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A Just Transition doesn’t mean a few already-rich people hoovering up all the benefits

Eco tips: Colm O'Regan at his home in Kilmainham, Dublin. Photo by Frank McGrath

Climate Worrier: A Hypocrite’s Guide to Saving the Planet by Colm O’Regan

The oil man. Summoned after the dip-stick showed there were only a few inches left. The Campus oil man gave the amount. Mama did a quick sum to work out the price per litre. They’d check the diary to see what was paid the last time and how long ago. Hmmm. A judgment was made. That’s not too bad. Or that’s gone up. Dada might mention Iran or Saddam Hussein. Life would go on.

E ither way, it wasn’t going to be drill, baby, drill. The oil fed the Wellstood, an at-least-60--year-old range that has been ever present in the kitchen — so ubiquitous that when I came home from school one day and Cooker Man (a man from Clonakilty who was reputed to be the only man who still fixed them) had the Wellstood pulled out from the wall, it affected me so much I think it’ll come up in therapy.

It wasn’t just the motor fuel my parents watched like a hawk. My father and mother were rigid with the home heating oil for the range. Forget your fancy heat pumps. Just light a cast-iron range early in the morning, turn it off mid-morning when the hot water cylinder was full and let the heat from the range ebb into the room. There was no shower and no immersion. The cylinder was the day’s hot water, so don’t even think of taking one of those baths that come up around your shoulders. You’re not Pam Ewing.

The other room was heated by an open fire with timber from the farm. The upstairs was heated by hot water bottles and 120-watt heaters called the Human Body. I wouldn’t call it fuel poverty. It was more “character building”. The fuel was out in the tank if it was really needed — say, if we had visitors. Although, famously, one visitor misunderstood the terms of reference for the bath and had a full one and took all the hot water. There was a shadow over the rest of their visit.

I moved to Dublin, where there was central heating. I would press a switch and it would come on and the house was warm. And I forgot just how much of a big deal that was. It’s easy to forget where you get your energy.

I don’t want to get all woo-woo, wellness is about positive attitude, you can buy these crystals from my Instagram page, but energy is everything and everything is energy. Even the renewable energy that your electricity provider said was green, with pictures of windmills in the ads and people with good teeth smiling as they boiled the kettle and a flaxen-haired child running up to them to show them a drawing and it was gorgeous — even that electricity is mixed with all the dirty stuff, so that sometimes you’re not actually using green electricity. You’re using methaney stuff. Sorry. They lied. Well, they didn’t lie. They just didn’t tell you that the electricity they generate is renewable, but that’s not always the electricity they send to you. Basically, that’s not a bunch of organic carrots. It’s a bunch of carrots that are sometimes organic.

Everything you do is a choice to use energy, to turn something that was just sitting there into a thing or a piece of light, heat, entertainment or transport, and that will put CO2 into the atmosphere. Because all the renewable things we can do with the nice technology will need fossil fuels to be burned to get us to that stage.

I’m not saying this to make you feel bad. We’re all doing it. But if we really want to change things we have to a) change most systems and b) be LESS: do less, make less, consume less, waste less, go less, have fewer nice things. Not fewer books. That’s a red line. But the main red line is that people who have less should pay less.

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The richer you are, the bigger your carbon footprint has been. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Not you — I know you’ve a passive house, but it’s the other fella on the other side of the mews. The one who hasn’t switched over to the electric Range Rover yet, like you have. But even if the poorer family is still burning kerosene in the Paraglo, basically inhaling most of the CO2 themselves, and not using the heat pump like you are, statistically, they are just living a lower-carbon existence.

Richer people fly more and further, ski more, have more cars per person, own more appliances, go on more stags to Tallinn, stay in more hotels, have bigger houses to heat and bigger immaculate lawns, more clothes, jewellery and those weird aluminium-looking bottles, are more likely to work in jobs that contribute no good to the world whatsoever, but involve trading imaginary units of wealth around the place and incentivising shareholder value and meeting KPIs in the Customer Joy Vertical.

So those here who don’t have much should pay less to fix it. They should still pay more than the average person in Suriname, but definitely less than those with money here. So we need what’s called a Just Transition. The idea is that in order to change an entire economy away from fossil fuels towards one that’s less dig-it-up-and-burn-it, you have to do a few things right.

Transitioning doesn’t mean a few already-rich people hoover up all the benefits. People who had jobs that are now suddenly not cool need to be re-skilled and they need help finding jobs and they need money while all of this is happening.

People who are marginalised because of money have to be represented and included when it comes to deciding how to change everything about an economy.

Even as I type Just Transition I feel that its time as a phrase may not be long. We have a habit of associating a phrase with some other rage we’re feeling and before long the phrase has to be quietly left out. So just so you know, Just Transition did mean something.

Climate Worrier: A Hypocrite’s Guide to Saving the Planet by Colm O’Regan

This is an extract from ‘Climate Worrier: A Hypocrite’s Guide to Saving the Planet’ by Colm O’Regan, out on October 13 from HarperCollins

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