SEAI 180 Degrees Season 4 Episode 3

The Politician - Minister Eamon Ryan

Jim Scheer 00:05

Hi, I'm Jim Scheer, host of 180 Degrees, a podcast brought to you by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. In this series, I talked to Climate Leaders about how they first connected to the urgent need for climate action. We go back to their roots and talk about their journeys, discover what drives them, and what keeps them motivated. We also explore the essential ingredients required for leadership on climate action here in Ireland, and how we might impact internationally. Nothing short of a societal movement is now needed to ensure a livable planet for our children and future generations. In this episode, I'm joined by Eamon Ryan, Minister for the Environment, Climate Communications and Transport. Eamon started his political career in the early 90s as a Dublin City Councilor, but today he takes us back to his early years to share where he first discovered his connection to the natural world, and how that passion has led him to where he is today. We discuss how the connection to nature that we all have might lead to an acceleration of the climate movement here in Ireland. We cover art, poetry, and community climate action in this not-so-common conversation with Ireland's leading politician responsible for climate action. Very grateful to meet with you today, Minister Eamon Ryan.

Minister Eamon Ryan 01:13

Good to be here, Jim, with you.

Jim Scheer 01:14

We're meeting at a critical point in the need for urgent climate action. So it's a privilege to be talking to the person with the top political responsibility for making things happen on climate and energy and in transport here in Ireland. And I want to cover a few topics with you here today. So I want to spend some time getting to know you as a leader, and how you deal with the pressure and the urgency of climate action, to check in on the current momentum around climate action in Ireland and talk about what you see as needed to take that action to the next level, and maybe hear a bit about your vision for the future. Do you remember a moment in time when you first became interested in environmental issues?

Minister Eamon Ryan 01:48

I have a long memory. And I need it in this occasion because I'm not a young fella anymore. I'm 58 years of age. I can remember the 1960s, I can remember man landing on the moon. And I say that because I can remember a moment when I was very young. When I was about seven or eight, I guess, six, seven or eight. And I was just on my street, I grew up in a suburban street in Dublin, and great street, everyone hanging out. You'd go, you know, cliched stuff, but you'd literally go into any house. But you know those weird moments when it really does strike home, I said, "My God, how lucky I am to be alive." I think maybe when you're above that age seven or eight, you kind of come into a consciousness that's slightly different. And I just mention that because I think that for me, it was, it was important I remember of excitement and privilege and kind of just for being alive. And I remember similarly, I was not a great student in school, I was like, I was good at Rugby. And I was good at fighting. And I was good at playing. But I wasn't a great scholar. But when I was about 16, I was really lucky. We did a course it was a one year course. This was in nature, the classes and teams, active learning, and it was so up to date, this was 1979. And like we were reading Limits to Growth and Silent Spring. And for me it was just transformative, because it gave me a love of learning, an interest in the knowledge of ecology, and a kind of realization that "shit" we better do something about this. I remember like one of the, I remember the teachers saying if we don't do something in 40 or 50 years time, we will have lost half of nature. And sure enough, the World Wildlife Fund came out two years ago, and they had a study that over the past 40 years, what had happened, we lost half of our wildlife. And so that, for me, was really transformative. But again, I remember single moments in time where I was - it was the summer of that year when I was walking home from school and I was going through a local park. And it's similar, that sort of similar sense of connection to nature, you know, connection to the world around you. And again, it's quite a joyful thing. It's got us to say, "Man, this is incredible." They got this interconnected network system, where where which were part of and just the understanding of that, or the sense of that. And so for me, I think that's where I - my roots come from - is in that kind of really deep sense of connection to nature, and being fearful of loss of nature and what it would mean for us and desire to do something about it. And that pretty much is still the motivation, still the thing that would inspire me.

Jim Scheer 04:25

Got it. Yeah. I think you were very lucky to get that at such a young age.

Minister Eamon Ryan 04:28

I think yeah, I think it's innate in most people. I think most, you know, that human consciousness and the consciousness of being aware of our surroundings and our connection to nature. I think that belongs to everyone. I don't think that's rare. I think it belongs to all classes, all creeds, all ages, all countries. It's a natural part of our consciousness and our reality. I think maybe I was lucky in the sense that just at that particular time in that class in school, I, yeah, I was lucky to do it. I mean it didn't stop me going to do a commerce degree in university. It wasn't - like I was a regular southside Dublin kid. So it wasn't like it completely changed me. But it did inform me in a fairly deep way, in a fairly way that kind of I sense is true. And I still do. And I think that sense that it doesn't belong to any - it belongs to everyone. You know, that's a normal, natural human instinct to have this sense of connection. I think that informs the nature of politics as well.

