CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin Action AT A C R O S S R OA D S by Sadhbh O Neill

First, the good news. 2020 has truly been a momentous year for obvious, merely being left of centre by itself the climate movement in Ireland. We have had a general election, does not determine whether a party will an unprecedented political debate about government formation champion ecologically sound policies; with climate policy to the fore and a global pandemic, during environmental outcomes are empirically tied which Friends of the Irish Environment won their climate case to the promises and positions made by political against the government in the Supreme Court. Despite years of parties before they enter government. obfuscation and symbolic gestures towards climate action, 2020 Of course, since the general election, the finally saw a serious political commitment made in the Programme for world has been convulsed by the Covid-19 Government that, if implemented in full and in a timely manner, will transform Irish "Though never a guarantee of crisis. Whilst no-one would have wished for a pandemic climate policy and get Ireland back on track irreversible structural reform, to drive climate policy, the towards meeting our obligations under the research across the OECD precedent of scientific Paris Agreement. consistently shows that having expertise in the form of the

The Green Party is now in government parties in government that National Public Health with an increased number of Dáil seats and has control of the energy, climate and transport ministries under its leader Eamon are pro-environment leads to greener policy outputs." Emergency Team (NPHET) guiding government policy in a time of crisis will not Ryan. The decision by the Green Party to be lost on anyone who has form a coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is hugely significant for the followed the call of Greta Thunberg and the environmental movement. Though never a guarantee of irreversible school strikers to ‘act on the science’. And in structural reform, research across the OECD (a club of mostly rich countries) contrast to the financial crisis of 2008, there is consistently shows that having parties in government that are proa clear consensus so far that austerity will not environment leads to greener policy outputs. While that might seem be the remedy for this crisis, unlike the last.

The lockdown also presented an opportunity for many of us (albeit under conditions of acute crisis) to experiment with green living in ways that were only fanciful before, such as working from home, reclaiming public outdoor spaces and most especially, the drop in traffic volumes almost everywhere. We must not forget what it was like to walk around our own neighbourhoods and hear the birds singing!

However, the climate crisis hasn’t gone away you know. Despite the economic paralysis caused by the pandemic and lockdown, there has barely been a dent in Ireland’s alarming emissions profile. A study by the Cork Institute of Technology for the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the emissions reduction throughout March-May (when the whole country had ground to a halt) will only amount to about 2.5%, which is a tiny fraction of what we need to do and less than half of what the new government has committed to achieving year on year to 2030. What we experienced at the household level as an enormous sacrifice made little difference to our overall energy demand. Ireland still has the third highest emissions of greenhouse gases per capita in the EU, the equivalent of 13.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide per capita, 55% higher than the EU 28 average of 8.6 tonnes. By way of comparison, Sweden had the lowest rate of emissions in 2018 at 5.4 tonnes per capita. If a pandemic-induced economic pause could not bend the emissions curve downwards, clearly words and plans alone will not be enough.

Meaningful climate action is going to require a complete transformation of our energy system and our economic activities. materials in the next 30 years as we did cumulatively in the past 10,000! There is no easy substitute for fossil fuels which are the main According to ecological economist Nate Hagens, to avoid facing the contributor to climate change, even though renewable consequences of our biophysical reality, we’re now obtaining growth in technologies have never been cheaper or more reliable. Ending increasingly unsustainable ways; the developed world is using finance our reliance on fossil fuels will require a new economic model to enable the extraction of things we couldn’t otherwise afford to extract along with a new energy paradigm powering up our energy to produce things we otherwise couldn’t afford to consume. system with 100% renewable energy which, though theoretically That is why the focus of many campaigning organisations and feasible, is no simple task. coalitions such as Stop Climate Chaos is on ‘system change’ and climate

