The electoral humiliation meted out to the Green Party by voters is unlikely to engender much sympathy from businesses that associate the party with carbon taxes and other measures that push up their costs and get in the way of making money.
That is a bit short-sighted.
The consequences of climate change are not up for debate, and neither are the costs it will ultimately impose on business. The ESRI churns out report after report about the economic costs of climate change, which it predicts will include everything from the physical damage caused by the sea level rising to high temperatures reducing labour productivity.
But what is also not up for dispute is that businesses are far more focused on actual costs rather than potential costs. The disconnect between the two makes it tempting and convenient for them to dismiss the green lobby as meddlesome and anti-business.
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Can my employer baldly state that its policy is different from whatever the employee handbook says?
Despite all the guff about corporate responsibility and carbon neutrality spouted by businesses both small and large, the incentives for a business to go it alone in terms of reducing its emissions are slim enough.
They fall to zero if, by doing so, a company conveys a competitive advantage on a rival who is not imbued with the same sort of social conscience and chooses to drag their heels.
The only way we will see reductions in emissions from businesses is if everybody jumps together. And that will only happen if someone is holding a gun to their collective heads. That someone has to be the government, either of its own volition, or because the European Commission is breathing down its neck.
[ Green Party’s meltdown largely due to ‘smaller party in government syndrome’Opens in new window ]
It would be preferable for all sorts of reasons for government to take responsibility, but the electoral hiding administered by voters to the Green Party last weekend makes it unlikely any incoming coalition will show the same enthusiasm for fighting climate change and putting pressure on business to cut emissions as the outgoing one did.
The more likely outcome is for the incoming government to do the minimum and preferably blame it on the European Commission.
Let’s leave aside the notion of the Green Party as some sort of better angel saving Irish business from itself as far as the consequences of global warming are concerned. The party’s most tangible impact in the next government would probably have been in the nature of strategic investment in energy and transport infrastructure.
All the various political parties committed themselves during the election campaign to make substantial investments in infrastructure.
The sums that have been promised are vast and potentially transformative. But as any voter knows to their cost, election promises are just promises and routinely broken.
There are economic storm clouds on the horizon, and the next governments will prioritise investment in the areas they think will deliver the biggest reward at the ballot box.
When push comes to shove the two parties that will most likely make up the next government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, have shown a willingness to long finger strategic infrastructural investments in areas such as transport and energy. One or the other of them has been in government for the three decades that the Dublin Metro project has been knocking around. If they believed in it, they would have built it by now. Likewise the tottering electricity grid.
Investment in transport and energy infrastructure is something of an article of faith for the Green Party because they are key to its agenda on climate change. One of the centrepieces of its manifesto was to spend €10 billion on MetroLink, Dart+, the Luas extension and rail projects in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.
But as they have found out, there are not a lot of votes to be had in promising strategic infrastructure. The opposite would seem to be the case. Some 23 Independent deputies have been elected to the next Dáil on a host of local issues, including some who opposed what they saw as Green Party policies such as wind farms.
According to the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, the State’s financial watchdog, Ireland’s stock of infrastructure is some 25 per cent lower than the average for a high-income European country.
It makes the point that infrastructure is key to attracting foreign direct investment and is a one of several factors multinationals consider when making investment decisions. The council also argues that strong infrastructure facilitates international trade and allows firms operating in Ireland to access larger markets abroad. This brings opportunities to take advantage of economies of scale.
It identifies four big areas of infrastructure that need investment: housing, health, transport, and electricity. The next government is likely to prioritise the first two as they directly affect the standard of living and are where the votes are won and lost.
The experience of the Green Party may further cool their enthusiasm for investing in the other two areas, which are key enablers for business and the latter of which is proving critical to the prospect of future inward investment.
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