Sir , – Dr Gareth P Keeley (Letters, July 28th) rehashs the tired and self-serving trope that Ireland can and should exempt itself from any challenging climate action on the basis that it happens to be a comparatively small country, in global terms.
This misses the true significance of our diplomatic “victory”, in relation to the European Union climate proposals.
It was not just Ireland’s climate action that was at stake: it was the combined ambition of the entire EU, one of the handful of dominant economic blocks on the planet. And we in Ireland (albeit with other fellow travellers) deliberately contaminated that ambition with special pleading, “flexibilities”, and scientifically barren “offsets”.
This when we know full well that the EU-wide 2030 climate and energy package falls far short of addressing the climate goals agreed just last December in Paris.
Instead of expending our political capital in working with our EU partners to realise those goals, we chose to export an béal bocht – not as a work of satire, but grotesquely reimagined as a handbook of international diplomacy.
We are sowing the wind; knowing, in our secret, cynical, hearts, that the reaping of the whirlwind (metaphorical – and literal) will fall to the young, the poor, and the vulnerable, here and across the world.
No, here is no cause for celebration. – Yours, etc,
BARRY McMULLIN,
Dublin City University
Dublin 9.