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IT WILL COME as little surprise to anyone that another report has highlighted just how perilous a time we are living in as we face the effects of climate change.
This week, the World Meteorological Organisation released its State of the Global Climate report for 2022 and its findings are worrying. It found that the last eight years were the warmest of modern records, despite the La Niña weather phenomenon that would have had a cooling effect. The WMO says the global average temperatures last year were 1.15 degrees Celsius higher than the 1850-1900 average.
Ireland is not immune to the growing impact of planetary warming. Last year was this country’s hottest year on record, according to Met Éireann, with all-time highest maximum temperature records for July and August both broken (at Phoenix Park on 18 July with 33.0°C and Durrow, Co Laois on 13 August with 32.1°C).
In his recent address to the Dáil, US President Joe Biden described climate change as the ‘single existential threat to the world.’ He spoke of a shared commitment between Ireland and the US to tackling the climate crisis to preserve our planet for future generations. He praised Ireland’s ‘famous 40 shades of green’ which he said ‘are being supplemented by green energy, green agriculture, green jobs.’ But does Ireland deserve this accolade? Are we living up to our climate commitments?
The Irish government has been keen to change its reputation from a climate laggard to a climate leader. Irish politicians have been quite good at signing up to international climate commitments and more recently setting numerical emission reduction targets.
One such example is how Ireland ratified the Paris Agreement in 2016: an international climate accord which requires governments to set nationally chosen targets reflecting equity and their differentiated responsibility for climate change and capacity to act with a view to limiting global heating to +1.5°C.
Ireland is supposed to contribute to the Paris Agreement through the EU, which recently increased its climate ambition by committing to reduce its emissions by at least 55% by 2030 relative to 1990 levels and reaching climate neutrality by 2050.
Ireland has also had a national climate law on its statute books since 2015. The 2015 Climate Act did not set numerical emission reduction targets or provide for carbon budgets but instead introduced a requirement to produce national mitigation and adaptation plans every five years. In 2021, the Irish government strengthened the Climate Act by enshrining into law a carbon neutrality by 2050 target, an interim target of a 51% reduction by 2030 relative to 2018 levels, a system of carbon budgets and sectoral emissions ceilings, and climate planning measures.
The improvements to Ireland’s climate law came in the wake of the ‘Climate Case Ireland’ decision. In this landmark ruling, the Supreme Court struck down the government’s flagship climate policy, the National Mitigation Plan, because it did not provide enough detail on how the government planned to achieve its 2050 national transition objective.
Making commitments is easy, but following through is the challenge. Emissions were projected to rise rather than rapidly fall over the lifetime of the plan but the Irish government has not been as good at translating these commitments into climate plans and policies, which result in substantial emission reductions.
Almost three years after Climate Case Ireland, the government has not yet adopted an up-to-date, long-term climate plan as required by our own and EU climate law.
Under the revised Climate Act, the government must adopt a national long-term climate strategy which specifies how the government plans to achieve net zero by 2050.
Under the EU Governance Regulation, Member States are required to produce medium and long-term plans, national energy and climate plans (NECPs) and national long-term strategies (nLTS). NECPs are 10-year plans setting out the policies and investment needed to deliver the EU’s climate and energy 2030 targets. The nLTS cover a 30-year horizon to 2050. The setting out and following of these plans is meant to help Member States to plan to contribute to the EU bloc’s climate neutrality by the 2050 target.
The Irish government has still not published the national long-term strategy three years after the deadline. This is despite the fact that the State is being taken to court by Friends of the Irish Environment and the European Commission for failing to produce an nLTS.
It seems the intention of the government is to produce one single long-term strategy, but the final version is not expected until the end of 2023.
As for Ireland’s medium-term climate plan, the government prepared an NECP in 2018 but the document is now severely outdated and falls dramatically short of the level of ambition needed to meet our targets. That plan is currently being revised and a draft must be submitted to the European Commission by 30 June of this year. This deadline is fast approaching.