Jim Scheer 05:30

Yeah, I think it's a beautiful place to start. And then at some point, as you progress through your, your, your learning, you decided to get into politics. Can you say what led up to that decision? And what had you say, "Well, look, I want to do something about this. And I think I'll go that direction." Well, as I said, I was pretty much a straight down the middle southside rugby playing jock, you might call it and kind of went to like - because [I] missed the points for architecture, so I did commerce instead, really enjoyed that, and was really good at it and ended up working in UCD running a marketing development course, which was really exciting and interesting. And, but that time in the mid 80s, Ireland was strange. It was last out turn out the lights, it was mass immigration of my age group. And I had friends who are kind of all over the world at that stage. So I decided to leave. I went abroad, travelled for three years, I guess. In all the usual immigrant haunts, and Asia and, you know, working in bars and working here, there and everywhere. And I came home - my dad joked, he said, I went to a yuppie and came back a hippie, but it was true. I kind of - actually in Australia, I spent, I spent a while in Australia and had a great time with - I met some Kiwis that I really got on with and painters. So I got into painting. And my dad was a painter. So it wasn't that foreign to me, I was used to the idea of painting. And so I came home, and I did not know what to do. I had a business degree background and commerce background and marketing background. And I just couldn't get it together to get a job in that area. I was kind of - I didn't know what I really wanted. And I was unemployed for about a year on and off in different ways, which is quite depressing and quite debilitating. And I was very sensitive, you get sensitive to the question, what do you do? And I didn't have an answer to it. I was reading and it was painting, but that wasn't, that was kind of - well it didn't pay anyone or didn't get - so it was, you couldn't really say that's what you were doing. And I remember then I got, I started working with the Green Party. I joined the Green Party because I had that underlying kind of interest in ecology. And this was the late 80s this stage. And there was a wave of public consciousness around environmentalism, like I've seen it. And I'm old enough now to see it come in and come out these waves of collective thinking about the environment. There was one in the 70s with the oil crisis, and well I suppose the original wave was going back to the 60s, the whole civil rights, gay rights, feminist, anti war, CND. That is where the green movement came from. It was part of that kind of 1960s, consciousness. So as part of that increased consciousness, the Green Party started to do well, not just in Ireland, but everywhere around the world. And I joined and actually one of the great things about it was, it got me out of a slump. You know, when you're unemployed, the hardest thing is getting the energy back to work or getting your confidence back and actually I joined the Green Party. There was no one really ahead of us. So I ended up within a few weeks running John Gormley's election campaign in general election, it was like plucking apples from the bottom of the tree. The roads were out there to kind of, there was this consciousness at the time. And I really enjoyed it. Now. So I did that. And then that gave me the confidence think, well, what am I going to do to earn a living? So I had the idea, I'll have a green business. And it was literally a eureka moment, too, as well. I was kind of putting election stickers on to European elections. And I said, I know what I'll do, I'll run a cycling holiday company, because that will be a green business, which I did for 12 years. My sister is still running the business. But that kind of brought me slightly away from politics, because I had to set up the business and earn a living. But then I still was still involved in the Green Party. And then as the 90s evolved, the business was very successful, it took off, I was very lucky. And it grew so much that I could get other people to run it. And I could go back into politics. So I was involved. I became chairman of the Dublin cycling campaign. And then in mid '97, I ran for the Seanad, first of all on the NUI panel, but then was co-opted onto the City Council in place of John Gormley. Politics is like anything, it's a craft in the sense that you learn you - like you serve your apprenticeship. So I served five years as a campaigner with the Dublin cycling campaign. I was five years as a counselor. I was five years as the TD in opposition in Dublin South. And then I was four years as a minister. So, and like, you couldn't do that four years, if you'd not - if you hadn't done the 15 years previous. Just training because, you know, well it's not just training. It's important in its own sake. But, but for me, it was kind of a slow process of going from being a member of the party active and running things, but to becoming a counselor - a campaigner, a counselor, a TD, a minister. And, and that's where I'm stuck at the moment. I'm still a minister. Well, with a gap in between. Yeah, but it's a deep history, and you're very conscious of the steps that you've, you've, you've made along the way. And I wonder if in that, in that lineage you just described there that that sort of that history, was there a moment where you started to see yourself more as a leader, rather than a just a contributor to, I guess, the cause of...? Got that, yeah, so there's, there's a pack of geese cutting the breeze ...

