Opinion

The hottest year ever, yet Harris is only talking about climate in the context of helping farmers

Climate change could increase competition for land, food and water and drive inequality, conflict, migration and volatility

Displaced Somali women carry firewood past a donkey carcass in the scrubland near Doolow, Somalia last year. Photograph: Giles Clarke/The New York Times
Displaced Somali women carry firewood past a donkey carcass in the scrubland near Doolow, Somalia last year. Photograph: Giles Clarke/The New York Times
Sadhbh O'Neill
Tue Mar 26 2024 - 06:00

Simon Harris assumed the leadership of Fine Gael and became taoiseach-in-waiting a week after the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed that 2023 was the warmest year on record, with the global average surface temperature 1.45 degrees above the pre-industrial baseline. The last decade was the warmest 10-year period on record. In 2023 nearly one-third of the ocean surface was gripped by a marine heatwave, harming vital ecosystems and food systems, and glaciers suffered the largest loss of ice on record.

According to the WMO, weather and climate extremes are either the root cause or serious aggravating factors that trigger displacement, food insecurity, biodiversity loss, health issues and more.

In his opening address to the Fine Gael convention on Sunday, Harris highlighted five themes for his leadership: hope, enterprise, equality of opportunity, integrity and security. “Security” covered a broad range of themes from welfare to housing, health services and policing. He mentioned climate change only in the context of helping farmers to transition to meet its challenges.

In fact, climate change risk and the security threats that it represent fall squarely within the taoiseach’s remit. The department publishes an annual national risk assessment, which highlighted in 2023 that interlocking risks “are even more significant than previously thought and demand a stronger global response and within a shorter time frame”.

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The assessment stated that “it is well understood that the costs of inaction far exceed those of the necessary remedial action, in terms of risks to human health, economic development, preservation of infrastructure and ecosystems, as well as risks to food, water and energy security and population displacement/mass migration”.

Facing these challenges properly falls to governments: no average person, institution or sector can tackle them alone

When climate risks are properly considered in the context of all the functioning services that we rely on, the focus shifts away from abstract probabilities to thinking about worst-case scenarios and how to prevent them. Even with the Greens in Government, weakly joined-up policies are presented as if these are all that is needed to stave off the worst.

The Government is still not confronting the possibility that climate change could be much worse than the “average” outcomes described by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), especially as these reports describe a situation where determined global co-operation is driving down emissions at 8 per cent every year, something we are not yet seeing in practice.

The reality is that global emissions are still rising. A 2021 risk assessment report by the UK think tank Chatham House estimated there is a 10 per cent chance that any backsliding or stasis in emissions reduction policies could lead to a plausible worst case of 7 degrees of warming by the end of the century. If emissions follow the trajectory set by current national plans, the report found there is a less than 5 per cent chance of keeping temperatures well below 2 degrees relative to pre-industrial levels, and less than 1 per cent chance of reaching the 1.5-degree Paris Agreement target.

These alarming calculations should worry every government and keep our taoiseach-to-be awake at night. Facing these challenges properly falls to governments: no average person, institution or sector can tackle them alone.

But systemic risks are not confined to one country. A study conducted for the UK government found the threats to the UK due to climate change impacts around the world could be an order of magnitude greater than those affecting the UK directly. Ireland is likely to be similarly exposed as a highly open economy. Economic “contagion” such as that experienced after the banking collapse is a feature of globalisation and it means we are exposed to the risks that other countries face too.

Climate change could increase competition for land, food and water which in turn drive inequality, conflict, migration and volatility on financial markets, leading to state failure even in countries considered developed and stable. While systemic risks might sound more like dystopian fiction than policy, these are exactly what climate risk assessments are highlighting.

Addressing climate change is essential for a country’s long-term prosperity and security, even if the actions that need to be taken conflict with other aims in the short run. According to Simon Sharpe, a former adviser to the UK government during its presidency of Cop26 in Glasgow and author of Five Times Faster, “no matter what the political system, it is only the person at the top who has the authority to balance these interests, and to decide how much effort to put into countering climate change compared to all those other priorities”. So if Harris really wants to prioritise security, climate change should be at the top of his agenda.

Sadhbh O’Neill is senior climate adviser to Friends of the Earth Ireland