Government needs to act on climate change - Hackett

The government needs to start making "radical changes" in a bid to tackle the worst effects of climate change, Offaly Green Party Representative Pippa Hackett says.

Ms Hackett was speaking after she attended the recent Extinction Rebellion rally recently in Dublin.

The event took place outside the 'Dead Zoo' (Natural History Museum). This was one of four such events organised in Ireland, and joined many events around the world, aimed at highlighting the world’s plight in relation to climate change, and species loss. It comes of the back of a WWF Report which indicates that since 1970, human activity has wiped out 60% of the world’s mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles.

“This was a family friendly event, so I brought my two youngest children Heidi and George with me, and they very much enjoyed waving their homemade placards! It is our children, and their children who will feel pain of climate change and biodiversity loss the most, so it was important that they were represented.

“There was a super crowd there and a variety of speakers outlining the chaos our climate is in, and what it means for our environment, its animals and its people, both in Ireland and all over the world. One must always remember that climate changes affects those who are marginalised most of all, so we as a society need to do what’s right to protect the most vulnerable," she continued.

“It really does seem to be the time to stop sticking our collective heads in the sand, and start changing how we do things, what we spend our money on, and really think about our expectations of this planet we call our home. There is no planet B.

“All speakers made an urgent plea to Leo Varadkar and his government to make radical changes and to take this issue seriously. We all have a role to play. Here in Ireland, we are losing iconic bird species like the Curlew, and mammals like the Irish hare and red deer are also severe under threat. Besides this, we are facing some significant EU fines for climate inaction, perhaps into the billions of euro, and it will be the taxpayers who will end up paying for those, so this inaction it is costing us all, one way of the other," Ms Hackett ended.