Minister Eamon Ryan 10:51

I think the Green Movement is slightly different from others. In their political philosophy, we didn't have a leader in the Green Party until 2004 I think it was, or - Trevor was our first leader. And actually in that green ecological consciousness thinking it's more, it's less hierarchical, it's flatter. Now you do need leadership. I remember once I met a German Green, Renate Künast I think she was, she was mayor of Berlin, very impressive woman. And she was saying at the time, they have a problem, because they don't have a leader. And the metaphor she had was, we need a lead goose, and I said, "What you mean you need a lead goose." Well, you know, I said - she said the way that geese fly in formation, if you've one goose at the front everyone knows, okay, that's where you are, and even there you take turns as to who's the lead in the formation, but I just thought it was a lovely image that that's the vision of leadership, is that, okay, everyone's flying together. But you maybe have someone at the point. I mean, the only time I really thought about leadership, I suppose, was after the 2011 election, when we lost all our seats. And again, in some ways, there was something not attractive, but there was something appropriate about that, that we ALL lost our seats. So there was a sense that it wasn't - and you know I think I was - I thought I'd hold my seat in that occasion. Or I thought Trevor would too. But we didn't. And in a way, I'm kind of ... it worked out better, because A, we were all in the same boat, B, we needed to rebuild and recover anyway. So the five years where we were doing that outside the Dáil was actually a useful thing. And but I - so I ran for leadership, then, and there it wasn't so much a sense of "Oh, I have, you know, what it takes to be leader" it was a more sense, I just had a certain sense of responsibility. I had a real sense that in our time in government, particularly from 2007, to 2011, and in general in the party, the history of the party, that we had done good work, and that we were, we were able to serve the Irish people in a way that is needed. And I suppose I had a certain sense of standing up for that, and not walking away from that, and having a responsibility to maintain and keep that. So it wasn't kind of "Oh, ho or you know I'm the best man for the job." It was more I have the right experience having been in government and so on, having been a TD. And that would be the best use of my time to try and you know, to lead the party. But, but even then, you know, we have a strong deputy leader, we've a very flat structure, as I said, where you have, like in our party, we have a leader as in a party leader, we've a deputy leader, we've a coordinator, we've a ... which coordinates our executive committee, we have a chair of the party. So we like we have we've General Secretary, we've we half a dozen leadership roles and for me I'm comfortable with that because that's the kind of Green Party tradition I come from, so. There's several geese.

Jim Scheer 12:55

... yeah, yeah, in front, yeah, yeah several geese. Are there any - I wanted to ask you a little bit more about leadership? I mean, is there anyone, any leader or any goose cutting the breeze that you see out there and you, you admire or you, you take something from?

Minister Eamon Ryan 13:57

There's loads, I won't mention the people in politics because then I'd be fearful of leaving someone out. But can I give an example maybe of - I did a thing a few years ago in the Burren College of Art on - well it was on climate initially, and we did some really interesting work around climate communications and how we inspire people to make the leap we need to make. There was a poet there, David Wyatt, I don't know if you've ever met him or heard him. But very interesting poet and he actually there was a further event, a leadership event in the Burren College of Art, which I ended up going to, and I can't remember which event it was at, but David has a poem. It refers to a Spanish poem about the Camino de Santiago the Camino and I don't I can't even quote the wording of it correctly here now but his wording there is advice or his thing is: pilgrim, you you make the path by taking the first step ... you kind of ... pilgrims take the take the journey on yourself, do it, you know, take one step at a time and and that's the path. That's what you have to do. And I think it sounds so obvious or very trite, but it actually is, I think, a very good formula. Because it means, you know, take your own step, you know do, make things happen, you know, suggest something, do something lead by lead by doing and, and by taking the steps, then others are responding or, you know, or they're encouraged to hopefully, or, are if you have to convince someone, then you've got to convince someone, but it you don't stay still, you take the first step. And I think that, that advice, remember that sense of leadership being emotion, you know, going to get up and do things is what's needed more than anything else?

Jim Scheer 15:40

Yeah, there's a real movement in what you're talking about. Which is interesting in itself, I think you've got a lot done in your two stances as Minister first as energy minister, and now minister of environment, climate and communications and also transport, and I know you didn't rest in the intervening period, the stakes are now higher than ever. How was your experience different this second time around?

