The Irish Times view on the climate crisis: a time for resolve and ambition

The Government is about to face into an immensely challenging winter as inflation, an energy crisis, labour shortages and dysfunctional supply chains conspire to feed into rising costs. The climate crisis greatly complicates matters as the world is experiencing its first big energy shock of a green era that facilitated scale-up of wind and solar resources. Compounding all of this is supply volatility, which has reignited demand for oil. This is posing a threat to global climate ambitions and economic recovery from the pandemic, according to the International Energy Agency. Some big emitter economies look likely to fall back on coal use.

This backdrop to the UN COP26 climate talks in Glasgow next month risks undermining momentum towards ensuring the world has a better chance of keeping temperature rise to within 1.5 degrees this century – a critical target of the Paris agreement. Decisions taken in Glasgow will determine if collective action to halve emissions by 2030 and to achieve net-zero by 2050 are possible. COP26 seeks to close the gap between aggregated country-by-country targets and the high-level aims of Paris. A cut of 28 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2030 is required; current promises add up to four billion tonnes.

Ireland has declared it wants to be among more ambitious states leading the transformation of the global economy. This confluence of circumstances, however, will require the Government to stick steadfastly to its domestic climate agenda. The country is only at the start of pursuing economy-wide actions. Over coming weeks the Government must finalise its first carbon budget, which will have macro-economic impacts, as well as a revised climate action plan setting out how a 51 per cent cut in national emissions will be achieved by 2030. It must stay firmly on a path of efficient rollout of renewable energy. Yet there are worrying indications that consumers, and some within the ranks of the Coalition parties, do not grasp the implications of what is required in a narrow timeframe.

Budget 2022 ticked most climate action boxes, especially on shifting to greater public transport use, and measures to ease fuel poverty. In reality, however, many allocations are effectively seed funding that must be built on every year up to 2030. How exactly farmers are to be rewarded for their contribution to decarbonising land use and curbing biogenic methane has yet to be set out, which is feeding big concern within their sector. Meanwhile as consumers are coming to terms with the latest – necessary – increase in carbon taxes, there is a risk they will conflate an unrelated energy crisis with climate action and that this will dilute essential societal support for bold actions to secure big emission reductions. There is a grave risk of row-back when urgency is most needed.