Ireland needs to take position of leadership on climate change

THE new year is not about whether Enda is under pressure from Leo or not. It’s not about how many people will register for the water charge. 

It’s not about whether Labour is dead or alive.

Lift your eyes off our self-defeating, narrow-minded national narrative and 2015 looks different. It looks like the year in which 196 countries could make an agreement to work together to make this world a safe place for the human race to live.

This could happen in Paris in December of this year. The UN agreement signed after an all-nighter in Lima at the end of last year was important simply because it was an agreement.

It did not secure our future on this planet because it did not secure a drastic reduction in carbon emissions. But it secured the opportunity that this precious year might be used by the nations of the earth to make an agreement in Paris which might save the world.

China and the US are signalling a serious commitment to decarbonising their economies – with China promising her emissions will peak by 2030 and the US committing to a 28 per cent cut from 2005 levels by 2025. As Nick Mabey of the UK lobby group, E3G, put it, “Even the most cynical commentators now see an agreement in Paris as the most likely outcome.”

One of the agreed, possible outcomes of Paris might be complete decarbonisation of the world economy by 2050. That would quite simply mean the end of the fossil fuel industry.

It would mean a very different world but it would be different in a way which would still allow us to live comfortably on the planet. Continuing to burn fossil fuels as we do will change the world too, in ways which will boot most of us off the planet.

If we are to have hope, every nation has to lift her eyes from her own self-defeating, narrow-minded narrative and think like a global citizen. That includes us, sisters and brothers. Putting a serious commitment to cutting national emissions before the March 31st deadline under the UN process should be seen as an opportunity, not an imposition.

What’s wrong with better public transport, cleaner food, well insulated homes, less waste, a cleaner environment and our own sources of energy? What’s not to like about ambitious emissions reduction targets except the fear of not being able to explain it in the back woods fast enough to get in again in 2016?

When the truth is that we have no chance of a secure economic future without radical emissions reduction. Stop and think for a moment what will happen to the countries who lag behind while the rest of the world gets serious about climate change.

Who wants to trade with a polluter? How do you sell agricultural produce as “green” when your record as a polluter is black? How do you incentivise the development of smart technologies which cut carbon emissions if your national government’s priority is getting away with it?

As one Irish climate campaigner reminded me, when Denmark committed to renewables and lowering emissions in the 1970s, she developed a host of new technologies, including Velux windows and specialised radiator valves. Not headline-grabbers perhaps, but steady earners for Danish citizens.

Instead our Taoiseach called our previously agreed emissions target for 2020 “catastrophic” for Ireland. Our Government has spent most of its political capital getting off with a reduced target for lowering emissions than most of the world’s developed economies -– 25.5% below 2005 levels – arguing that our reliance on agriculture makes us a special case. Our plans for agriculture in Harvest 2020 bust even the low targets we have set ourselves and we do not know how we are going to make the rest of the reduction.

Our appalling transport emissions are projected to rise by possibly as much as 23% by 2020, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The percentage rise will depend, it said, on how far the Government pushes with green policies, such as incentivising lower emissions vehicles, developing biofuels and imposing additional carbon taxes.

There is little indication that our Government will pursue any of these policies. The can of life-threatening emissions is being kicked firmly down the road to a place where another government will face an economic crisis which will look 2008 look like a party as it scrambles to catch up with a decarbonising world. The cost of making the change later will be so much higher than making it now.

And what about idealism, on the eve of the proclamation of this Republic? Surely our republicanism calls on us to be global citizens, as we have often shown ourselves in the past, sending our peace makers all over the world under UN command?

Being a global citizen quite simply demands we lower our level of emissions, which Trocaire recently calculated as equating to those of 400 million of the world’s poorest citizens.

I grew up proud of the fact that Ireland was relatively generous in giving relief to poorer countries. Politically incorrect and disempowering though they were, the images of famine-stricken Ethiopians are carved into the psyche of an Irish person of my age.

I am outraged that Ireland was singled out by the Climate Action Network at the UN conference in Lima, with only three developed other countries, as “fossil of the day” for failing to contribute to the Green Climate Fund which helps poorer countries adapt to the changing climate.

The other three, Belgium, Austria and Australia, ponied up and committed to the fund within the day. Our Government has yet to do so. To put this failure in context, Peru and Colombia have committed to pay into the fund.

We have got to change tack now and aim for a position of leadership on the climate issue. Many voices within our climate movement expressed disappointment that national commitments to reduce emissions were made voluntary, not mandatory, at Lima.

But It is questionable that the UN ever had the power to commit countries to targets against the will. And it is possible that voluntary commitments will be made across the board because the people of every country on earth want to have a home on this planet.

One of the reasons we have got this far is because 400,000 marched in New York for action on climate change in the run-up to Lima.

Ordinary people all over the world are beginning to bust through the ignorant narratives perpetuated by those who have a vested interest in “Business as usual” who are given oxygen by self-serving media. They are beginning to ask their national governments to put a brave commitment to reducing emissions on the table for Paris.

We in Ireland have just a few short months left to lift the needle from the stuck record of our national woes which has us starving with the Malawis because we have less than we used to have. This year we have a chance to change the record for good and become responsible citizens of this beautiful world.