Minister Eamon Ryan 16:01

Well, firstly, I suppose there is a real benefit in having experience. In government it's never easy. It's it changes everyday. Stuff keeps coming at you. It's like a conveyor belt that never stops. And there are issues that you have to deal with or manage or decisions you have to make. And you're not in control, like people think, oh, you have full control. You're not, you're you're working with civil service, you're working with colleagues in governments, you're working with the opposition, you're working with media, you're working with the public in the widest sense to kind of try and get as much public confidence in what in the way we're going. I've enjoyed both occasions, because I'm very lucky, I'm in departments, in this case, two departments, that I've a real interest in the subject. As I said, you know, I'm the Minister of Transport at the moment and as well as Minister of Environment, Climate and Communications. I mean, I've been working - part of that apprenticeship I mentioned earlier was in transport. So I kind of, I'm really interested in it. And same with climate and energy and communications, and they're all connected and environment. I've been working on it for 25 years, so more, so I kind of I think I just have a natural interest in it. And that helps a lot in terms of the desire to affect and deliver change. I think the last time we were in government was very difficult, because there was a financial crash. That was very much about what we had done in this country, not so much the Green Party I think, but you know, the lead up to the Celtic Tiger and everything. And it was a difficult, stressful, time in the country, because we were kicking ourselves rightly, in terms of we'd allowed a housing bubble develop. We were counting the cost of rectifying that, in this period in government, there's been a similar moment of crisis. COVID, first of all, and now the war in Ukraine. It's a slightly different feeling, though, because being both COVID and in the war in Ukraine, there are they are external factors. So you're - while it's crisis management - and it's funny when I came back into government, literally the last year and the last government had been crisis management. I was very involved with I was very close to Brian Lenihan, and very involved in the financial crash management of it. And this time I came back in and we were straight into COVID. And in the real heat of it in Spring, Summer 2020. Now, as we come out of COVID, I think the real desire, the real intention is to try and use that same flexibility that crisis management we showed in COVID, on three issues, on housing, on health reform and on making a climate leap. And in some ways, the experience of the last sort of the last time in government and the last two years, it helps, because in a system that by nature, and and understandable for reasons, change is not you know, fast change is not what you'd characterize, you know, the way that public service or in any time in any organization, how you achieve change. So in some ways, I feel we're in a position of opportunity at the moment to make change quickly. Just because we've been coming out of are are in the middle of a period of change.

Jim Scheer 19:12

Yeah, I think that's a great observation. And, you know, I think a lot of us were struck about how we pulled together during COVID to mind each other and to respond. And there was an immediacy about it and, and a sense of acting in a crisis. Do you think there's anything we can take in particular from that experience to apply to being in the climate crisis where maybe some of the effects aren't as immediate to us all here? Certainly immediate to other people around the world and many of the species on the planet, but is there something we can take, some parallels we can learn from?

Minister Eamon Ryan 19:43

There are, I mean, there are also differences. I mean, there is a difference in COVID, because there people were concerned about their immediate, own health, their own survival for a lot of people, they were worried about if, particularly if you have an underlying condition. I don't want to get this I don't want to be on a ventilator in a - and that's a very powerful motivation. Climate and addressing the biodiversity and pollution crisis is different because it's much longer term, it's more collective, it's less immediate, but, well, firstly, and it's a very simple message. But it's I think it's true. So if we were willing to do that, particularly in COVID, to protect our older people, would we not be willing to make the same sort of effort and level of change to protect our younger people's future, you know, if you just put it that way, in terms of having done that, for our older people, is not now time to do the same for our younger people. And my understanding, my sense is, and I travel the country a lot. And I think Irish people are up for it. I think they understand the science, they, they want to make the leap, they want to provide this more secure future, I'm convinced of that from a whole range of backgrounds. And in some ways, it goes back to what I was talking at the very start about your connection to nature and the underlying kind of understanding of what's at risk here. People do, and they don't want to ignore that. The parallels are different because, well, I suppose COVID was relatively simple in the sense it was it was about, you know, relatively simple measures to make sure we didn't see the disease progress. Whereas climate, it's much more complex, it's involving our food system, energy system, transport system, industrial systems, all of which are, have been set on a course for the last 150 years, that will take a lot of reversing and undoing and probably more than 180 degree change, probably, you know, it's it's a dramatic change. One of the things that comes out of COVID, I think is a potential, particularly in Ireland, or countries like Ireland, is a trust in the state or trust in the ability of the state to make decisions or make ... and that's in short supply at the moment in the world. You know, the our Democratic particularly liberal Western democratic systems are under huge pressure. The rise of populism, the kind of far right, is very sapping of the ability to make decisions make hard decisions. And in some ways, in COVID, governments did that - had to do it and got permission to do it. And in Ireland, if you look at it, in terms of where we come out of COVID, we had one of the lowest mortalities, we had one of the highest vaccination rates, we had by and large, incredible compliance, I'll always say I always remember the day we introduced a mask restrictions on the buses. And I was doing a piece to camera out in Merrion and Stephen's Green and the reporter was saying, "What makes you think that people are going to ... How can you possibly police this, where people are going to wear masks on buses." And I pointed up, and there was there were two buses gone by and everyone on the bus 95% of people had a mask on. And I just think as a lesson for ourselves that we can actually do things collectively, COVID maybe provides a certain opportunity in that way. And it won't be as easy in climate because that there was a self preservation in that but it wasn't just that it was just a sense, "Yeah, we can do things collectively."

