Sir, – The greatest challenge we face today is climate change. It represents an existential threat to life on earth as we know it. And it is a problem of our own making. As the only species which can prevent catastrophic climate change, we continue to refuse stubbornly to do what is necessary to prevent it. A microcosm of the problem we face was succinctly set out by Prof John Sweeney in your newspaper on Wednesday (“Ireland still appears delinquent on climate action”, Opinion & Analysis, July 6th).
Agriculture, our largest sectoral contributor to greenhouse gas emissions by some distance at a whopping 37.4 per cent of our total emissions, looks like it may effectively be awarded (no pun intended) sacred cow status. Are Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue, the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) and others not aware of what is happening in the world – the risk of multiple famines this year, wildfires in the Arctic, ice sheets melting, forest fires, record heatwaves, flooding and ocean acidification?
What would people facing famine in the horn of Africa and what will future generations make of the fact that, even as we knew we were facing catastrophic climate change, we increased our dairy herd – the biggest polluter in our most polluting sector –by almost half in 10 years?
The Minister, the IFA and others are stakeholders and represent vested interests, but they are a tiny minority, and their interests are predominantly financial or economic in nature. But all of humanity, including farmers themselves, also has a stake and interest in reducing emissions. This interest is existential in nature.
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Agriculture, our biggest polluter, should not get a free pass, or anything like it, when it comes to our Climate Action Plan.
Why should the rest of society carry the can for agriculture, while continuing to subsidise the sector to pollute our environment on a literally industrial scale? Given what we know, would this not be both grossly unfair and grossly immoral? – Yours, etc,
ROB SADLIER,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.
Sir, – John Sweeney clearly outlines the difficult trade-offs that have to be made between different sectors if we’re to get even close to our emissions reduction commitments.
In particular, he draws attention to the “departmental silos” that seek to reduce the targets in each particular area.
The problem with this kind of decision-making is that it’s all a very long way from the kinds of changes that will be required by individuals and their communities.
For example, there would be no point in the Department of Transport agreeing to an additional 5 per cent reduction instead of agriculture if there’s no prospect in our highly centralised system of those reductions happening at a local level, where even minor reductions in car dominance are off the table for many councillors and their voters.
For there to be any prospect of meeting targets, the tradeoffs inherent in the process will need to be felt at a local level as well, so that it’s no longer politically tenable to voice support for reductions at the national level while locally continuing to fight for road building and agricultural expansion, and against bike lanes and pedestrianisation. This will require much more control over budgets, both financial and carbon, in electoral areas so that voters have much better visibility about what is required, and can hold their representatives to account.
Without this kind of change to political incentives, it’s very unlikely that we’ll get anywhere close to the targets in the Climate Act, the consequences of which surely don’t need spelling out at this point. – Yours, etc,
DAVE MATHIESON,
Salthill,
Galway.