Bríd Smith
The Climate Council’s carbon budgets will soon be passed by the Government and the Dáil. Eamon Ryan and the Greens will eulogise them as a major step forward in fighting the climate crisis and indeed as an example of why they were right to enter Government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
In fact, the budgets and the debate around them show a total lack of ambition and a refusal to recognise reality from both the Greens and the government.
The budgets are supposed to map out a path that gets us to a future of reduced CO2 emissions in line with the science and taking account of what we can emit while still limiting temperature increases to under 1.5 degrees.
In 2019 the program for Government promised cuts in CO2 of 7% per year to 2030. In 2019 the UN also produced a report calling for cuts of at least 7.6% per year to 2030, in order to have a 66% chance of limiting warming to 1.5%.
Think about that. This is just to be in with a chance of limiting warming. Much of the recent science suggests much more needs to be done to ensure we don’t exceed 1.5 degrees warming – itself a death sentence for large parts of humanity and life on the planet.
But the budgets suggest cuts of only 5.7% per year to 2030. Less than the Government’s own promise, less than the UN suggest and much less than needed to comply with the Paris treaty’s aims.
Even worse, the budget ignore emissions from aviation and shipping and is built around a framework that aims for “Net Zero” by 2050. This is a hopelessly late date but even that is based on some magic future technology that will remove and capture the CO2 that governments will allow the fossil fuel industry to spew out. It is a reckless and outrageous gamble with the planet’s future.
It is depressing that the Dáil committee responsible and the Government have chosen to ignore the pleas and evidence from eminent scientists that spoke to them and urged more ambitious targets.
The targets are only one concern, but how the Government believes we can reach even these inadequate targets is another. They continue to allow data centres to proliferate across the country and seem content to allow for any increase in wind or renewable to be gobbled by them.
They have no real vision of providing the free, frequent public transport we need to radically cut emissions in transport, instead clinging to an impossible vision of 1 million EVs to replace petrol and diesel cars. Their retro fitting programme continues to ignore the majority of workers who simply cannot match the funding available to bring there homes up to a level that can cut heating and energy use.
The climate movement and the young people who led mass protests before the pandemic are being failed by the Greens. It is time to take to the streets again.
