50 signatures reached
To: Taoiseach Mícheál Martin
Taoiseach - Step up and act for children now on the climate emergency.
Taoiseach - Step up for children and future generations. They need emergency action now.
Dear Taoiseach,
We are parents, care-givers and grandparents from across Ireland deeply concerned by the escalation of the Climate and Biodiversity Emergency, and what it means for our children and grandchildren.
We have been lucky in Ireland to have escaped the level of devastation experienced by our fellow Europeans this summer. But the hot weather we’ve been enjoying here is part of a pattern resulting in thousands and thousands dying across Europe due to the consequences of extreme heat, including infants and young people. Nurseries and schools have had to close, with children fainting and experiencing seizures due to abnormal heat. Irish tourists have had to run for their lives from wildfires. We know our kids face increasing deadly heat, and other extreme weather events, in their lives due to inadequate climate action to date. And experts warn of the increased likelihood of the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation, which would leave Ireland and our way of life unrecognisable forever.
Your government declared the Climate and Biodiversity Emergency in 2019. You stated at the COP in 2022 - “If this generation doesn’t step up urgently, future generations will not forgive us. As leaders, it is our responsibility to drive the transformation necessary”.
We need to see an emergency response - guided by best available science, public health expertise and human rights. Instead we’ve been dismayed to see backtracking by your government on its obligations to protect children from climate harms - efforts to disapply our climate law, set up new fossil fuel infrastructure, and prioritize data centre growth over children’s right to grow up in a stable climate.
Our kids and grandkids are increasingly aware of and distressed by the harms that have been done to their lives. And we’re distressed and frightened for them. But we know there is so much we can still do to protect children in Ireland and everywhere from the worst of climate harms. And as we are sure you are aware, it is your obligation and the State’s to do so.
We call on you as An Taoiseach to meet with parents and young people and listen to their concerns. And we urge you to:
- revise all relevant Government policy and plans to enable an emergency response to the climate crisis based on best available science and human rights obligations, including stopping harmful efforts to build new fossil fuel infrastructure via an LNG terminal, expand data centres, and disapply climate obligations in new laws;
- hold a televised address, akin to those carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic, to advise the public of the escalation of the climate and biodiversity emergency, how the government will respond, and vitally, reassure children and young people that you will act without delay to protect them from climate harm;
- follow the expert guidance of climate, biodiversity and public health experts to rapidly speed up deep reductions in climate pollution across each and every sector, and to plan and prepare for the threats posed to health, life and nature, by increasing risks of deadly heat, extreme weather events, and climate tipping points such as AMOC collapse.
We hope you will stand with your fellow parents, and for the sake of children and future generations take the essential action that this worsening emergency demands. Children need you to step up to protect them and future generations, and they need you to do it now.
Why is this important?
Protecting our children from harm is the most basic responsibility and instinct of being a parent. The devastation we have seen across Europe this summer - thousands dying, including infants and young people, as a consequence of extreme heat; Irish tourists running for their lives from wildfires; children fainting and having seizures at school; nature and wildlife destroyed - is a sign of a fast worsening climate and biodiversity emergency which puts the future of all our kids and grandkids at risk.
Instead of the emergency response we need to protect children from the worst of climate harms, their Government has been back-tracking on their obligations to them. There is so much more we can do to protect our kids and give them a better chance for their future. And children and young people need it to happen now.
Please join with other parents, care-givers and grandparents, and call on Taoiseach Mícháel Martin to step up for kids and future generations as he promised, and take emergency action to help protect them and their future.
How it will be delivered
Via email and in-person.