Climate change: Companies cannot wait for new technologies, they must act now, warns UCC expert

Eoin Lettice: 'Too often, sectors with vested interests have pointed to future, unknown, or untested technologies as being our 'get-out-of-jail-free card' when it comes to climate change.'  Picture: Dan Linehan

Sectors that must reduce emissions cannot abdicate their responsibility by waiting for new and untested technologies to come to the rescue — they must act now.

That is according to a University College Cork (UCC) expert, who was speaking following the "now or never" scenario laid out by the world's scientific community in the latest UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which said that steep emissions cuts must begin after peaking in 2025 in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

Plant scientist at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Environmental Research Institute in UCC, Eoin Lettice, told the Irish Examiner that the "verdict from the IPCC was reached a long time ago with some still refusing to accept the outcome".

There can be no punting the ball down the road in the wake of the IPCC's findings, said Mr Lettice.

"Too often, sectors with vested interests have pointed to future, unknown, or untested technologies as being our 'get-out-of-jail-free card' when it comes to climate change. 

"What this report makes clear is that we cannot rely on hypothetical technological advances to cut GHG emissions, sequester carbon from the atmosphere, or allow for easy adaptation to climate change. 

In short, we need to act urgently with the tools we have available to us now."

Agriculture must do some of the legwork, he added.

"The need for urgent reductions in methane emissions should supersede attempts to protect sectors that are unsustainable.

"The adoption of a low-carbon, plant-based diet has also been flagged in the report and will go hand-in-hand with changes to the agriculture and food production sectors." 

Nature-based solutions on emissions will also help to address another major global crisis — biodiversity loss, according to Mr Lettice, a UCC observer during last November's UN climate change summit in Glasgow, Cop26.

"This new IPCC report emphasises the importance of 'nature-based solutions' in climate change mitigation including tree planting, halting deforestation, as well as protecting peatlands and coastal wetlands. 

While noting that these solutions by themselves will not, and are not meant to be, an alternative to greenhouse gas emissions, such nature-based solutions can also help us to tackle that other existential crisis of our time — biodiversity loss." 

Meanwhile, non-governmental organisation Our Fish said, in light of the IPCC report, that ending EU fossil fuel subsidies "would be one of the most effective ways of reducing the size of destructive, industrial fishing fleets and reducing the overfishing that is depleting fish stocks and ecosystems".

Overfishing simply means taking more fish out of the water than can grow back. Scientists have increasingly sounded the alarm that overfishing is exacerbating both the biodiversity and climate crises.

Our Fish programme director Rebecca Hubbard said: "Rebuilding fish populations would enable marine ecosystems to function like a healthy body, ensuring they can cycle and sequester more carbon through the fish and the seabed, support more fishers that do not need to burn as much fuel to catch as many fish, and feed more people with less environmental impact.”

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB