To: Mr. Kevin Bakhurst, Director General, RTÉ and Mr. Tony Hanway, CEO, Virgin Media Ireland
Host a standalone TV/livestream #GE2024 Leaders' Debate on the Climate & Biodiversity Emergency
Invite the leaders of all national political parties to take part in a dedicated TV/livestream debate focused exclusively on the climate and diversity emergency (separately from any and all other general election programming, including any general leaders debate). Uniquely, make this a jointly hosted event across your respective TV and digital platforms (RTÉ and Virgin Media). Questions should come from a studio audience composed of a sample of citizens strongly biased toward those under 35, and including young people not yet 18, to reflect the disproportionate significance of the climate and biodiversity emergency for future generations.
Why is this important?
The climate and biodiversity emergency (and the wider global polycrisis it represents) is entirely different from all other issues in this general election campaign. It is global in scope, raising genuine existential risk for the stability of all human civilisation within the lifetime of young people already of voting age. It transcends and dwarfs the other “conventional” political issues: there can be no enduring solution to housing, healthcare, education, emigration, economic development, peace or justice unless there is a successful response to the climate and biodiversity emergency. For Ireland to play even its minimal fair share in such a global response would now require fundamental and disruptive changes in current political priorities. It is utterly impossible to do justice to this issue without a full debate devoted exclusively to it, and driven by an audience selected explicitly to represent future generations who are entirely reliant on the decisions being made now.
"We need to focus every inch of our being on climate change. Because if we fail to do so, then all of our achievements and progress will be for nothing. And all that will remain of our political leaders’ legacy will be the greatest failure of human history. And they will be remembered as the greatest villains of all time because they have chosen not to listen and not to act." - Greta Thunberg, speech to the European Economic and Social Committee, February 2019.
[Note: This initiative follows on a previous petition during the #GE2020 election campaign, initiated jointly by Nikki Ffrench Davis and Barry McMullin.]
[Image credit: sculpture by Isaac Cordal, "Follow the leaders".]
"We need to focus every inch of our being on climate change. Because if we fail to do so, then all of our achievements and progress will be for nothing. And all that will remain of our political leaders’ legacy will be the greatest failure of human history. And they will be remembered as the greatest villains of all time because they have chosen not to listen and not to act." - Greta Thunberg, speech to the European Economic and Social Committee, February 2019.
[Note: This initiative follows on a previous petition during the #GE2020 election campaign, initiated jointly by Nikki Ffrench Davis and Barry McMullin.]
[Image credit: sculpture by Isaac Cordal, "Follow the leaders".]
How it will be delivered
When a substantial number of signatures are achieved, the petition will be delivered by email to the Mr. Kevin Bakhurst, Director General, RTÉ and Mr. Tony Hanway, CEO, Virgin Media Ireland.