Sir, – The ongoing failure to reach emissions targets is entirely predictable and will not change until the Government changes (“Ireland unlikely to meet climate targets, EPA warns”, News, June 1st).
It is beyond ironic that Minister for Climate Eamon Ryan says we have to “double down on action” while he has sat in office for two years now and overseen this failure.
More recently, the Government’s encouragement of the proliferation of data centres is bordering on climate recklessness.
Generally speaking, the problem isn’t failure to implement the Government’s plan, the problem is the plan.
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A transport emission increase of 19 per cent between 2021 and 2022 shows the urgent need for radical and imaginative steps.
Placing hopes in the arrival of a million electric vehicles is insane and guarantees more failures in the coming years.
We need to switch massively to public transport, and we need to bring a whole generation with us in making this switch; a policy or even an ambition to provide free and frequent public transport is one measure that could have a profound impact in the coming years.
The scale and ambition of retrofitting programmes needs radical overhaul. Once again, reliance on personal behavioural changes or individual investments is going to ensure we fail. We need to be able to say that the up-front costs of retrofitting will be paid by the State and then target those households in most need and with the poorest energy efficiency. This needs to be done by a national retrofitting body.
In agriculture, the most glaring failure is the continued policy of making our food system dependent on the needs of large processors and business interests. We need an agricultural policy that is aimed at giving farmers and rural communities a sustainable future and an environmentally sound policy based on food sovereignty.
That means confronting and dismantling the large beef and dairy processors and corporates for whom, in reality, our food policy is built around. – Yours, etc,
BRÍD SMITH TD,
People
Before Profit/Solidarity,
Dublin South-Central,
Leinster House,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – The director general of the EPA Laura Burke told the EPA’s annual climate conference: “There is a significant gap between the ambition in the Climate Act and the realisation of the necessary actions to deliver on that ambition. The data shows a step up in both the implementation of actions set out in plans and policies and the identification of new measures is needed. All sectors have work to do, in particular the agriculture sector.”
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar recently stated that “no farmer is going to be told to stop farming or to reduce the size of a herd to meet exacting climate change targets”.
He said that Ireland would adopt “sensible” measures to reach greenhouse gas emission targets and that reducing the food we produce would “make no sense at all”.
Land used for pasture-fed beef is land that cannot be used for wild ecosystems. While human habitation occupies 1 per cent of the planet, crops occupy 12 per cent and livestock grazing occupies 28 per cent. Yet the animals fed on pasture alone produce just 1 per cent of the protein we consume, a spectacularly profligate way of producing our food.
One kg of beef protein releases 113 times more greenhouse gases than one kg of pea protein. Emissions from pastured beef are three to four times higher than grain-fed beef.
Organic farming takes longer for cattle to grow and lose twice as much nitrogen per kg as conventional meat – an even greater climate and pollution threat.
In terms of common sense, the evidence suggests it is time for a radical shift to a sustainable and efficient system of food production. – Yours, etc,
CATHERINE CONLON,
Ballintemple,
Cork.
Sir, –It is unsettling that the EPA has warned that Ireland is going to miss its emissions targets.
However, while a lot of work has gone into the legislation around the targets themselves, anybody who pays attention to the public pronouncements and local voting records of many representatives of the State’s larger parties will be unsurprised at this likely outcome.
On transport in particular, while there have been some improvements to public transport, we’ve had Cabinet Ministers calling for more road building, and local councillors voting against active travel infrastructure, with the overriding message being that the State and local authorities are in the business of continuing to promote private car use for most journeys. Although electric vehicles have a part to play, even if the rollout of charging infrastructure were being carried out with urgency, a like-for-like substitution of petrol with electric cars will fall far short of providing the transport emissions cuts that are required.
While the imperative to reduce emissions is now widely recognised across the political spectrum, we’re now at the point where acknowledgment without adequate action is just another form of climate denial. So while our representatives might not like to think of themselves in those terms, by declining to act sufficiently they’re going to be seen that way by current and future generations. It also serves as a reminder to those in the media to always ask the following questions when talking to politicians about plans to reduce emissions: “When, and by how much?” and “If not, where else instead?” – Yours, etc,
DAVE MATHIESON,
Salthill,
Galway.