The Government's recognition of climate change is at odds with its historic failure to address the issue, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.
Climate change is "central to Government policy across all sectors", Minister for the Environment Dick Roche declared yesterday when he launched the Government's second national strategy to deal with what Tánaiste Michael McDowell described as "a fairly serious global issue".
Both Ministers were understating the case. If tackling climate change has become "central to Government policy", this has happened very recently. All of the available evidence points to a failure by the Government to take steps to deal with the major environmental issue of our era.
The latest National Climate Change Strategy replaces the original one published in October 2000. Yet it contains no scorecard on how effectively the key measures then proposed were implemented - presumably for the simple reason that most of them were quietly dropped in the interim.
No "appropriate tax measures, prioritising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions" were introduced. The ESB's massive power station at Moneypoint, which belches out 5.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, has not stopped burning coal. We're also still awaiting a "rebalancing" of motor tax to favour more fuel-efficient cars. Moneypoint was retained as a coal-fired power station because of concerns about fuel security and the danger of being held to ransom by the Russians if we became too reliant on natural gas for electricity generation. But there is a half-hearted commitment to examine "clean coal technologies" between now and 2020.
On "rebalancing" motor tax, the Government's own agency - Sustainable Energy Ireland - warned last week in a submission to the Department of Finance that some of the proposals being considered could have the perverse effect of penalising people who want to buy more environment-friendly cars.
And whatever about the "improved spatial planning" promised in 2000, through residential density guidelines, the National Spatial Strategy and regional planning guidelines, the Government took no action - until very lately - to curb the sprawl of Dublin and the growth of its car-orientated commuter belt to 100km.
It is simply not adequate, against this structural backdrop, for the new National Climate Change Strategy to say that the Government "recognises and supports the role of employers in promoting more sustainable travel patterns among employees", or to say that it will back these with an "information campaign".
The truth is that nearly five years were lost, largely because Ministers didn't really believe that the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change would come into force. As a result, a whole series of measures that could have been taken on a "no regrets" basis never saw the light of day and are only now being belatedly recycled.
After Kyoto was first adopted in December 1997 and long before the treaty was finally ratified in February 2005, it was clear that Ireland would have a tough task in meeting its commitment to cap the growth in our greenhouse gas emissions at 13 per cent above their 1990 levels in the commitment period of 2008-2012.
Due to the Government's failure to take concerted action much sooner, our emissions are now more than 25 per cent higher than they were in 1990 - in other words, nearly double the Kyoto target. And the most spectacular increase has taken place in the transport sector, where emissions were up by 160 per cent in 2005.
Dick Roche attributed a "very significant proportion" of this increase to "fuel tourism" - motorists from Northern Ireland crossing the Border to fill up their tanks with cheaper fuel. But the 2000 strategy proposed "setting fuel taxes at appropriate levels" to reduce this incentive and also the rate of increase in overall consumption.
However, the real culprit for the huge increase in transport emissions is the car-dependent society that the Government has promoted through its laissez faire planning policies and compounded throughout most of its two terms in office by a transport investment programme that put 80 per cent of the money into roads.
Now, the same Government talks about moving towards a "low-carbon economy" - something we will have to do if we are to have any chance of meeting the declared EU target of a 20 per cent cut in emissions by 2020 (based on 1990 levels). For us, this will be a very tall order, given the scale of our overshoot.
The figures tell the story. According to the strategy's projections, Ireland's emissions in 2020 - far from being 20 per cent lower than they were in 1990 - are likely to be nearly 16 per cent higher, even with the additional measures now being proposed, such as the switch from incandescent to long-life lightbulbs.
Although Dick Roche has been at pains to discount the extent of the Government's reliance on purchasing carbon credits to meet Ireland's Kyoto target, it is clear from the figures that this particular "flexible mechanism" is the single biggest item in its basket of measures, accounting for a reduction of 3.6 million tonnes.
Next in line is emissions trading (2.42 million tonnes), followed by savings from Common Agricultural Policy reform (2.4 million tonnes) - even though this particular measure was opposed tooth-and-nail by the Government when it was going through the EU process. After that comes forestry "sinks", which will save two million tonnes.
But it is the reliance on carbon credits that could be the strategy's Achilles heel. So far, €270 million has been allocated to buy credits by investing in clean development projects in developing countries. But this is based on the current price of carbon of €15 per tonne. What if the price rises to, say, €50 or even €100 per tonne?
The Minister has said that he's "not hooked" on carbon credits, which is a good thing if it's true, because any country that seeks to meet its Kyoto - and, indeed, post-Kyoto - targets in this way runs the risk of saddling itself with huge bills when it could more wisely be investing in domestic measures that would benefit everybody.
It is difficult to disagree with Friends of the Earth's verdict that the strategy published yesterday amounts more to "tinkering" than transformation.
"We need a sea-change in how we live, work and travel in Ireland if we are to do our fair share to prevent climate chaos," according to its Irish director, Oisín Coghlan.