Climate crisis and political action

Sir, –In your recent article "Varadkar says no farmers will be told to stop farming or reduce herd size" (News, May 8th) a number of things are listed that we as a society will not be told to do in order to meet our climate targets, with the Tánaiste instead outlining how the State will do "everything we can to achieve everything that's sensible".

As temperatures nearing 50 Celsius persist in India and Pakistan, as the world witnesses the highest levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide ever experienced by humans, as biodiversity declines at an alarming rate, as CO2 emissions continue to grow across most sectors in Ireland, and as the World Meteorological Office finds that the chance of temporarily reaching the Paris Agreement 1.5 Celsius threshold for one of the next five years is now 50:50 and increasing with time, one wonders how sensible our current climate action approach is given these kinds of trends, and what in fact are the things our leaders will be brave enough to tell us, or preferably support us, to do? –Yours, etc,

ALI SHERIDAN,

Maynooth,

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Co Kildare.