Think globally and act locally — climate change is our problem too

MANY people cheerfully and willfully ignored all the warnings about a financial and property bubble and the damage that their bursting would bring to the Irish and world economies.

“Why did nobody tell us?” was a regularly heard complaint after the inevitable happened and with even worse consequences than most of the naysayers had predicted. Some people had tried, but few wanted to listen.

The same threatens now when it comes to dealing with the link between man-made carbon emissions and damaging climate change. That hasn’t gone away, you know. We just hear an awful lot less about it, in Ireland at least. Last Tuesday Business & Leadership magazine brought together experts in the “green economy” for a conference in Dublin that I attended. There were some fascinating speakers who demonstrated how private sector companies are making enormous strides to reduce emissions and their carbon footprints — and how they are failing often too.

One of those speakers was Yvo de Boer, global advisor on sustainability and climate change at the accountants KMPG, who take this stuff seriously. He had served until last year as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. He provided a compelling presentation about government and corporate responsibilities and the opportunities that are opening up to those who behave progressively. “Can you put the world on hold while you solve the Irish economy?” he asked rhetorically.

All the environmental stuff seems to have dropped off the Irish agenda with the political collapse of the Green Party. Increasingly, I have heard people sneer about Green aspirations to change the way we live. As far as many Irish people seem to be concerned, living standards have dropped enough due to the recession without the environmental lobby apparently wanting to reduce them further, and taxing us into compliance. The Greens were hammered in the recent general election, mainly for propping up Fianna Fáil in power. Strangely enough, given that it justified its presence in government on the basis of there just being ten years to save the planet, it suffered for putting national needs ahead of global ones. While it is proud of the introduction of certain measures they favoured — such as the carbon levy on fuel — such actions only added to the contempt many voters felt for them. But the Greens didn’t do as much as they intended. They failed to get a climate change bill passed into law which, was a major failure. Why else did they stay all of that time in government if they couldn’t get their most important piece of enforced behavioural change on the statute books?

It falls now to the new government to do that and there is a commitment in the Programme for Government to introduce a Climate Change Bill that would force certain standards of behaviour on Ireland to ensure a reduction in our carbon emissions. One school of thought is that Fine Gael and Labour will be able to get one through without alienating vested interests such as big business and the farming lobby, both of whom complained bitterly about what the Greens wanted to do. However, the possibility is that the effort will be somewhat wishy-washy, more of the gesture variety than anything substantial.

There certainly seems to be a lack of urgency to do anything. I was told this week that Phil Hogan, John Gormley’s replacement as Minister for the Environment, apparently intends to publish a “consultation paper” early next year. If all goes well he may have a bill ready to bring forward by the end of 2012. Clearly this does not have the same priority as his introduction of a household tax, as he wants to bring in for January 2012, or the installation of water meters to prepare for the introduction of charges for the supply of water. Those are not environmental measures, but quite simply revenue raising ones because of the massive gap between government revenues and expenditure. What chance do you think further government imposed changes in economic and environmental behaviour will have to positively influence public attitudes after those happen first?

There will be many who will argue against any such climate change bill and they will have plenty of arguments to offer. Here are some in no particular order: our emissions are too small to make any difference to the global situation; there is no point in us cutting ours when developing countries are expanding theirs and getting economic advantage from doing so; our emissions are falling anyway because of our economic depression; this man-made global warming stuff is malarkey, it happens all the time and what’s happening now is natural and nothing we do has anything to do with climate change.

I’d prefer not to take that chance. There was a frightening report on the front page of The Guardian newspaper on Monday morning that showed that economic recession has failed to curb rising emissions, undermining hope of keeping global warming to safe levels. The newspaper reported that greenhouse gas emissions had increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history. It cited yet as unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency. Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel — a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009.

So what does this mean, at the end of the most serious global recession in 80 years? (It is over everywhere else bar Ireland, Greece and Portugal, although of course a collapse in the euro could negate all of that recovery, but let’s leave that aside). According to the Guardian report, the IEA has calculated that if the world is to escape the most damaging effects of global warming, annual energy-related emissions should be no more than 32Gt by 2020. If this year’s emissions rise by as much as they did in 2010, that limit will be exceeded nine years ahead of schedule, making it all but impossible to hold warming to a manageable degree.

Scientists have a goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius — which scientists say is the threshold for potentially dangerous climate change. But now the pace of increase in carbon emissions provides a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperature of more than 4C by 2100. “Such warming would disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict,” the IEA’s chief economist believes.

As it happens about three-quarters of the rise in carbon emissions can be attributed to developing countries. They have emerged from recession more quickly and are in no mood to pull back from efforts to bring their living standards up to western levels. However, it is also believed that the west has “outsourced” billions of tonnes of its emissions by reducing its own heavy manufacturing and relying on imports from the developing world instead.

Clearly this is a global problem. But we can’t just throw up our hands and say it is someone else’s problem when we share the planet and will suffer the consequences of climate change as well. We have to do our bit at home and contribute to the international campaign to bring about change. It would be in our self-interest.

The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.