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Varadkar says 'adaptation' to climate change most effective response and land use plan needed

The Taoiseach said reducing emission would make a “small contribution” to slowing down climate change.

TAOISEACH LEO VARADKAR has said that adapting to the reality of climate change is the most important thing the government can do to protect people, property and infrastructure, while reducing emissions will “make a small contribution” in slowing it down. 

Varadkar was responding to a question from Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns about the Government’s plans to address land use and implement flood protection schemes in the wake of the floods that hit Midleton in Co Cork last week. 

“I agree that we’re all going to have to have a much greater focus on adaption as part of climate action. Climate change is reality,” Varadkar said. 

“Even if the world reaches net zero by 2050, and it might not, there’s a lot more climate change to come, it’s baked in, it’s going to get worse, there’s going to be more of it.

“And while us reducing our emissions will make a small contribution to slowing down climate change, the most effective thing we can do to protect our people and our property and our infrastructure is adaptation and we’re going to need a much greater focus I think on that in the time ahead.”

The Taoiseach, who visited Midleton in the aftermath of the flooding, said it was the worst he has ever seen. 

“I had a chance to visit Midleton last week, a town that I know very well. And I’ve seen a lot of flood damage in my time, but this was at a different scale. Flood waters that were up to my arm and not just water, dirt, mud sewage a huge amount of damage done,” he said. 

The scale of the flooding seen in Cork, Waterford and other parts of the country since Storm Babet has been blamed by TDs on the way land is used and a lack of prevention schemes. Cairns pointed in particular to floodplains being built on and wetlands being drained as two major factors. 

She also said that Midleton had been waiting “a decade” for a flood protection scheme which is yet to enter the planning stage, to which Varadkar replied that these schemes are often objected to in court and An Bord Pleanála. 

“Minister (Patrick) O’Donovan had a very good meeting with Cork County Council yesterday, I’m due to receive the report on that today.

“It’s still intended to get the flood relief scheme into planning next year, but these are complex schemes that take a lot of time and are often challenged and opposed at An Bord Peanála and in court. We’ve 50 don’t and they worked, 90 in the pipeline.”

In response to the question of whether the Government was in favour of a national land use plan, Varadkar said it was being worked on and led by Minister of State Pippa Hackett. 

“On the issue of land use plan. Yes we need a land use plan for Ireland. We are working on that at the moment. Very much being led by Minister Hackett but obviously, agriculture involved in that too and other Government departments.” 

A land use plan would regulate the kinds of buildings and infrastructure that can be built in certain areas. Land use planning usually vests this decision making in a central authority. 

Storm Babet 

Storm Babet brought heavy rainfall across the country last week, particularly in the south and south west, and people are still dealing with the damage it caused.

Midleton in Co Cork was one of the worst hit areas, with flood waters filling the town’s streets and causing damage to homes and businesses. Members of the Defence Forces were deployed to assist locals dealing with the deluge and roads were cut off. 

Local TD James O’Conno said it was “devastating” to see the extent of the damage and questioned why a Status Red weather warning was not issued.

‘Adaptation’

Storms that can cause severe weather events like last week’s flooding are expected to become more frequent and more intense as climate change disrupts weather patterns. 

Governments are now having to deal with the very real problems that climate change poses and adaptation has become a common theme after decades of inadequate action on emission reduction. 

Last year the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report which stated that the impacts of climate change are already causing severe and widespread disruption around the world and drastic action is needed to avoid mounting loss of life, biodiversity and infrastructure. 

In 2018, the government published Ireland’s first National (Climate) Adaptation Framework (NAP), which aims to “reduce the vulnerability of the country to the negative effects of climate change” in order to develop a “climate resilient Ireland”. 

A Public Consultation has since been held and the Government is currently reviewing the NAP. 

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    Mute Davy
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:04 PM

    Natural weather occurrences.
    Building on flood plains the problem.
    But sure blame the lame climate change and tax all round.

    319
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    Mute Brendan O'Brien
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:22 PM

    @Davy: “Climate change is reality,” Varadkar said. He’s right. You’re wrong.

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    Mute Adrian Kehoe
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:57 PM

    @Brendan O’Brien: of course it’s a reality, it’s the natural cycle of the planet we inhabit, it’s been happening for millions of years and it will continue to happen for millions of years to come.