Jim Scheer 23:07

I get a sense from that, that you put a bit of stake in the role of togetherness and community. And in that being something that is a platform for addressing or accelerating climate action.

Minister Eamon Ryan 23:19

I do I mean maybe I'm going right back to that sense as I said, I was a kid in this city. There was a very, it was a very strong and still is I think sense of community maybe. And we have to be careful of it. My great hero was Con Houlihan the journalist and writer. And Con maybe put it very well once, he said, "We're like starlings, we all fly one direction and some idea, and then we fly in another direction." Occasionally you need people to go against that. But there is strength in, in that sense of community and protection and social progress in it. And, and I always kind of grew up and my sense growing up was a sense of being part of a city or part of a country or a wider world where that sense of collective engagement is was very real. And it is, I think one of the important things about it, when we talk about climate is it's all it's very global. It's like it's really it's massive scale of the you know, the problem is such a huge geological problem the advantage when you start talking about community or bringing it back home, bringing it back down to is that that's very, you know, people can relate to that it's very hard to relate to something in the atmosphere, but something in your local community or something in your own home. That is much easier for us to kind of think about and deliver on and act on and deliver change for.

Jim Scheer 24:49

I think I'll bring us back slightly now to what's happening right now. So we've had some significant achievements over the last say five years following the citizen's assembly on tackling climate change in late 2017. We've had a number of iterations of a Climate Action Plan since then, so that the level of planning around what we were doing on this issue, took a step change. In July 2021, the Climate Act was signed into law. Just last month, we had Ireland's first ever carbon budgets approved by the Dáil without a vote. And right now government has committed the largest ever level of supports for businesses and households in terms of grants and other supports to get off fossil fuels. Can I ask you just to reflect on that progress? How do you feel right now with that work that's been done over the last few years?

Minister Eamon Ryan 25:33

I think that work has been significant in the last four or five years. And I do think you're right to go back to that period of 2017-2018. And this came out of the financial crash. So the Irish financial crash where there was a lot of uncertainty in Ireland about ourselves about our political system or democratic system. And out of that some ideas came, the citizens assembly being one, which was held first on the repeal issue, but then also was held on the - on the climate issue. And in that, the really interesting thing, and this was back in 2017, I guess it was framed in 2016. Was what was the question we were asking? And I think the right question was put to that citizens assembly it was how could we be leaders rather than laggards. And, and I think the way Sharon Finnegan and Justice Mary Laffoy, I think, wasn't it and the organizers of that did a really good job in presenting the evidence that allowed the citizens assembly provide the answers to that question, how would we build leaders? And then in turn the Oireachtas committee, taking the report from the citizens and assembly and saying, "Okay, how do we the question being, how do we turn those recommendations into policy measures?" And, and in fairness to Richard Bruton, who was minister then at the time, his Climate Action Plan, I think was the 2018 Climate Action Plan, wasn't it? It was an ambitious changing time. But an important moment of change, where we were starting to think seriously, and to put in place some of the sort of policy measures we'd need and now not enough and not fast enough, and not just all at the moment, still on policy and on paper, but starting to provide the foundations for what we need to do, in my mind. And I think our programme for government picked up on that. And I think the climate law we passed last year, and the carbon budgets passed last month. And it's it is important to note that while that wasn't voted on, there was 10 people, I think calling for vote or less than 10. So the vast majority of the Dáil said, "Yeah, we agree." And when we put through the climate law, it was 130 something to 10 or 11. So the very strong political support, I think, reflecting a public support. So, so those political foundations for climate action are really well set. Climate is about a changing in the whole capital system, the capital, in our housing stock, our energy stock, our transport stock, and so on, of land use, and you don't change that overnight, and you don't stop-start and change it, the more it's a kind of a 30 year, kind of layer upon layer of change, the more successful it will be. If it’s stop-start, or if there's political uncertainty around it, then it'll take longer, be more expensive and more difficult. So we're in a, we're not in a bad place. Now the thing is about actually delivering - because for all the good policies for all the budgets lines have been provided, and they are significant now. It is now the time to deliver the real change. And the urgency is real. What all the climate scientists say this is the decade it has to be done. And it's still a challenge. I mean I look out the window here, we're looking out on Leeson street, and I despair at the transport system, you know, in terms of which has been embedded for 30, 40, 50 years of designing it around private car and and haulage systems that are very hard to retrofit or to change. But that's what we have to do. We have to put in bus connects in, you know, all our cities, we have to put in new rural bus services, I look at the buildings across the road and every single building is going to have to be in our case we're in Georgian Dublin it'll probably be district heat, but we have to take out the oil fires, burners, and the gas-fired cynlinders burning in every single building. That's a massive task. And in farming and in land use and in it's, it's you know, we shouldn't underestimate the scale of the challenge. You know, you've seen the modeling figures. You know, what we need to do in forestry, to store carbon, what we need to do in our wetlands, what we need to do in the land that is farmed. Now, I think it's doable. I think actually, it'll make for a better country in each of those areas. And it won't work if it's if it's towards a worse system. It'll only work if we have a better economy, more socially just, more secure, more stable coming out of it. And all the changes will only work if they bring us in that better direction. So I'm confident we can do it. Energy's happening because solar and wind is now cheaper, and the energy system is inexorably going in this direction. We have to just hurry it up. Transport and agriculture is more difficult, because I mean, it's difficult. We're saying to farmers for 50 years, "drain your land." And now we're saying, "don't drain your land." That's a hard switch. And in transport for 100 years, we've been designing it around the car. And now we say, "No, we need to design it around the pedestrian, and the cyclist and the bus user." And, and not that there isn't a role for someone in a car. But it can't be the way it was designed in the last 50 years particularly. And that's a hard change.

