In reality, major combat operations had only begun. The easy part was the decimation of Iraqi soldiers, the hard part was contending with the unseen enemy — one with nothing to lose and prepared to sacrifice life and limb, their own as well as others, through car and roadside bombs and other devices of mass destruction.

Even harder was getting the everyday population onside. Even those who wished that the tyrant Saddam Hussein was removed ended up hating the American and British invaders.

The American hubris and naivete about the tinderbox that is Middle Eastern politics still reverberates today, with George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld et al caught napping as Iraq and beyond metastasised into an orgy of bombings, violence, civil strife, and horror that will take decades further to unravel.

The Bush and Blair legacy will largely be the dismal failure that was the second Iraq war — both its execution and the failure to keep the peace for years afterwards.

Tánaiste Micheál Martin may lack the smug odiousness of George W Bush’s smirk and unwarranted self-confidence, but there were shades of the naivete this week when talking of climate change denial.

Responding to record-high temperatures in Europe and wildfires in Greece, Mr Martin has said there has been “an appreciable shift in public opinion” on climate change.

“I mean, the era of denial is gone, more or less, bar the fundamentalists who still don’t believe in the fact and the reality of climate change,” he said. "But the vast, vast majority of people accept that the climate is changing."

It was his “major combat operations have ended” moment in relation to climate scepticism and outright denial.

Mr Martin must not be paying attention to the likes of Twitter (or X, as Elon Musk now calls it as it rebrands itself), Facebook, and Instagram of late, if he thinks those who don’t believe that climate change is real are a small minority.

#climatescam con artists

It may be true that Twitter is not a platform for the masses in Ireland and beyond, with daily users dwarfed by Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok users, but its oversized influence on political discourse and the shaping of the everyday news cycle shows little sign of abating.

Every time that entities like the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and others release incontrovertible evidence of climate change and the impact it is having in real time, the hashtag #climatescam invariably trends on Twitter.

Accompanying the #climatescam label comes a torrent of vitriol and bile aimed at scientists and politicians with an environmental focus, and it begins to invade the airwaves of right-wing media and other con artists who see there are serious bucks to be made by pandering to the climate-denial echo chamber.

This is no tiny minority.

Similarly, a cursory glance at Facebook newsfeeds and Instagram’s comment section below the posts from environmental organisations such as Greenpeace or UN Climate Change or Nasa Climate Change shows the strength in numbers of not only the career climate change denialists, but the ordinary citizens seduced by their grift that the climate crisis is just a giant hoax.

When the jig was up for covid deniers, they invariably turned to attacking the vaccine, then attacked the trans community, then attacked the entire LGBTQ community for sexualising children, and now attack the climate science, putting together a powerful coalition of far-right culture warriors who not only cajole ordinary citizens but monetise their distrust of institutions.

The likes of GB News in Britain, Fox News in the US, and others around Europe have fanned the flames, seeing there are clicks to be had and views to be garnered by repudiating and ridiculing science.

Those clicks end up in the thousands, if not millions, and the ripple effect is incalculable.

The marauders may have been repelled, but they remain camped at the gates. To insist they are a defeated entity, as Micheál Martin suggests, is folly.

Arguably even worse than outright denial of the climate crisis is the intransigence to take meaningful action in what is an existential question: without a deep retreat from fossil-fuel-led industry and society, life on the planet as we know it will change irreversibly. 

It is already in full swing. Climate change is not waiting around to give us a fighting chance.

Ireland's failing targets

Yet the snail’s pace that we in Ireland and beyond at which we are travelling to reverse course onto a cleaner path is policy de jour. All in good time, our leaders say, as the planet heats to worryingly high levels because of our dependence on heat-trapping fuel.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar may not be a climate sceptic or a climate denier, but his hostility towards the European Commission’s nature restoration law as “going too far”, despite an unprecedented decimation of biodiversity and the natural world, and his insistence that even more roads are needed in Ireland despite transport emissions going up, gives aid and comfort to those who are happy to stick to politics as usual.

The Climate Change Advisory Council’s annual review warned this week that the country will not meet the targets set in the first and second carbon budget periods unless urgent action is taken and emissions begin to fall much more rapidly.

Ireland’s carbon budgets, which allocate emissions ceilings to motorists, households, farmers, businesses, and industry in five-year cycles, aim to reduce emissions by 4.8% a year from 2021 to 2025 under the first block, while the 2026-2030 budget will increase that annual reduction target to 8.3%.

The Climate Council’s assessment mirrors that of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which warned last month that Ireland is on course to cut emissions by just 29% by 2030, as compared to the target of 51% — with key sectors such as agriculture and transport way off track.

If the country’s own leader pours cold water on the scale of the changes needed, then what real hope do we have for the systematic changes necessary to stave off the worst of climate change, which is happening more and more intensely before our very eyes, in real time?