MINISTER FOR CLIMATE Eamon Ryan has said that the Taoiseach and Tánaiste, who are both skipping a global climate summit next week, should use the time to answer “serious questions” to the Irish public about their plans for climate action.
Countries from around the world are sending representatives to a major UN climate conference called COP29 hosted by Azerbaijan next week but Taoiseach Simon Harris and Tánaiste Micheál Martin will not be among the attendees.
The Government leaders will instead be staying in Ireland as politicians kick into campaign mode ahead of a general election at the end of the month.
Green TD Eamon Ryan, however, will be attending the conference both his capacity as a minister and to take up a role as a co-facilitator of international negotiations on climate adaptation, which he was appointed to by the COP presidency.
The conference comes as the world grapples with rising temperatures and increasingly clear evidence of the impacts of climate change. The solution lies in driving down greenhouse gas emissions that have have been released in massive volumes for decades by burning fossil fuels and other anthropogenic activities.
Speaking to reporters ahead of the conference, Ryan said: “I’m not going to be critical of the Taoiseach and Tánaiste for not going. I think that would be an easy kick.”
However, he said what he “would be critical of” would be “if they don’t use the time, the same time negotiations are on at COP”, to have a “proper climate debate at home” and for the public to hear “a real, honest assessment from the Taoiseach and Tánaiste” on how they intend to meet the challenge of the climate crisis.
“How how do they think we should meet our transport emissions reductions? What exact measures do they think they’d like to put into a Programme for Government to see us delivering the scale of change we need to make?” Ryan said as examples.
Ryan, who has served as Minister for Climate since Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, was also the third leader of the coalition alongside Harris and Martin until he stepped down as leader of the Greens earlier this year.
The minister disclosed that there has been a “few rocky Cabinet meetings” recently.
“There’s been a lot of good things we got through, but a lot of others where there is still a significant political divide on this issue at home, in terms of our ability to scale up and make much more ambitious change [for climate action],” he said.
“So, I have no problem them staying at home, but not if there isn’t serious questions answered and serious debate had in terms of what we’re going to do on climate and being honest with our people about the scale of change that’s coming if we’re going to play our part,” Ryan said, adding that he hopes to see the Taoiseach and Tánaiste “really engage” on climate issues.
At COP28 last year, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, almost 200 countries agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels and on a fund to help vulnerable states dealing with loss and damage caused by climate change.
This year, the main issue on the table is climate finance – that is, agreeing on ways to raise financing to help most-affected countries mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Ryan said that these could prove to be some of the “trickiest” negotiations since COP21 in 2015, when countries forged the landmark Paris Agreement.
He said that failure to make progress would be “unconscionable”.
EU climate monitor Copernicus said yesterday that 2024 is “virtually certain” to be the hottest on record in recent history.
Additionally, the year will likely be more than 1.55 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1850-1900 average.
“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29,” Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess said.
The Journal’s Lauren Boland will be in Azerbaijan next week to cover COP29 and will be sending daily editions of our climate newsletter Temperature Check – you can sign up for it here.
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