Jim Scheer 30:40

Yeah. You talked, you talked about the political foundation, we've got the legislative basis now with the climate act. And then you talked about some of the actions and the technologies and the different actions that we need to shift. As adults, I think we've become pretty good at sort of reasoning, our actions and decisions. And I guess, as a politician, you're dealing with, with reasons all the time, like, and multiple objectives, like we've got to sort the economy and we've got to supply jobs. And I wonder if we've created a system that's somehow overly constrained? Or maybe that limits our thinking, do you think about our current economic and market systems and our ability to to accelerate climate action with those systems? Or is it the systems themself that need changing?

Minister Eamon Ryan 31:19

I think it is a level of system change that goes beyond just the technical, and the - it is around what do we value? I mean, I think only - and listen, I'm coming from a Green Party perspective on this. I - we were asked once, we were working on the idea of green economics, you know, how do you translate it down into really simple words, the least words possible, we boiled it down to three words, quality, not quantity. You know, a lot of our system has been about economic what what [?] says, you know, the way classic economics, and I come from this, like I was taught in UCD, first, first class economics, literally the very first class, you're there, rule number one, people are profit maximizers, and all the assumptions are made on the basis that people are going to do, you know, maximize output, maximize their consumption maximize. And I remember thinking at the time at a younge age, and you know, I said I'm not quite sure that kind of fully explains the way I feel or think. And so I think the system change that's coming isn't just a technological one around use of electric car versus a combustion engine, planting a forest rather than a plowing a field, or - it is a wider system change that measures progress in a slightly different way. And particularly in the Western world. Because I mean, we grew up in the western world where we the 20th percent wealthiest, we're consuming 80% of the resources. So we that's not going to be the future the next 50 years or 100 years. The rest of the world won't quite put up with it but also, we don't have those resources. Like in Europe, we import so much of our food for feeding cattle and sheep, we import our energy, we import our steel, we import. So if we don't switch towards a less consumption orientation system, then I think we won't, it won't work. It won't work, particularly for Europe.

Jim Scheer 33:12

You're talking about scrapping GDP as the headline measure of success?

Minister Eamon Ryan 33:15

We've already, I mean, the governor of the central bank down here has just come back from New Zealand, where they started some of this and saying, Yeah, I mean, that's the central bank whose job is to measure wealth. And they're saying, you don't measure it by just by GDP, you got to measure by level of mental health, level of dispersal of income, you know, is it concentrated? Or is it broad? Level of ... well being and sense of, for a lot of younger people, there's a lot of anxiety, you know, including coming out of a lot of environmental concerns. So we do need to measure progress. And that I think that's some of the system change where we need to go.

Jim Scheer 34:01

Got that. Yeah. And you talked, you mentioned a very important topic there in terms of climate anxiety. And that's something that a lot of people working in the sector and outside the sector feel from time to time. Do you - are there times when you're down about what's going on when you read the latest article from the IPCC? And if so, how do you respond to that?

