Sir, – Underlying Sadhbh O’Neill’s article “Nowhere is there a wealthy country that consumes only a little energy, or a poor country that consumes a lot” (Environment, Opinion, February 22nd) is an essential message of climate justice and one often missed in debates on the decarbonisation of the global economy.
The headline could be expanded to show the wider injustice of the climate emergency. The two overwhelming inequalities: those impacted most by climate change are the least responsible; and those who are most impacted by climate change often have the least capacity to cope with its impacts.
In the last year, I have had the privilege to visit the communities World Vision Ireland supports in the Philippines, Solomon Islands, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. The people I have sat with are acutely impacted by the climate crises – their right to food, their right to education and their right to good health, among many others, is being undermined by the climate emergency.
While we in Ireland and the Global North need to rapidly decarbonise, our counterparts in the Global South face an altogether different challenge. Governments there need to deliver a development pathway for their communities that follows a different path – one that is not dependant on fossil fuels.
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It too is an injustice, that the economic path that has provided so much opportunity, progress and wealth to the Global North is now restricted to the Global South. We ask them to ignore this fossil fuel-based road to success and to gamble on a new pathway. To do this they require enormous support, financial and technical.
It is in our own self-interest that these nations have a development pathway that leaves fossil fuels in the ground. – Yours, etc,
MAURICE SADLIER,
Programmes & Policy Director,
World Vision Ireland,
Dublin 6.