Reacting to the decision of the Dáil’s Climate Committee to pass the CCACs proposed carbon budgets, People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith said it was “a major mistake to pass budgets that ignore the science and meant the committee was accepting budgets which did not comply with our obligations under the Paris Treaty”.
Deputy Smith along with other committee members had proposed a reduction in the budgets to align them with the science but this was rejected by Government TDs.
She added: “These budgets do not even comply with the Governments own 7% per annual reduction target and that they were premised on huge and unproven future emission cuts from future technological advances”.
The passing of the budgets followed a long debate at the committee and a number of hearings over the past month. Deputy Smith said that those supporting the CCACs budget proposals effectively had no answer to the numerous criticisms of the proposals by eminent scientists and campaigners who had addressed the committee and strongly recommended that the first two 5-year budgets see a significant reduction in total emissions.
The TD added: “To add insult to injury the committee has also effectively erased from its final report the points made by those scientists. But trying to ignore or censor the science will not work and the climate movement will hold all parties that passed these flawed budgets to account, especially those on the left and in the Green Party.”