In the absence of a credible roadmap for how Ireland will achieve emission reductions necessary to meet our 2030 climate and energy targets and net-zero by 2050 target, we are essentially rudderless.
We do have the annually updated Climate Action Plan, but this is a short-term planning mechanism and is insufficient by itself to get us to our 2030 and 2050 targets. From a good climate governance perspective, medium and long-term climate plans should be informing the production of shorter-term plans like the Climate Action Plan and not the other way around.
Having medium and long-term climate plans in place would embed a long-term climate vision into policymaking and limit the risk of policymakers backtracking on their climate commitments.
Medium and long-term climate plans would also prevent us becoming locked in to high emissions activities like developing new fossil fuel infrastructure. This NECP revision process will be one of the last opportunities to plan for orderly and socially just emissions reductions.
EU law requires Member States to set out more than just climate and energy targets and objectives in their national energy and climate plans. They must also detail the enabling social policies the Member States are planning to ensure a just transition, mitigate social and employment impacts of decarbonisation and reduce energy poverty. Done well, the NECP is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to build public support and foster a sense of national ownership over the decarbonisation process. This can obviously be achieved through enabling social policies but also through early and effective public participation, which is mandatory under EU and international law.
This is the most critical decade for climate action. How the government approaches the national energy and climate plans revision process will be the litmus test for whether Ireland is serious about getting climate policy right. All eyes should be on the government in the coming months to see if it delivers.
Dr Orla Kelleher is an assistant professor in climate, environmental and human rights law at Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology. She is currently conducting research on EU and Irish climate law on behalf of Environmental Justice Network Ireland.
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How’s China / Indias medium and long term plans??
@Paul Keenan: I guess you don’t buy any Chinese goods if you’re worried about their pollution levels? Must be one the few people without a house full of Chinese made rubbish. Fair play for having principles.
@Paul Keenan: Stop buying from them. If we buy less of the stuff they make that aren’t needed, maybe that would reduce their emissions.
If tech companies – that are well implanted in Ireland- made electronics that could easily be repaired or if they didn’t program short lifespans on operating systems, a lot less would be required.
@Paul Keenan: If you consider the speed at which China rose to be the largest economy in the world then I would say they’ve got plenty of ideas. Change is part of their culture whereas in Ireland its resistance to change that defines us as a nation.
@Paul Keenan: China is ahead of schedule:
China is expected to achieve its 2030 target of installing renewable energy capacity ahead of schedule by about five years. China looks likely to exceed 33% renewables generation target by 2025.
How China is Winning the Race for Clean Energy Technology:
@Paul Keenan: “Today, China is a veritable green power. It leads the world in renewable energy production figures and is the world’s largest producer of wind and solar energy, as well as the largest domestic and outbound investor in renewable energy.”
“China seems to have an all-round lead on the U.S. in terms of trade balance, R&D investment, and patenting. On the investment front, China had surpassed the U.S. by the late 2000s and Europe by 2012 to be the world leader in low carbon technology investment, pumping in annually at least US$100 billion into innovation by 2014. As of 2018, Chinese investment in clean energy technology was almost double that of the U.S.”
“China has an estimated 2.7 million people employed in the solar energy sector, making up more than half of the world’s 4.3 million solar jobs.”
@thesaltyurchin: we’re the most mailable and adaptable nation in the world. There’s no other nation that has experienced and adapted to as much as we have in 30-40 years. You have mistaken moaning for resisting.
I will tell you what the plan is. The plan is to make the small guy foot the bill for the large conglomerates around the world for climate change. When the American militarys carbon footprint is exempt from carbon counting(in fact all military carbon is exempt) , which has a bigger carbon footprint almost than the whole world combined without China you would have to think the whole thing is a load of bo11ox. Private jets exempt, private yachts exempt in fact most things that affect the super wealty are exempt. This drive to stop people driving
petrol and diesel cars is ridiculous as driving cars only uses about 10% of the world’s fuel, again the ordinary working person suffers the most because there won’t be any battery trucks, trains or ships or planes anytime soon if ever. The price of electric cars is out of most peoples range and their not fit for purpose outside cities, the price of houses will soon be out of most peoples range and if they keep going like they are with the ridiculous decimation of our fishing and particularly farming industry with the blatant lie about cattle causing climate change we will soon not be able to afford food either
@Michael McGrath: very well said
What Ireland does or doesn’t do won’t matter in the grand scheme of things. No point in wasting throwing money at climate policies when 90% of the world’s population ain’t doing the same. Unless it’s a total, global unified approach then you’re just wasting time and money.
@Niall English: This is what Tim Pat Coogan described as “learned helplessness”. It is a belief that the external forces are too big to matter to the individual, community and nation.
Removing climate change modelling from the mind is like giving up cigarettes, at least as I learned from reading a book on the smoking habit. It isn’t difficult because of the conviction that smoking is necessary to relax or concentrate even though no drug can have opposite effects, was the incentive to stop smoking as I realised how the mind fools the individual to act against their best interests.
Climate change modelling insists on opposite effects like heatwaves and cold snaps, droughts and floods or any opposite meteorological event once people assent to….What?. That Humanity can control the weather/temperatures by doing or not doing something?.
Once a person sees the absurdity of smoking they will change their views and likewise climate change modelling and the addiction some people have to dire and dour conclusions.
@Niall English: It does matter to the people that live here. Not burning things we find in the ground for energy when it’s so obviously abundant is an inevitable evolution of humankind. But we’re still very much connected to the chase for shiny things. A self-perpetuating system that nullifies any intelligent or logical conversation about our place on the planet.
Another government endorsed narrative for our own good. What’s the relevance of the temps from 1850-1900? A time period where temp estimates were rounded down?
USCTN data is the most accurate measure of temps and shows a slight cooling since 2005.
But we should trust the governments new measurements from urban heat islands and airport runways.
Anyway all you need to know about whether carbon driven climate is a hoax or not is pay attention to what is censored. If facts about carbon are not allowed to be discussed then you know you are over the target.
@lumberjack: 1. “What’s the relevance of the temps from 1850-1900?”
The temperature baseline in 1961-1990
The climatological baseline period is a 30-year “normal” period, as defined by the WMO. The current WMO normal period is 1961-1990.
“WMO uses 1961-1990 as the internationally agreed base period for measuring long-term climate change. The average global temperature during that period was 14°C.”
Current Global Temperatures (2022) are 0.86 Celsius above 1961-1990 average and 1.15 Celsius above the pre-industrial 1850-1900 average i.e. c. 75% of warming occurred after 1970.
1850-1900 was chosen as the pre-Industrial average as it is before we added 1,200 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere (via a combination of fossil fuel burning and cutting down forest). But as said, the 1961-1990 average is the most common baseline in climate forecasts and most of the warming (75%) occurred after that period.
2. “USCTN [sic] data is the most accurate measure of temps and shows a slight cooling since 2005.”
USCRN data (United States climate) does not show cooling.
It is false to claim that the data show no warming over that time period. There is a warming trend. And even if the US experienced a flat temperature change since 2005, this would not prove that global warming isn’t occurring. The US only covers 1.8% of the planet, and the land area and period is too short to reliably indicate long-term Global trends.
3. “But we should trust the governments new measurements from urban heat islands and airport runways.”
Urban and rural regions show the same warming trend. The warming trend is not due to the Urban Heat Island Effect.
78% of temperature stations are in Rural areas, 27% are in Urban areas. In the following study, only looked at Rural temperature stations (15,594) not affected by the Urban heat island effect.
They show the same warming trend.
“We compare the distribution of linear temperature trends for these sites to the distribution for a rural subset of 15,594 sites chosen to be distant from all MODIS identified urban areas. While the trend distributions are broad, with one-third of the stations in the US and worldwide having a negative trend, both distributions show significant warming.”
Wickham, C., Rohde, R., Muller, R.A., Wurtele, J., Curry, J., Groom, D., Jacobsen, R., Perimutter, S., Rosenfeld, A. and Mosher, S., 2013. Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average using Rural Sites Identified from MODIS Classifications. Geoinfor Geostat: An Overview 1: 2 of 6, pp.1895-2007.
@lumberjack: and the neglecting to mention anywhere by journalists in any context that CO2 is Essential to life on this planet and if it drops below 300ppm in the atmosphere that it would have a serious effect on plant and animal life. And plenty of studies that say that CO2 has minimal effect on climate temperature are wiped or accused of being funded by the petrochemical industry. There is a study available online(surprisingly) by one of the major universities in America that when CO2 was at its highest level ever, 26% in prehistory that it coincided with an ice age
@Michael McGrath: its amazing the nonsense people believe.
@Michael McGrath: “Essential to life on this planet and if it drops below 300ppm in the atmosphere that it would have a serious effect on plant and animal life. ”
This is laughably wrong. CO2 levels never exceeded 300 ppm at any time in the past 420,000 years until c. 1910. Here’s a graph going back 420,000 years (CO2 is the blue graph at the top):
It is from: Petit, J.R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N.I., Barnola, J.M., Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delaygue, G. and Delmotte, M., 1999. Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature, 399(6735), pp.429-436.
As mentioned CO2 levels first exceeded 300 ppm in c. 1910, and between 1800 to 1000 AD, CO2 levels averaged 275 – 283 ppm:
“Before the Industrial Revolution started in the mid-1700s, atmospheric carbon dioxide was 280 ppm or less. Global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in parts per million (ppm) for the past 800,000 years based on ice-core data (purple line) compared to 2021 concentration (dark purple dot)”
Many plants can cope with low CO2 levels, in particular grasses including cereal crops, because they evolved a new efficient form of low CO2 photosynthesis, called C4 photosynthesis, about 34 million years ago.
“At high temperatures and relatively low CO2 concentrations, plants can most efficiently fix carbon to form carbohydrates through C4 photosynthesis rather than through the ancestral and more widespread C3 pathway.”
Vicentini, A., Barber, J.C., Aliscioni, S.S., Giussani, L.M. and Kellogg, E.A., 2008. The age of the grasses and clusters of origins of C4 photosynthesis. Global Change Biology, 14(12), pp.2963-2977.
The issue isn’t climate change modelling, it is the validity of experimental modelling itself even if people are distracted by all the dire and dour speculative conclusions passed off as facts.
I see no reason why readers cannot shift their attention to the roots of empirical modelling and the validity of the scientific method itself as it was created in the vacuum left by the inability to resolve the transition to a moving Earth in a Sun-centred system. The idea is to restore some stability to the connection between the motions of the planet to the Earth sciences of climate, biology and geology whereas modelling enthusiasts still live off a misadventure with timekeeping where all the basic planetary facts are lost.
Climate change modelling is disastrous for a productive and healthy society as it works off fear and anxiety whereas normal pollution and environmental concerns represent roughly a Tidy Towns endeavours. How to untangle global warming from local environmental concerns shouldn’t be all that difficult but again, that requires a shift in perspective.
Ireland has a maritime climate because it sits in the Atlantic Ocean hence our climate cannot change.
@Carrickview: 14 climate projections made since 1970 were evaluated to see if they came true up to 52 years later. The model predictions came true, see this chart
https://imgur.com/gallery/UNnbfQp
“Model simulations published between 1970 and 2007 were skilful in projecting future global mean surface warming”
This gives us confidence that future climate projections will continue to be accurate.
Hausfather, Z., Drake, H.F., Abbott, T. and Schmidt, G.A., 2020. Evaluating the performance of past climate model projections. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(1), p.e2019GL085378.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/climate-model-projections-compared-to-observations/
The climate has always been changing. We are living through the tail end of an ice age. We can’t stop climate change. Can we speed up the process? Yes. Can we now slow it down? Possibly.
@Fuji Hakayito: “We are living through the tail end of an ice age.”
No, the tail end of the last Ice age ended c. 10,000 years ago.
In fact, the Earth was cooling slowly before the industrial revolution. It was not warming:
https://www.realclimate.org/images//Marcott_PAGES2k.png
There was a faster cooling trend after 1,000 AD, this led to the Little Ice Age, the colder weather caused mountain glaciers expand globally and the Vikings to leave Greenland.
This was due to a combination of a few volcanic eruptions in a row and slow changes in the Earth’s Orbit. You also notice the near vertical red line at the end of the graph, that is human caused global warming. The arming trend is far faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years and is totally unrelated to the warming that happened at the end of the last Ice Age (ended officially 11,700 years ago).
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/paleoclimate-the-end-of-the-holocene/
Marcott, S.A., Shakun, J.D., Clark, P.U. and Mix, A.C., 2013. A reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years. Science, 339(6124), pp.1198-1201.
Yet another follower of the Planet Ireland Movement. Wired to the Moon and Earth. Sorry, but we are all on the same Earth and under present circumstances and actions we haven’t a ghost of a chance of meeting the necessary reductions. There is only one way and one way only we could do so, before we are all cooked slowly by global warming or very fast by a nuclear war. We need to re purpose the World’s Military Industrial Complex, into the manufacturing and installation of literally thousands of new generation nuclear power plants. These to go into every existing thermal plant, cement works, big ships etc., many with molten salt backup to compliment the concurrent installation of as much wind and solar as possible, given its massive intermittency issues.
Concurrent with this, we need to use the waste heat where possible in the set up of mega hydroponic / aquaponic/ aeroponic grow houses and fly factories, bringing in a new era of totally pesticide free, sustainable food production.
The very sad thing is after scientific report after scientific report, many people still don’t get it and are prepared to sit on their hands and wait for everyone else to change. The funny truth is that places like China are way way ahead of us on the switch to renewables albeit they are still big polluters but they are starting from a much lower base and their rates of change are much better than ours. Every country has to change… big and small…… sitting here with our heads in the bog just isn’t good enough . Fossil fuel dependency is on the way out one way or another so now is the time to transition…. The longer we delay the more expensive, individually and as a nation, it’s going to be.
The elephant in the room is the world population. In 1900 it was less than 2 billion, today it’s over 8 billion and growing. The UN says nothing about this adding to the problem, because religion would have to be addressed.
A lot of these areas will never be able to make any change. The only things that some of them seem capable of, is buying weapons. Just look at Sudan and Ukraine, tanks and jets. We haven’t one tank, too expensive.
@Donal Ronan: ok but we’re not going to be culling humans any time soon, population is supposed to level out in the coming decades anyway, so in the meantime what we could do is try to consume less of the things that are harming the planet, and look after the land and biodiversity better.
@Donal Ronan: The UN has a lot to say on population size. It produces a report every year. It is clear that the way to stop population growth is to support healthcare (particularly reproductive healthcare), education (particularly for girls) and pensions (so that those retired are not dependent on children). The world population will peak at some point between 2050 and 2150 and then will decline.
But our ‘plan’ for most of our modern political history is to not have a plan? Dont see why this issue will be any bit different.
The government is gonna fix the weather
I sleep better at night
And more and more and endless gab about climate says the auld lad next door,
The auld lad next door says a wee bit warmer would be grand me auld bones, Ireland is a cowld hole anyway,
NO. Sad that the Irish Govt. is addicted to kicking the can down the road and the inability to develop medium to long range plans (3-5 years) for anything. This inability to plan trait is also present in many Irish men and women.
have your say