solidarity-People Before Profit pledges free transport in climate action plan (Independent.ie)

Leah Farrell/RollingNews

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27 thoughts on “Climate Before Everything

  1. newsjustin

    I’ve always wondered why there was such an emphasis on public transport companies breaking-even or making a profit. Public transport is a social and environmental good. It should be very heavily subsidised, if not free.

    1. millie vanilly strikes again

      +1

      I’d always understood that the point of a public transport system was not for profit, but that of a public service i.e. something that is for the benefit of society as a whole and something that enhances the quality of living rather than hinders it.

    2. paul

      Public Transport is not supposed to make a profit, it’s supposed to provide a service. Whenever I see train or bus tickets go up in price, it doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. I can see there being some cost though, to break even or if an increase is proposed to deliver it with “this increase is directly funding x development and once it’s funded, we will decrease the cost accordingly”.

    3. Rob_G

      No public transport company in Ireland has ever made a profit. I agree that it should be subsidised, but management still needs to provide some value for money.

      For example, dart journeys are subsidised (from memory) at about €1 per passenger, per journey. Some rail services in the west of Ireland are subsidised at a cost of €300-€400 per passenger, per journey.

      In the latter case, apart from the fact that it would be cheaper to provide a door-to-door limo service for each individual passenger, I can’t imagine that it is very environmentally friendly to have 90% empty trains trundling back and forth.

  2. A Person

    This is from the people who want free everything, fee bins, free water, and now free transport. Did they not ever hear of the polluter pays principle – which is the only way to decrease consumption – look at plastic bags consumption when they introduced a charge. No, as per usual with the lefties, let someone else pay. Populist nonsense. Who is going to pay the bus drivers. If public transport is free, will anyone walk or cycle? It doesn’t matter, it all looks good in bs election promises.

        1. A Person

          Well done Millie for the really educated response. See my reply to the other idiot on this topic

          1. millie vanilly strikes again

            Ouch. Off to take another some more paracetamol.

            See my own response to your truly cutting riposte. Plenty of very valid points for you to address, or are you planning on falling back on your standard grouching about lazy people and free stuff stereotype?

      1. A Person

        What is my age? What is my gender? What has it got to this with this topic? Were you not the one blaming the “blueshirts” on a distressed women giving birth on the street. Please explain how free stuff like bins, plastic bags, water, transport etc., reduces consumption. No, play the person, not the ball. Pathetic. If transport is free, how do we pay for health services, the latter of which has nothing to do with consumption. God no, lets not debate the real issues.

        1. millie vanilly strikes again

          Plenty of valid points for you to address further down the thread. So, off you go.

          1. A Person

            Where did you address any of the points I made? For example, paying reduces consumption. Where did you address this? Using italics doesn’t make you right, or more educated. Where did I mention lazy people? It seems that your lack of an appropriate response to my post means you are the lazy one. Again attack the poster and not the message posted.

    1. newsjustin

      It’s not “let someone else pay” it’s “let’s all pay.”

      Talking about the polluter pays principle is nonsense if you’re suggesting more expensive, poorly resourced public transport. Then you’re just encouraging people back into their cars to pollute a lot more. Unless you’re suggesting we all just stay at home?

      1. Spaghetti Hoop

        You’ve touched on something important there, which many ignore. The less value for money the public transport service is, the more people will abandon it for the car. The more dangerous and unhealthy the public transport is, the more people will abandon it for the car.

      2. Rob_G

        London had an (admittedly, not cheap) extensive, highly-efficient system of public transport, but the roads were still choked with cars everyday. It wasn’t until they brought in the congestion charge that the traffic improved significantly.

        – people are kind of lazy and selfish; many will still choose to drive unless you ban cars from parts of the centres of cities completely, or penalise motorists financially to convince them to leave the cars at home.

    2. Nigel

      Think of it as the opposite of austerity. Instead of the right-wing policy of taking money off everybody who isn’t rich and using it to pay for the global catastrophe inflicted on the world by rich people, making pooor and middle-class people even poorer and miserable, and sometimes dead, we take some money from everybody, especially the rich, and use it to pay for lots and lots of nice things that make everything better and keep people alive and not destroy the planet.

  3. Harry M

    “Solidarity-People Before Profit’s other climate action proposals include putting the major agri-corporations into public ownership ”

    – taking ownership of privately owned companies? That’s not just socialist policies, that’s Cuba, Venezuela…

    Anyway, easy to promise whatever you want when you have no intention of being in government

    1. class wario

      You’re right. You can’t have any influence on public feeling or policy debates if you’re not in government. Things like marriage equality and repeal were wholly 100% pushed by government parties with zero involvement from anybody else. PBP need to absorb themselves into one of FF or FF immediately and adjust their policies accordingly.

    1. Brother Barnabas

      not sure how you’d dismiss “murphy” as a complete liability – he was a couple of hundred votes short of topping the poll in GE 2016, nabbing around 15% of first preferences – well ahead of FG’s brophy, SF’s crowe and Zappone too. so there are a lot of people who think positively of him. and he’ll breeze in this time round, too.

  4. Shitferbrains

    Certainly a change from the ” tractor production up, bumper harvest expected ” lies propagated by the hard left of my youth as they looked eastwards for inspiration.

  5. scottser

    1. Legalise Weed
    2. Let the farmers grow weed instead of farming cattle
    3. Turn grassland into meadow to encourage bees
    4. Feed remaining cattle seaweed to keep the fart levels down, cos at the end of the day only weirdos don’t love a burger every now and then.
    Sorted

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