First carbon budget - Green taxes better late than never

WE HAVE all known for some time that we were living in an unsustainable fashion and that we would have to embrace profound change to try to reverse, delay or at the very least contain the effects of climate change.

We have been slow to acknowledge that we have an obligation to do all we can to try to confront the issue. Some people have even tried to shrug off our responsibilities by suggesting that, as a tiny country, any contribution we could make to the process would be all but irrelevant.

Environment Minister John Gormley put a welcome end to all that short-term, self-serving, shoulder-shrugging yesterday when he introduced our first carbon budget to the Dáil.