Even a sustained economic crisis will not bring about the governance i.e. addressing the sources and drivers of emissions and reductions in emissions that are needed. The sharp decrease in not just technical abatement. Environmentalists will need to continue global carbon dioxide emissions attributed to the worldwide challenging the economic model driving climate change and ecological financial crisis in 2009 quickly rebounded in "However, the climate crisis destruction beyond regulatory fixes. However, that is not to discount the need for cross-governmental policy 2010, partly because the hasn’t gone away you know. coordination and legally binding long-term goals. The emissions intensity of the Despite the economic paralysis Supreme Court judgment in the Friends of the Irish global economy actually caused by the pandemic and Environment Climate Case highlights the importance of increased as demand lockdown, there has barely even the weak 2015 Climate Action and Low Carbon rebounded. Some analysts attribute this stubborn trajectory to the debtbeen a dent in Ireland’s alarming emissions profile." Development Act in imposing obligations on the government to plan emissions reduction policies in a transparent manner. The Programme for Government promised a bill f u e l l e d e c o n o m i c within 100 days of government formation to implement the expansion of the global economy, which is decoupled entirely recommendations of the 2017 citizens’ assembly and the 2019 Joint from any physical limits, but which in turn both drives economic Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action report and strengthen this growth and requires economic growth to sustain itself. The legislation further, by setting a target for net zero emissions by 2050 consequences of exponential growth, no matter how slow the at the latest and establishing a system of five year carbon budgets or rate, are profound. If the global economy continues to grow at emission ceilings across all sectors of the economy to deliver 7% about 3.0% per year, we will consume as much energy and emissions reductions per year on average by 2030. The Climate Case

"The lockdown also presented an opportunity for many of us to experiment with green living in ways that were only fanciful before, such as working from home, reclaiming public outdoor spaces and most especially, the drop in traffic volumes almost everywhere. We must not forget what it was like to walk around our own neighbourhoods and hear the birds singing!"

judgment also requires the government to produce a new climate plan to replace the one that it quashed and crucially, this will require a statutory public consultation and public engagement – which should ideally take the form of a renewed national dialogue on climate action. An opinion poll commissioned by Friends of the Earth in May shows that there is overwhelming public support for actions that prioritise climate change and that the government should be guided by science and expert advice on climate action as they have been on Covid-19. However, Ireland will not get back on track to meeting our Paris Agreement commitments without sustained political leadership from all political parties that transcends electoral cycles and decisive interventions to end the use of peat and coal in electricity generation, an unprecedented ramping up of renewable energy technologies and transformative policies to end our reliance on cars and fossil energy for heating and transport. Where agriculture and land-use policies are concerned, the government will have to intervene decisively with new policies and supports that protect and enhance biodiversity whilst reducing emissions that are mostly driven by intensification and reactive nitrogen inputs. Given the uniquely high contribution of the dairy and beef sectors to Irish greenhouse gas emissions, it would be unthinkable for this sector to get a free pass on climate action, especially as this sector was largely unaffected by the pandemic. The dairy sector even saw a 5% increase in volume exported in 2020.

A socially just recovery must be at the heart of climate policy, especially for sectors and regions where structural change is inevitable (eg the Midlands and Bord na Móna). At all costs, we must try to avoid a ‘K-shaped’ recovery where a staggered resumption of economic activity benefits high income earners in some sectors at the expense of growing income inequality and high

Chaffinch by Mike Brown

rates of youth unemployment. Such a scenario can only be averted with strong state interventions such as redistributive tax policies and an economic stimulus package that is geographically and demographically fair. Instead of propping up polluting sectors with subsidies and supports, now is the time for investments in green infrastructure and new jobs in areas such as retrofitting, eco-tourism and renewable energy.

Locked down, activists have turned to novel forms of online campaigning using tools such as webinars, call-a-thons and e-actions. But we are all suffering from some degree of crisis-fatigue and media focus on Covid-19 and we desperately need some successes to celebrate against the grim backdrop of climate science and wave after wave of distressing news. The publication of the climate bill in October will provide a unique opportunity for the climate and environmental movements to unite around the goal of faster and fairer climate action and to solidify in law the State’s climate goals and the duties of government to deliver on the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Bring it on!

Sadhbh O Neill is a PhD candidate at the School of Politics and International Relations at UCD, researching climate ethics and carbon markets. She teaches an undergraduate module in environmental politics and policy at UCD and DCU. She also works as a researcher for the Independents For Change group on the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action. With over 25 years’ experience in environmental advocacy, she was most recently a spokesperson for Climate Case Ireland, a legal action against the Irish government’s climate policies.