Climate activists will not succeed in achieving the scale and speed of change required to fight climate change if they try to shame, blame, or force people to act, Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications Eamon Ryan has said.
Mr Ryan was responding to anger over the slow pace of climate action at the inaugural three-day Mary Robinson Climate Conference in Ballina, Co Mayo.
The minister said he understood the fear and anxiety among environmentalists but that dividing the public into "them and us" groupings over the issue will not deliver the political actions required.
There was a palpable sense of anxiety over the lack of climate action among the 200 strong audience at the conference.
Many were reflecting the sentiment of Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Oisín Coghlan yesterday who said that "reasonableness" had not moved-the-dial on climate action.
Mr Coghlan said actions needed to be increasingly "unreasonable" in order to "save the future for ourselves and our children".
However, Mr Ryan said: "We have to ask for people's help instead of telling them what to do".
Policy makers should listen and build from the ground up rather than talking from the top down in government, he added.
Mr Ryan referred to reports that the overall hottest days globally were recorded earlier this week. He also said it was unprecedented for fishing in the Moy River to be shut down last month because of high water temperatures.
He insisted that the delivery of climate action was under way but needs to be sped up.
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The minister said that the communication around climate change had not worked to instil a need for action.
He said it has gone wrong since the late 1970s when a belief in market liberalism and the mantra that "markets know best" dominated.
However, he said that climate activists should not target individuals, or their homes, as that would make climate action a divisive issue among the public.
"For political action, you need to have public support. That is not to say that we do not need more direct action by climate activists. But in doing so let us not lose that sense of fellowship and common purpose in taking the next steps."
The minister said he agrees with Mary Robinson that the emissions from global aviation should be taxed and that windfall profits in this country should be taxed to pay for climate action.
He pointed out also that there are more solar panels in the Netherlands than in all of Africa, where 40% of the world's solar energy is located.
"We need to finance and supply energy renewables to developing countries," he said.
Minister Ryan’s address to the conference was interrupted by a group of young climate activists protesting about plans for a Liquified Natural Gas terminal in Ireland and the potential facilitation of an extension to the Corrib gas field off the coast of Mayo.
The conference also heard from Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester Kevin Anderson who had cycled to Ballina from Dublin over two days, having already taken a train from Manchester to Holyhead.
He said that Ireland is falling far short in terms of political leadership, courage, and integrity in relation to climate action.
Prof Anderson said that Ireland has far more financial capacity to decarbonize than almost any other nation.
Quoting figures from the Environmental Protection Agency, he said greenhouse gas emissions from Ireland were up 22% since 1990 compared with an overall reduction of 31% across the European Union.
Ireland is producing eight tons of greenhouse gas emissions per capita while the average for the European Union is six tons per person, he added.
