The Government's climate change legislation is as milk-and-watery as any of its backbench TDs could have hoped for: it has pushed the prospect of necessary but unpopular decisions into the future and ignored repeated warnings from the Environmental Protection Agency about the unsustainability of existing policies. While paying lip-service to the threat posed by global warming, it continues on a path that will breach its EU greenhouse gas commitments.
The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Bill, 2015, published by Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly last Monday, has the fingerprints of his predecessor, Phil Hogan, all over it. Strong on aspiration but low on specifics, it follows a well-trodden ambivalent path. Promising to make the transition to a "low carbon economy" by 2050, the Bill fails to specify what, exactly, is meant by a low carbon economy. It refuses to set specific targets for carbon emissions. But it accepts the State must observe its EU commitments to cut greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, based on 2005 figures.
A National Mitigation Plan to reduce greenhouse gases, and a National Mitigation Framework, to respond to climate change, will be revised every five years under the Bill, while an expert advisory council will make recommendations to the Minister for the Environment. In line with the conditionality of the legislation, however, the Minister will not be required to follow that advice.
The gap between the Government's EU commitments on greenhouse gas reductions and reality has been clinically exposed in reports produced by the EPA. Its projections, focusing largely on agricultural output and transport activity, show that Ireland will breach its EU undertakings next year and the process will accelerate into 2020. One of the main drivers of this development will be an increase in dairy cattle numbers and fertiliser use under the Government's Food Harvest plan. Transport emissions, involving diesel fuel, could grow by up to 20 per cent.
The Government has sought an exemption for Irish dairy activity from Brussels, on the basis that output is largely grass-based and ecologically friendly. But it may not receive a favourable hearing and the clock is ticking. By the end of next year, Ireland will have exceeded its greenhouse gas targets and may face heavy EU fines. Under existing rules, Ireland is obliged to set annual binding limits to ensure gradual progress towards its 2020 target. From 2017, trajectory and target will diverge.
The EPA has urged the development of sustainable food production and a rapid decarbonisation of energy and transport systems to mitigate the effects of climate change. On the basis of what we have witnessed so far, the Government is not interested in taking tough decisions.