Sargent on Election '07 and Climate Change

In an interview with Attack Media, Trevor Sargent spoke of Climate Change, being on the other side of the fence and biting the bullet on going into government.

Since being in Government

Sargent spoke of the change in his workday now that he and the Greens form part of the Irish Government. "The programme for government is the focus of my work rather than trying to criticise other peoples work. I have my own work to do now."

On Climate Change

Although at the beginning of this year's election campaign climate change seemed to be high up on the agenda for voters, Sargent believes that when it came down to Election Day people voted on fear, "I do think that fear really dominated peoples' voting near the end of the campaign." He also admitted "Hardly anyone on the doorstep raise climate change as an issue that was important to them". Instead personal debt and being "borrowed up to the hilt to put a roof over their head" were major concerns. However, he was still content with how this year's election went for the Green Party: "For us it was a good election for a small party, compared to other small parties. But we would have hoped to have done better."

Sargent spoke a lot on climate change. He pointed out that this generation is one that will be very harshly criticised by future generations, stating "genocide was the alternative to tackling climate change". For people worried about how tackling climate change will effect the economy he directed them to the Stern Report, by Nicholas Stern, Chief economist with the World Bank. In it Stern remarks "climate change is the worst failure of the market". According to Sargent the report also states that we are "sentencing ourselves to a huge recession unless we tackle climate change". Sargent argues that people and business should not be put off by the initial cost of implementing greener policies as they would "save money in the long term". One of the ideas mentioned was one where business would be encouraged to be more competitive through competing on helping the environment.

He also spoke of Ireland's newfound reliance on imports rather than exports and its effect in turn on climate change. There is now "less food in terms of fresh produce being grown in the country than ever before". He went on to make the connection between this and the cost of importing food economically but more importantly the cost of energy and the direct impact this is having on climate change. Sargent also pointed out that the "record breaking weather events" and the rainy summer are direct results of climate change.

Addiction to Oil

On oil and Ireland's addiction to it Sargent spoke of Sweden and their plan to have completely stopped using the fuel by 2020 regardless of whether or not it is still available. He equated our addiction to oil to someone being addicted to heroine or cocaine. He said that addict's talk about needing their fix, while he hears others saying they need oil. According to Sargent, Ireland, like Sweden, must free itself from this addiction to oil: "We have to wean ourselves off oil and we [the Greens] have to get into government so we can start as soon as possible."

Biting the Bullet

There's an enormous amount of bullet biting going on when you think that there are six Green TDs and 78 Fianna Fail TDs. Sargent admitted that he and the other Greens were extremely disappointed about the issue of Shannon and the M3 motorway. "We were tearing our hair out about Shannon during the negotiations."  He admitted that they had lost on Shannon but had won on several other issues, and the question was should they walk away from everything else that they had succeeded on.

Sargent made it clear that the Green party standpoint on the Shell to Sea protest and the Rossport Five hadn't changed, but as government officials they could not be seen to interfere with due process. He maintained, "Rossport is a microcosm of the entire country". He went on to say they now "had to get on with developing a post oil and post fossil fuel economy".

Five years on

Sargent hopes that at the end of the government's term he and the rest of the Green TDs will be happy with they have achieved. "Hopefully we will be able to tick those boxes in the Programme for Government that were very hard won negotiations. I hope for example we will have turned around the country from being an energy greedy country (for want of a better word) to being a very efficient user of energy."