Minister Eamon Ryan 34:19

It's very scary. And because it's scary, I just want sympathy. There's so much science you listen to but I remember the - being at one of the COPs recently and the Royal Academy, the Royal Academy of Science, whatever it is, the UK Science Institute. They did a very simple lecture, a very good scientific lecture admitting uncertainty, but raising concern about tipping points that you'd crossed them before you'd known you'd known you'd cross them. And that's the scary thing in my mind that you cross a tipping point, be it the release of methane from Siberian tundra or the loss of the rainforests to Savannah conditions or whatever variety of different tipping points. And that's the one that scares me is the "shit, we've passed a tipping point, and it's now triggered a runaway climate change." So that is it can be and for a lot of people is very scary. I - can I go back to what I said one thing I said earlier on, I never said at the start we were chatting about at that poem by David Whyte, "pilgrim take the path," and that's the for the other great attractiveness about that is by doing something by actually addressing, you know, effecting change, by actually materially doing it, you know, and that's not ... it's not to put, like the environmental movement, we made a mistake over the last 30 years, like so many sections in society, it was all putting the responsibility on the individual, it was a market led kind of response to, if you do the right thing in your consumption, then we'll solve this problem. I don't think that will reassure the anxiety. So when I say, by taking the path, by doing something, I think it's not just that you know by your actions, you might reduce your own emissions, and you might address the issue, but the very act of doing something about it and and being part of the solution, even if it's a very difficult battle, or even if it's very scary, at least you're moving in its own just for its own. It's like exercise is good fear, like doing stuff to address the fear is good fear, I think.

Jim Scheer 36:18

Got it. Yeah, I was at a talk you gave at the Unitarian Church on St. Stephen's Green. And there you were talking about ... it I think it was 2015 so a while back but you were talking about the Pope's Encyclical Laudato si', which called for a combined ecological and social approach to address the climate crisis. What about that resonated with you?

Minister Eamon Ryan 36:38

Well, I thought Laudato si' was a critical, important encyclical not separating us from nature, you know, that old social, Catholic social teaching that we are dom - we dominate or we have to, we have to manage, we're part of it. The other person who I met over the years who really inspired me on this was this is going to sound a strange combination, but was Tommy Tiernan, we did a thing at the Abbey Theatre a few years ago, we brought people in the artist Dorothy Cross, Michael Gibbons, the archaeologist. And also Tommy, he was the best at describing environmentally. And he said, "Don't speak to me about the environment, if it doesn't have the human being in the centre of it." And that's the flip side of the coin. In other words, you know, don't don't environmentalist effect, rule out the human aspect to this. But similarly, then, John Moriarty said, as human beings don't, don't miss this connection to nature. And Pope Francis the same, the encyclical, in my mind was remarkably important advancement of thinking in the church, particularly, but had wide resonance. It wasn't just Francis, it was Bartholomew, the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, he actually was eco - he was stronger on this before Francis and he pulled Francis along a lot I think. But Francis is still at it, and I mean, his recent book, what is it - Time to Dream - which is saying, actually, similar to what I said earlier about this COVID crisis has to be the moment we use as a lever for change, particularly on climate and on protecting our environment. So he's still at it in his mid 80s, not moving or not staying still. But in my mind, pushing out a message that I think resonates, whatever your view on the church, whatever your theological disposition. I think if most people, when they read that stuff from Francis, they realize it's actually important. It's relevant. And it's, I hope, very influential today.

Jim Scheer 38:33

Yeah. And then there's this cohort of young people who seem to get it in such a simple way. It's like, nothing else matters if we don't do something about the climate crisis. So the economy or the jobs don't seem to mean nearly as much to younger generations as they do to older generations, necessarily. And, you know, we've seen that huge rising up. And I think if there's a cohort of people who are feeling climate anxiety more than others, maybe it's them and how do you think we we best respond to that call from from young people who can't vote and they can't have their say in the same way and they don't have they can't make the decisions? How do we best respond to that call to get our act together?

Minister Eamon Ryan 39:16

Well, listening first of all, I think they can vote that like a lot of the will be voting a lot of that Greta is now, what, 19-20? And I saw her speak at an event in Madrid, where she was very strong on the Democratic aspect of this, you she was really clear and really pronounced about ... don't despair, address it through our democratic systems. So I know I'm not translating exactly what she said. But that was pretty that was pretty close to it, and I thought I was really impressed with her. Again, just the simplicity and the clarity of the way she spoke and does still speaks. The other thing I noticed though, and I saw you outside the gates of the Dáil, how many Fridays in a row. And I saw it around the country. I went around the country at that time, particularly back in 2017/18/19 it was kind of the climate strikes were building up was there was, it was quite positive, upbeat, it was, "another world as possible, we are unstoppable. Another world is possible." Anyway, it was angry and urgent in a sense but it wasn't. There was a sense of even in this most difficult situation that we're going to win.

