Days of masterly inactivity on climate action coming to an end

The last significant act of the Government led by Micheál Martin will most likely be its most important. The Climate Action Plan is expected before December 17th. It marks a big reallocation of power and responsibility within the State. It is the first plan within the legally binding framework for carbon reduction passed by the Oireachtas in July 2021. It will roll out the sectoral emissions ceilings agreed by Government, last July. Those ceilings are the targets within which sectors must deliver. The target of an across-the-board reduction in emissions of 51 per cent by 2030 is the staging post to net carbon neutrality by 2050.

*The targeted reduction of 25 per cent in agricultural emissions is considered the most contentious. But the politics of carbon reduction in transport will be more difficult going forward. The target for transport requires a 50 per cent reduction in the same period and will create a sharp contest for scarce space on our roads, particularly urban ones. Nothing remotely like the status quo can survive, if transport emission targets are to be met. The private car must move over and make more space for public transport and cycling, and that makes for messy politics.

The Climate Action Plan is when aspiration changes into action. The scale of what is about to happen from January 1st should be a step-change. So too will the context. It is when political ambition set out in a carbon budget is delivered on by plans that are subject to legal action.

The basis of legal action is the Government’s legislation of 2021 setting out binding emission reduction targets and the Supreme Court decision in 2020 striking down the previous government’s 2019 National Mitigation Plan. Essentially, that plan didn’t deliver on its legislative remit to “achieve the objective of transitioning to a low-carbon climate”. A plan that would comply with the law had to allow a “reasonable person” judge if it is “realistic” and to decide whether they agree with the policy options set out. In other words, for a plan to be legal it had to be credible.

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This legal context changes the balance of power. Climate action has long been holy writ, but not a priority for Government departments. Politicians are signed up to the principles, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. It was a box-ticking exercise in departments that got on with the day job of delivering for their sectors. Now there is inbuilt legal pressure on civil servants and State agencies to ensure that carbon reduction is intrinsic to plans and budgets. Anyone caught greenwashing risks ending up in court and departmental plans on redthing from roads to house building being set aside. Masterly inactivity may be off the menu.

Embedding decarbonisation in legislation is an attempt to avoid repetition of what happened after 2011. The Green Party was kicked out of national politics and most of its achievements over the previous four years, washed away. Two survived. One was the drive towards renewable electricity and the other was a carbon tax, albeit mothballed at low levels. Ironically, carbon tax is the lone attempt to broaden the tax base and sustainably support the larger state that all parties, including those who talk about lower taxes, are intent upon creating.

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This lost decade of decarbonisation has cost Ireland dearly. Every year lost increased the velocity of future change required. This bears down especially on younger workers, ever fewer of whom relative to the number of dependents, must bear the burden. It is a burden of cost to transition now and the cost of delay in delivering the opportunities of decarbonisation, which are enormous. Ultimately, it is the delay in checking the advance of climate change itself which is catastrophic.

This is where politics comes to the fore. How do we deliver enough, quickly enough, to sustain enthusiasm? Finger-pointing is not effective. Charlie McConalogue, Minister for Agriculture, has – whether they appreciate it or not – delivered for farmers in keeping their obligation for carbon reduction to 25 per cent. The politics of the next step is to ensure that farmers have income from alternative activities that allow them to both farm and decarbonise at the same time. Emissions from farms are divided 2:1 between livestock and fertiliser. Paradoxically, an increase in the cost of fertiliser because of the war in Ukraine is reducing use, and farming is continuing. Less fertiliser and more anaerobic digestion, forestry and land use for energy production are part of the mix for sustainable agriculture. Apparently, we can meet 10 per cent of our national requirement for gas from anaerobic digestion by 2030. Manure is the new money.

What is lacking is the capacity of the State to deliver in-scale or on time. In parallel with Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan’s Climate Action Plan, Attorney General Paul Gallagher will deliver his plan on reform of the planning laws. Housing is one object of that and climate is another. Gallagher’s work is critical to speeding up and enlarging the administrative capacity of the State. The Civil Service is essential to embed decarbonisation as State policy. But it is politics that will have to manage change on a scale that is larger in consequence than the industrial revolution. What will that look like? It could look remarkably like an offshore wind turbine or a bus lane near you soon.

*Article amended at 9am on November 29th, 2022