Ireland's tackling of climate change likened to sticking 'plaster on a gash' that needs A&E

Storm Austen will see Cork, Kerry, and Waterford under an orange warning for rain from 10pm on Thursday until 5am on Friday. File picture

As the country braces for Storm Austen with heavy rain and strong winds, the actions Ireland is taking to tackle climate change have been compared to sticking a “plaster on a gash that needs to be taken to A&E”.

Storm Austen will see Cork, Kerry, and Waterford under an orange warning for rain from 10pm on Thursday until 5am on Friday with Met Éireann warning the public should brace for flooding, delays to public transport, and difficult travelling conditions.

A nationwide yellow warning for wind and rain will also come into effect on Thursday.

Storm Austen’s arrival comes as the UN warned the world will no longer be able to stop global warming exceeding 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

It said that if the world cut greenhouse gas emissions by 18% by 2030, and by 45% by 2035, there would be a good chance of limiting temperatures from rising above 1.7C.

But it said that if current policies continue, warming could reach 2.8C within this century and increase thereafter.

Additionally, the El Niño phenomenon could cause a record rise in ocean temperatures in the Pacific as it barrels around the globe like a “wrecking ball”, causing floods and droughts.

A new report predicted the event could bring temperatures around 3.8C above normal between November and January in the central Pacific.

Oxfam Ireland has warned that Ireland will not be immune to the effects of El Niño, with disruptions to global food and energy supplies expected alongside growing flood damage due to storms.

Climatologist Peter Thorne said we are going “to go considerably above 1.5C next year because of El Niño”, which will be a “foretaste of our climate in a decade’s time". 

He said 1.5C, 2C or 3C above just gives “more and more steroids to the climate system and hits us more and more frequently with harder and harder punches".

“It is not that they are new punches, but the extreme precipitation events, the heavy rainfalls – your Midletons, your Enniscorthys – they become more frequent, more severe," he told the Irish Examiner. 

“Your heatwaves become more frequent, more severe. It becomes increasingly challenging to continue to farm in the way we have. Storms, they might hit with a greater punch,” Mr Thorne added. 

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The climatologist claimed climate has fallen off the political radar and is “very rarely the story of today”. 

“There’s always something more urgent, but climate will be the story of every one of your readers’ lifetimes, particularly the younger people,” he said.

Research fellow at University College Cork, Breffní Lennon added that some of the “most climate-aware people are those who are using coal to heat their home". 

“They understand if they have a fireplace or they can’t afford to change over, they know they need to, but they cannot afford to get out because they are locked into these fossil fuel systems.

“I think the problem is that a lot of the time when we talk about climate change, it's still about believers and deniers, and that train is gone,” Mr Lennon added.

Mr Thorne said that if the Government had taken a decision 20 years ago to produce “all our own indigenous renewable energy, driving around in electric cars, having heat pumps, having retrofitted properties”, we would not “be in the pickle we are in now". 

“At the moment, we’re trying to apply a sticking plaster to a gash that should be taken into accident and emergency,” he said.

He added that it was “nonsense on stilts” that Ireland is doubling down on fossil fuels and spending so much subsidising fossil fuels when that money could actually be used to help people transition away from them.