Jim Scheer 40:31

Yeah, there's a super positive vibe around how that could get done. And that I think needs to drive it. Can we do a bit of visioning for the future just to get just to get us towards wrapping up? So when you think about the future when you picture 2050? Or do you and and what do you see?

Minister Eamon Ryan 40:47

I hope I get to 2050. What age will I be then, I'd be quite old, but I'd be - I spent a lot of my adult life thinking about what it'll be like in 2050. And I'll be there, "I told you so." I think by 2050, I don't see why we wouldn't have a country where every home is warm, and healthy. And I mean, I think look at it this way, it's weird to look back to I was born in the early 60s. You look at the CSO statistics for Ireland in the early 60s. And the percentage of houses that didn't have running water. And the percentage of houses that didn't have a toilet, it was shocking. It wasn't, they all had outside toilets. Up to half. And in a short, three or four decades, we went from then to a situation around where we had central heating in pretty much every home and somewhat and a life expectancy that went from something like 60 years to 80 years. And so why not in the next 20 or 30 years, if we put all our effort into switching towards that every single home is heated in a way that is sustainable, and is really comfortable. And that's a very good first base. You know, there's incredible social justice comes out of that because fuel poverty is and the effects of -poverty and environmental degradation go together. So if we can separate them, and address that environmental issue in terms of how we heat our homes, that's an incredible prize of progress in social welfare of our country. And I think it's absolutely achievable. I'm absolutely convinced we will do it. Because the better technology ... these heat pumps work, insulation is not rocket science. We will do it in a systematic way. It's happening. It's happening as we speak. I mean, even in my lifetime go back to when I started as a kid on a street where we you played football? Everyone did. I know that's a cliche, but it was true. It was safe. It wasn't as car dominated, it wasn't as threatening. You could let go of a five your hands of a five year old on the street and not be terrified. In 30 years time, could we not go back to some of that. And I think it's achievable. And I do think in this industrial revolution that's taking place and balancing between variable and renewable power, and the flexible demand use of it. I don't think that's reversing. Like, you know, 90% rate was it Fatih Birol, the head of the IEA was - gave a statistic recently, I don't have the exact figures numbers but 85-90% of the new capacity being built in the world last year was renewable, like it is happening. You do that for 10-20-30 years and get the further advances in technology from scale. So I think it will, now where will our environment be? Will we have gone over one of those tipping points? Or will we? We don't know. But that shouldn't stop us or shouldn't grip us with fear. So we don't make the change, because the change is going to be better anyway. Even if in Ireland, we find ourselves in this terrible situation that some of those tipping points have been crossed, we have to manage all the consequences of it. We manage better with warmer homes, safer streets, food systems that are able to cope with droughts and with rainfall, heavy rainfall, and all the changes we need to make in the agricultural system would bring us in that direction. Preparing for adaptation and mitigation at the same time. I don't see it not happening. Because it there's sense behind it. And I hope and 35 or 30 less than 30, 28 years time. There's that sense of having made that progress.

Jim Scheer 44:27

So optimistic or even convinced that we can do it?

Minister Eamon Ryan 44:30

Yeah, convinced. I quoted something else recently in terms of - I was giving a speech in the Dáil about the war in Ukraine from the but there was someone Nelson Mandela had quoted. Or he was quoted in terms of the there's an evolutionary step towards progress, peaceful progress in the world. I think he's probably right. Now that can be derailed. It could be derailed more than anything else by environmental degradation, but in humankind in our connection to each other and our understanding of the place in the world, I think that's a truer approach, a truer philosophy or a truer, that's truer to what's actually happening. We are living in a time of increasing awareness, of increasing education. And I think humankind is in that is in that evolutionary step towards a better relationship with the world. Either that or we're in deep trouble.

Jim Scheer 45:27

Minister Ryan, thanks for your time, and your commitment. Good luck with your mission.

Minister Eamon Ryan 45:31

Thank you.

Jim Scheer 45:32

Thanks. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. We hope you enjoyed our conversation and it's left you in action and hopeful for our future. Please visit sei.ie/podcast for information on each of our guests this season and links to further relevant material to support you around your own climate actions or resources if you're suffering from any climate anxiety. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to 180 Degrees and rate the podcast to help us spread the word.