EAMON RYAN HAS seen it all before.

He’s seen concern for the environment coming and going over the last forty years. For him, it’s an interest that started after doing an O-Level in Ecology as a 16-year-old in the late 1970s.

The wider environmental consciousness waned during the recession of the early 80s before coming back later that decade – Ryan remembers canvassing for John Gormley in the 1989 election and feeling really positive about the green project.

Environmental concerns went out again the mid-90s before getting a rebirth in the 2000s with Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and all that went with it. The last recession saw climate issues fall down the agenda again.

Now, climate is back on the political map Ryan is convinced it won’t be falling off like they before. It simply can’t.

“I’ve seen over 30 years the tide coming in and out. I think this time the tide is rising far higher than it has in the past and I don’t think it will withdraw quite as easily because, to be honest, the scale of the challenge is so great and it’s going to become the big economic, social and government story of our time.”

Ryan is speaking to TheJournal.ie while helping out with a cleanup of the River Dodder in the heart of Dublin 4.

It’s a Saturday morning and he’s joined the Donnybrook Tidy Towns for its monthly cleanup with the Dodder Action group.

There are five volunteers on today’s cleanup including Ryan and his son Tommy.

Niall Loftus of Donnybrook Tidy Town starts the cleanup with a moment’s reflection for Trish Brennan, “a proud Roscommon woman” who passed away a few days previously and was married to their chairman. Without her, “Donnybrook Tidy Towns wouldn’t exist”, he says.

Loftus says he wishes they had more people out helping but that it’s hard to get them out, even if a reduction in litter shows that people are being more careful.

He points to a plastic bag full of beer cans that’s been hung on a gate and notes that even those having cans by the river are trying to be more careful.

I ask the Green Party leader why the green message is breaking through.

He points to several reports that stopped people in their tracks over the past year or so.

There was the alarming UN report last October that warned about a transformation of society that is “unprecedented in scale”. A few weeks later, that was followed up by research showing a 60% decline in the world’s animal population over 40 years.

Then there was David Attenborough’s campaign against ocean plastic and finally, Greta Thunberg. Ryan says the Swedish 16-year-old spoke about the “planet being on fire” in a way that grabbed people’s attention.

“She spoke a truth, that you’re messing with my future.”

Saying ‘I’m not going to have a future if you keep going the way you’re going’. And I think we noticed when we were canvassing a lot last year, that you’re starting to get parents responding to that and grandparents saying, ‘you know, they’re right’.