The Government's new National Climate Change Strategy is a step forward, if only a tentative one, in facing up to Ireland's responsibility to play an effective and equitable role in tackling global warming.
Most of the new measures it contains have already been announced or reported, such as the target of achieving 15 per cent of electricity generated from renewable sources by 2010, improving the energy efficiency of new homes by up to 40 per cent from 2008 onwards or using a levy to encourage a switch to long-life lightbulbs. But there is an issue of political credibility here, as many of the measures proposed in the Government's first National Climate Change Strategy in 2000 were not implemented.
Although the latest strategy is full of figures showing projected reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, what is urgently needed - as Prof Frank Convery, chairman of Comhar, the Sustainable Development Council, said yesterday - is a long-term approach to ensure that Ireland succeeds not merely in moderating the rise in emissions, but actually reducing them over time. What he has proposed is that we should commit ourselves to an "ambitious but realisable" target and, once this is agreed by all stakeholders in society, "the national debate should focus on ways to get there".
There is also the issue of equity. As Prof Convery noted, there are bound to be winners and losers in the transition to a low-carbon economy. "Strong leadership will be needed to ensure that the necessary tough decisions are made and their impacts - positive and negative - are shared across society in an equitable manner", he said. The Irish Business and Employers Confederation made the same point yesterday, suggesting that industrial users of energy were being unfairly saddled with strict carbon limits which do not apply to other sectors such as transport, agriculture or housing. Such perceptions of unfairness must be addressed if we are to move forward together as a society in dealing with this issue.
There is also an urgent need for people in general to be better informed and, in this context, the Government's plan to spend €15 million on a "major national climate change awareness campaign" must be welcomed. The launch in Brussels on Friday of the latest working group report of the scientifically authoritiative UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, dealing with its likely impacts worldwide, will help to dispel the dense fog of complacency being spread by sceptics.
The Government has promised to establish a Climate Change Commission of eminent experts to "monitor and assess Ireland's progress" in addressing the issue. Such a commission must be independent, with the necessary discretion to highlight failures as well as successes. And since the Taoiseach has been so vocal on climate change in recent times, perhaps the commission should be attached to his Department to underwrite the "whole-of-Government co-ordination" about which Minister for the Environment Dick Roche spoke when he launched the National Climate Change Strategy yesterday.