From top: Enda Kenny addresses the COP 21 climate conference in Paris; Dan Boyle

Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s address to the climate change conference in Paris this week was insipid, cowardly and an utter embarrassment.

Dan Boyle writes:

Damn right I’m going to write about Climate Change. Maybe I’m coming from a well defined, and pronounced, perspective on this. Probably enough, too much, has already been written about it. None of that changes the fact that it is the issue that affects all life on this planet.

Slowly, too slowly, it has sunk into our collective consciousness that we have a problem. Some, motivated it seems out of contrariness and obtuseness, want to quibble with the nature of the problem. Others want to believe that it’s someone else’s problem, so let them deal with it.

Our esteemed Taoiseach has placed himself in both these camps. His speech to the Paris Convention this week was an utter embarrassment.

It should be considered the ultimate embarrassment of a term of office that has seen him stagger from prevarication, to outright lies spun from folksy, but untrue, tales of people that didn’t exist and events that never occurred.

This should be considered the Taoiseach’s ultimate embarrassment but it won’t be. The street savvy Mr. Kenny is all too aware that Climate Change as an issue rates, if at all, quite low on the pecking order.

We’re three months away from a general election where being honest about this won’t help him or his party achieve re-election, and possibly the prospect of being able to govern on its own (may the Lord protect us all!).

There are precious few votes in climate change. It is an issue that of itself is a political poison. The first law of politics is don’t tell voters what they don’t want to hear.

The fact is that it is our profligate use of fossil fuels in the ‘developed’ World has bought us a standard of living denied to most others on this planet. It has come with a potential cost to end life here within an historically short time frame.

It is politically impossible to sell the message that those of us who live well need to live our lives less. That is if you equate living with consuming. There is the prospect of far better lives being lived merely by living differently. This is an even harder political message to sell.

Those who want to defend the status quo, or deny the need for change, invoke those with less in our society the homeless; the widow woman. The very people they have ignored consistently and constantly.

It has never been argued that those without would be asked to live with even less. There is a fear among the more prosperous that dealing with climate change might bring about a more equal society, a more equal World. Damn right it will.

A more equal society doesn’t fit into the Fine Gael world view. These are the interests that Enda Kenny seeks to represent. If the country was to seriously live up to its global responsibilities, a consequence of that would be a more equal society.

Something our vested interests would not put up with. If anything indicates the failure of our politics it is the weight that the special pleading of vested interest groups is given, with the antipathy against those with real needs who then suffer further.

I didn’t think it was possible to think less of Enda Kenny. I was wrong. His speech in Paris revealed that he could never be taken seriously as a leader. He may convince enough to sidle back into office. He is likely to benefit from a disparate opposition.

He’s probably right in thinking he will win more votes by going for the ignorant ‘no surrender’ vote on climate change, even if such thinking is dangerously short term in nature. The democrat in me will continue to respect the office he holds. However, given his insipid and cowardly speech I could never respect his conduct in government.

Still he will always have Paris.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle