Every household in Ireland must make climate change a personal battle, even in the face of rising living costs, former president Mary Robinson has said.
The climate issue has been pulled sharply into focus following figures from the Environmental Protection Agency showing Ireland’s emissions rose by nearly 5 per cent last year.
Mrs Robinson said while the increase was not surprising in the context of Covid-19, there was now a pressing need for behavioural change.
“Every household has to move on this as well as government. And every city and every county,” she told reporters at the opening of an exhibition, 1845: Memento Mori, at Dublin Castle on Thursday.
“It’s a very big challenge to all of us. Those who are very worried about their mortgages, about the price, the cost of living, about paying the next bills — even so they too have to sort of realise we are in a very perilous state at this stage because we haven’t taken steps.”
Mrs Robinson, a prominent voice on climate justice for many years and chairwoman of the Elders, said the problems experienced elsewhere in the world were now becoming apparent at home.
Earlier this week, Ireland, the UK and elsewhere experienced record-breaking temperatures, wildfires and heat-related deaths.
Irish farmers
She said Irish farmers must be at the forefront of the domestic fight and, while declining to comment specifically on current negotiations within the Government on what carbon reduction targets should be set in agriculture, she said every sector should aim as high as possible.
“Farmers know they bear the brunt of heavy flooding and drought and it’s going to get worse,” she said. “There is a lot that can be done to help farmers, and their income in particular, by measuring the carbon they sequester in fields. Every farmer does that ... and they need to be paid for that. Their future has to be sustained.”
Despite a tone of grave urgency, the former UN high commissioner for human rights painted a positive picture of life in the aftermath of the global-warming struggle.
As well as being rid of polluting fossil fuels, she said cities would be more liveable, the countryside wilder and more natural.
While many were pressing this message, Ms Robinson conceded she was worried at the lack of priority it had been receiving in many political agendas, in particular during debates in the race to replace Boris Johnson as UK prime minister.
“I hope that the very real fires that took place in London and elsewhere in the UK will be a wake-up call,” she said. Similarly, recent weather events in Europe had focused minds, she said.
“For decades the poorest parts of the world have been dealing with this and we haven’t cared enough. Now it’s beginning to hit us and we’re realising, we’re waking up. But we need to wake up more quickly.”
Elsewhere Taoiseach Micheál Martin has conceded climate targets will be “very, very difficult” to reach but says with new technologies and a more rapid development of wind energy, Ireland can achieve the 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Mr Martin said increased coal-burning because of international energy shortages would create “short-term challenges” but the Government’s increased focus on renewable energy “will redress that within the decade and beyond the decade”.
“We need to get a stronger correlation between targets and delivery,” Mr Martin told journalists in Singapore. “We’ve got to focus on delivery of targets that have been set ... We need to change the dial there in terms of emissions.”
