The Government's National Climate Change Strategy will reflect the reality that there is no "silver bullet, no magic solution" to the issue, Minister for the Environment Dick Roche told the Fianna Fáil Ardfheis last night.
Mr Roche said that the strategy would set out a series of measures to achieve our objectives.
"It requires energy conservation, technological innovation, policy flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, global co-operation on the widest scale, and local action by each individual. The ideology or hollow dogma of our opponents will not provide the answer."
Mr Roche said the Irish people had shown great ingenuity in transforming the State's economy. "Under Fianna Fáil, I have absolutely no doubt that we can show the same ingenuity to meet the challenge of climate change throughout the 21st century."
There was still a job to do at home, he said. "When burden-sharing was agreed between the EU 15-member states, Ireland was allowed to increase our emission levels by 13 per cent above 1990 levels because at that time our economic development was so far behind everyone else."
Mr Roche said that thanks to good economic management by Fianna Fáil, the economy grew beyond what anyone could have predicted. However, as the economy grew, so did carbon emissions.
"Today we are now at 25 per cent over 1990 levels, 12 points above where we would like to be," but we were by no means at the bottom of the EU class. Seven EU states were much further from their EU Kyoto Protocol targets than Ireland. "And we will make our targets. This will be clearly set out in the new national climate change strategy."
