Sir, - As a climate Jeremiah of some 12 years' standing perhaps I could comment on one or two aspects of the National Climate Change Strategy (The Irish Times, November 2nd)?
It seems as though at long last some legislative curb is to be placed on the scandalous waste of energy in new buildings. The more energy efficient a building is the less it costs to heat and light and the smaller are the associated greenhouse gas emissions. Simple enough, one would have thought; certainly the environmental movement has lobbied hard on this matter throughout the 1990s. Successive governments have, however, preferred to be seduced by the siren songs of the construction industry.
If building regulations had been tightened up at the start of the current building boom rather than towards the end of it, then we would have been ahead of the posse. As it is, the posse, in the shape of the Kyoto commitments, is now threatening to string us up. How sad - yet how easily predicted and prevented.
As for Moneypoint, one can only welcome the phasing out of that monstrous installation. I have fond memories of a surreal ESB presentation of the early 1990s in which it was "proved", via copious statistics, that Moneypoint gave out a vanishingly small amount of pollution; at least we have moved on from those days. Future energy use must be sustainable; CHP (combined heat and power) and gas-fired generation are all very well as interim measures but in the longer term zero-emission technologies such as wind, wave and solar energy must be used.
Currently we have an absurd situation in which the development of very cheap wind energy has hamstrung the industry by forcing it onto high ground, thus alienating much of its natural constituency in the broader green and outdoors movements (to say nothing of alienated locals who are expected to host an industry which gives them no return.)
It is not too late to adopt a sensible long-term approach to wind energy; nor is it too late (yet) to develop Ireland's massive wave resource. The old excuse for Irish inaction in these fields - poverty - no longer applies. Invest now and reap the benefits later. - Yours, etc.,
Jim Woolridge, Woodside Road, Sandyford, Dublin 18.