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    Mute David Jordan
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    Oct 25th 2023, 3:13 PM

    @Adrian Kehoe: Whether or not this is a natural cycle has no bearing and what we need to do, climate is changing and we need to adapt.

    The rate of warming we’re currently seeing was never experienced for thousands of years past, even at the end of the last Ice Age, the warming c. 12,000 – 17,000 years ago much slower. Looks the charts, for temperature for the last 2000 years.

    https://imgur.com/gallery/5ioVzFY

    Rising temperature is a near vertical line.

    We had over 10,000 years of climate stability, with only small local changes in temperature and climate over the last 10 millennia, that dependable climate allowed civilisation to emerge and flourish, but that is longer true.

    36
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    Mute Adrian Kehoe
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    Oct 25th 2023, 5:36 PM

    @David Jordan ,If you are correct why don’t we stop allowing the 240 odd cruise ships that visited here last year and also stop air travel, let’s go back to boat and sail. If the people that are taxing and controlling us really believe in climate change then they would do this immediately, not next week not whenever, immediately. Man made climate change does not exist by piers corbyn, have a read of that and see what you think

    23
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    Mute A D
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    Oct 25th 2023, 10:42 PM

    @Adrian Kehoe: I believe David Jordan is an expert on the subject. Certainly far more knowledgeable on it than the rest of the commenters.
    wikipedia Piers Corbyn, begins with the sentence “Piers Richard Corbyn (born 10 March 1947) is a British weather forecaster, anti-vaccine activist, conspiracy theorist, and former politician.”
    Doesn’t sound very plausible. I don’t want to know his opinions.

    4
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    Mute Adrian Kehoe
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    Oct 26th 2023, 12:43 PM

    @A D: could you post a link to any scientific research that David Jordan has published, can’t seem to find any of his work anywhere online, also , when you pay enough scientists for a general consensus about anything that fits any narrative then you get climate agenda nonsense, could you maybe also comment on my previous statement above as to why these things that are allegedly damaging the planet are not acted on immediately with suspension of flights, cruise ships etc etc,or maybe David Jordan has written a piece to counter my suggestions?.

    1
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    Mute Four Aces
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:43 PM

    “A small contribution”? Ireland’s contribution will change nothing except punish our people.

    183
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    Mute Chutes
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:54 PM

    @Four Aces: There is no escaping change, changes are either forced upon you or you learn to accept that things just fkn change. You won’t like all the changes.
    Standards of living, absent immigration to revitalise our beleaguered real economy, will fall.
    Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it isn’t true is a maxim I feel many could benefit from.

    10
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    Mute Dave Barrett
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    Oct 25th 2023, 5:00 PM

    @Four Aces: yip, solution, tax them to the grave.

    18
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    Mute Thomas Sheridan
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    Oct 25th 2023, 6:46 PM

    @Alan B: Alan, you have accidently raised a very important issue and highlighted how the largely work-shy council tenant’s are getting their homes upgraded for free and paid for by our carbon taxes.
    Meanwhile, overtaxed workers living in their overpriced houses (or rented accommodation) cannot afford the massive cost of upgrading our substandard homes.

    15
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    Mute BL Music
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:51 PM

    Ireland has spiralled downward at a swift rate under varadkar and FFG . Look at our country and its inhabitants. We pay more for everything , our healt service is been decimated , our Garda are underpaid , our justice system is a joke, crime is thriving . Don’t even mention housing .
    We are one of only THREE countries in Europe who give full welfare to anyone who arrives which has led to a huge influx

    149
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    Mute Chutes
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:56 PM

    @BL Music: If people want excellent services they must be willing to foot an increasing tax bill. That is far from the case in Ireland.
    That said, obviously value for money is poor throughout the isle!

    13
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    Mute Kevin Kerr
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    Oct 25th 2023, 3:48 PM

    @BL Music: We don’t give full welfare to anyone who arrives. Please deal in facts

    13
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    Mute Tom Newell
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    Oct 25th 2023, 6:13 PM

    @Chutes: we give 24 billion to health, and the clowns running it literally flush it down the toilet, and u think giving them more will help…..ya sure

    22
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    Mute Luka Roche
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:22 PM

    Sure blame Rural Ireland yet again for the Climate.

