Maeve Higgins: Climate crisis puts Ireland in a particularly precarious position

We need to prepare for a more extreme climate system - and put the solutions in place

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have already doomed 120 trillion tonnes of Greenland’s ice to melt markedly raising sea levels.

"I see this like Apollo 13." Frank McGovern, the chief climate scientist for Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency, uses the metaphor of the failed 1970 moon shot to describe the climate crisis. 

Apollo 13's command module pilot famously said, "Houston, we've had a problem." We have one too, says McGovern: "We're out there, and we've got a problem, a major problem. They had a leak and were building up carbon dioxide in their system, so they would actually kill themselves, a bit like us here."