Ireland’s longest-serving climate scientist has said Irish politicians need to wake up to the country’s poor performance on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Emeritus professor at Maynooth University John Sweeney was speaking in advance of the Cop30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil.
He said this month’s summit faced a “Herculean” task in getting laggard countries to act on their pledges to cut emissions, including the Republic.
He hoped, however, that it would focus the attention of Irish politicians, ensuring the State played its full part.
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“It’s an opportunity for our own politicians to see what the rest of the world is doing about this problem and to really waken up to the fact that Ireland is not pulling its weight internationally,” he said.
He said the Government had signed the Global Methane Pledge targeting emissions from agriculture and other methane sources at Cop26 in 2021, but then “brushed off” the idea that it applied to Ireland. “There has been no progress on that at all,” he said.
He also criticised Government delays in setting new carbon budgets – limits on how much greenhouse gas emissions each sector of society and the economy can emit over the next five years.
They are held up partly over differences of opinion on how agricultural emissions should be counted and curtailed. Still, Prof Sweeney said it felt as if the issue was being “ignored”.
The Republic will be represented at various stages of Cop30 over the next two and a half weeks by Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Minister for Climate Darragh O’Brien and Minister of State for International Development Neale Richmond.
Speaking earlier this week, Mr Martin said the State’s commitment to its climate obligations was “steadfast”.
He and Mr O’Brien acknowledged, however, that the country needed to do more to cut emissions and live up to its pledges.
Prof Sweeney will also attend the annual summit, which will be his 14th Cop.
He said while he travelled in hope each time, his expectations were low this year.
“I’m not expecting anything great from this Cop because there’s so much happening geopolitically that countries will be quite happy to kick to touch until the next Cop.
“If we get anything concrete out of it, it would be very useful but I’m not awfully optimistic.
“The shadow over it is the Trump withdrawal. But the last time this happened in his first term in office, it had a galvanising effect on people.
“I’m hoping there will be a show of unity among the other countries.”
He said the overriding priority must be getting countries to act on their pledges to cut emissions to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.
“It’s a Herculean task and it’s not going to achieve 1.5 degrees, but every tenth of a degree after 1.5 matters.”