    When they were digging the channel for the tunnel segments in the Limerick Tunnel, they excavated 800 thousand tonnes of silt from the River Shannon. None of the protected rivers across Ireland haven’t got a silt cleaning since 1922. But prior to the British used to clean the silt every 5 years from Rivers across Ireland.

    89
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    Mute
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:20 PM

    He and his political party only care about personal financial profit maximising. He’s earned the title Spin Doctor among others. Putting a plaster on this oozing artery will not save anyone.

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    Mute
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:06 PM

    Clown

    99
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    Mute The boot
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    Oct 25th 2023, 3:25 PM

    Tory boy. Sick of the sight of him and fine gael . The rich peoples party. Couldn’t care less about working class people or poor people. And the rest of them the greens blueshirts on bikes. Same with FF out with the lot of them.

    52
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    Mute Mary Toilet
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    Oct 25th 2023, 3:28 PM

    @The boot: same with Mary Toilet, privately educated and lives in a mansion, completely out of touch with the dregs of society

    9
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    Mute
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    Oct 25th 2023, 5:54 PM

    @Mary Toilet:
    But thriving and surging rent free in your “brain-wrong of a man mental” ;~}

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    Mute Steve Brennan
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:06 PM

    Yes, we have to adapt, but if we don’t ALSO reduce emissions to net zero then our children and grandchildren will have to adapt a lot MORE. Some people think we have too much immigration into Ireland right now (not me). What would it be like be 500 million people have to migrate from parts of the world that will be too hot to live in in 10 years?

    36
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    Mute Gearoid O'Ceilleachair
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:30 PM

    I am sorry that this man has drawn himself into a modelling subculture where most of our society seems stuck. Our landscape contains the Newgrange monument, which is an anchor for all research in maintaining a Solstice alignment across 5,200 years. It demonstrates the connection between human timekeeping and the planetary cycles/motions.

    The beginning of the neolithic New Year at Samhain in Ireland is now a worldwide festival. Still, due to the dominance of a Royal Society subculture, its importance as a foundation for solar system and Earth science is lost to a bunch of fools and their contrived modelling agendas.

    36
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    Mute Gearoid O'Ceilleachair
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    Oct 25th 2023, 4:12 PM

    Politicians are impervious to external influences and believe their political machinations alone are what guides society; however, in this case, they are used as part of a subculture as everyone else is.

    Many contributors here insist that natural selection is a reality despite being a prejudice conviction written as an evolutionary narrative where favoured ‘races’ exterminate less favoured ‘races’. Instead of dealing with the matter as adults would, society goes into thumbsucking mode by defending the indefensible or labelling it as idiosyncratic.

    Climate change modelling is just another symptom of a modelling community that is out of control, and that is the only reality.

    7
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    Mute Diarmuid Hunt
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    Oct 25th 2023, 6:28 PM

    @Gearoid O’Ceilleachair: Gearoid, it has been explained clearly to you that eugenics and natural selection are two different things, why do you still conflate the two? There is nothing in evolution or natural selection that says there are races or that one is more favoured. Natural selection is an explanation of what is observed in the real world, it is descriptive not prescriptive. People using a legitimate scientific idea and twisting it to do harm does not invalidate the idea. Akin to we should not have a system of governance (political idea) because fascism or authoritarianism exist.

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    Mute Gearoid O'Ceilleachair
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    Oct 25th 2023, 7:00 PM

    Diarmuid :

    “Thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members…  Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts—and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal ‘struggle for existence,’ it would be the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed—and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults.” Darwin

    en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Descent_of_Man_(Darwin)/Chapter_V

    Prejudice became natural selection as an evolutionary narrative, and eugenics became natural selection.

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    Mute Diarmuid Hunt
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    Oct 25th 2023, 9:44 PM

    @Gearoid O’Ceilleachair: Yes, you’ve also been told that just because Darwin made discoveries regarding natural selection does not mean that everything he wrote is true or followed. I hope you’re just dishonest, the alternative I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

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    Mute
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:15 PM

    The world is burning and all this clown cares about is the next Kylie minouge concert. Be gone with you varadkar.

