Irish Examiner View: Greens in Coalition talks - Scare tactics

Political dialogue is often weaponised to obfuscate and sown uncertainty.

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan outside Leinster House

Political dialogue is often weaponised to obfuscate andsow uncertainty. That process, that application of the frightners is well under way as the Greens, despite deep and valid reservations, enter talks to try to form a coalition government.

Tánaiste Simon Coveney has promised he will not stand over the “decimation” of family farms by Green policies. Others warn that the Greens will “destroy rural Ireland”.

There is a deep irony, maybe an unrealised one, in those objections. Rural Ireland has already been changed utterly by industrial farming and its use of chemicals and land management. That is a reality we all bear responsibility for as farmers produce our food.

It may be fair to describe the Greens’ ambitions as incoherent but the core of its argument, that much of what we do is unusustainable, is undeniable.

We should change while that change still has the potential to avert climate chaos which will decimate far more than rural Ireland.