    65
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    Mute James Mullen
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    Oct 25th 2023, 6:31 PM

    Why are the comments closed on Varakars Statement on Ukrainian asylum Seekers?.
    Shutting down free Speech AGAIN.
    We would have more Rights in Commi Land

    28
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    Mute Oh Mammy
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:09 PM

    We never had floods growing up.

    21
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    Mute Joe Kelly
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:25 PM

    @Oh Mammy: in the 1970s a university professor said on rte news if bnm didn’t stop turning bog land into farm land it would result in severe flooding as far away as fermoy and other areas of Co Cork. I thought he was mad, guess who was wrong.

    77
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    Mute Oh Mammy
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:54 PM

    @Joe Kelly: That’s not mad at all. It’s also not climate change.

    37
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    Mute Chris O'Brien
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:21 PM

    “On the issue of land use plan. Yes we need a land use plan for Ireland. We are working on that at the moment.”

    So 100 plus years in government, and everything you’ve done – on balance – has made these issues worse.

    But.

    A few more years and viola! You’ll fix all the problems you’ve created.

    And.

    Tell us again why drivers see being treated like a cancer on society if our plan is just to adapt ro climate change?

    Jazes these guys are all just awful.

    37
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    Mute Kevin Farrell
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:16 PM

    Is this Government Policy now? Do the Greens agree with this? It is madness, pure madness. If every country adopts this approach, we will end up with an uninhabitable planet.

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    Mute lesidees
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:20 PM

    @Kevin Farrell: please explain. How does adapting to climate change make the planet uninhabitable?

    19
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Oct 25th 2023, 2:28 PM

    @lesidees: Because adapting to climate change means that he wants to cease policies that might tackle the causes of climate change.

    Of course he is only saying that because he knows that the policies FFGG have pushed are going to affect their chances of re-election, because those policies put the blame and the costs onto the consumer, the person who can do least about it, while letting those corporations that are the cause of the problem off scot-free.

    And if they do get back into power then it will be business as usual anyway.

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    Mute lesidees
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    Oct 25th 2023, 3:56 PM

    @ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: no, we can and should do both. I don’t see anything in what he said that suggests we don’t need to cut ghg emissions

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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Oct 25th 2023, 4:09 PM

    @lesidees: So you don’t think the government has finally realised that putting the burden onto those – i.e. us – who have no control over it, while letting those who actually cause the problem continue doing what they do has upset us deeply?

    And will hurt government parties at the next election?

    7
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    Mute Kevin Farrell
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    Oct 25th 2023, 4:29 PM

    @lesidees: Attempting to adapt won’t make the planet uninhabitable. But, deciding not to reduce or being a laggard at reducing emissions will. FG and FF have been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century when it comes to dealing with the emissions issue. The comments from Varadkar are just a smoke screen for not bothering to focus on emissions as an essential part of the equation; i.e. it has to be an EQUAL priority as well as trying to mitigate the worst effects of climate change that we are already experiencing.

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    Mute Colette Kearns
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    Oct 25th 2023, 4:45 PM

    Since the 1950 scientists have been intrefiering with the weather, cloud Seeding geoenginering & god only know what else!

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    Mute Mary Toilet
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    Oct 25th 2023, 3:11 PM

    I agree, people need to ditch their cars and use boats and canoes

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    Mute Tom Newell
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    Oct 25th 2023, 6:17 PM

    Soundbites Martin running his gob one side trying to keep FF and himself relavent, menwhile prince sparkle socks leo running his gob about climate change to keep himself and the tory lite FG mob going……

    14
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    Mute Wayne Shoes
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    Oct 25th 2023, 3:50 PM

    Mary toilet get a job.Or better still get a life and a friend

    15
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    Mute Mary Toilet
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    Oct 25th 2023, 3:59 PM

    @Wayne Shoes: did you take time out from playing Mario Kart to type that?

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    Mute bruce banner
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    Oct 25th 2023, 3:27 PM

    We are a great candidate for the Uruguayan energy model. We could be free of fossils fuels in 10 to15 years. But there’s no political will for it

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    Mute Thesaltyurchin
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    Oct 25th 2023, 7:41 PM

    Wonderfully spoken but literally say absolutely nothing. They’re ‘having chats’ is about all

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