Scientists reacted to the Government’s sector-by-sector emissions-cutting plan with relief that a deal had finally been done but deep concern that it fell short of what the overall target demanded.
The 25 per cent target set for the agricultural sector to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, in the view of scientists, falls short of the share of emissions the sector is responsible for, putting an impossible burden on other sectors to make up a shortfall to the overall 51 per cent target.
Politics may require the Government to offer special treatment to a sector because of its importance to rural Ireland and food production, but physics does not recognise special dispensation when it comes to cutting emissions to combat the climate change.
“What matters is the Government gets the maths to 51 per cent and they have not got it there. There is a substantial gap,” said Peter Thorne, a climate science professor at Maynooth University.
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“Even if every sector comes in on its budget, we would not meet the 51 per cent so clearly somewhere along the line, one or more sectors needs to achieve more.”
Legal challenges
The Climate Change Advisory Council, the independent body that advises Government on its climate actions, has said the sectoral targets would only reduce emissions by 43 per cent over the next years, falling short of the 51 per cent target set in legislation, in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. This could leave the Government exposed to legal challenges.
“We are glad the numbers have been identified, albeit that we have concerns with them, because they were acting as a block to what we really need, which is the action. We really need the policies, the action, the rollout,” said council chairwoman Marie Donnelly.
“The numbers that were published are at the lower end of what was estimated for virtually all of the sectors and, as consequence, don’t add up to the 51 per cent. If the numbers had been taken at the higher end for each of the sectors, we would have got to the 51 per cent.”
Longer term, this will mean the emission cuts need to be deeper for the agriculture sector or all of the sectors would ultimately have to face increased reductions.
Climate politics is here to stay
Dr Cara Augustenborg, an environmental policy professor at UCD and a member of the advisory council, said the shortfall this time around would result in greater pressures later on if the legally binding commitment to the 51 per cent target is to be achieved.
“It makes it even harder and that is what we have seen for the last two decades. We have kicked this can down the road for decades now and so the targets, the cost, the challenge is just getting harder and harder because we are leaving things too late,” she said.
Even to achieve the lower 43 per cent target set out in the emissions plan, the Government will still need to resolve red tape and policy issues and offer funding to make it happen, she said.
“That is the big question. We have a lot of great targets but without plans on how to achieve them,” she said. She also noted failures to introduce policies and plans to achieve the target of having a million electric vehicles on Irish roads by 2030. There were just 47,000 in January.
“The key is now urgent delivery of the plans we do have in place. We need to stop just sitting around talking. We need to actually get busy doing,” said Dr Augustenborg.
While the 25 per cent target for agriculture has generated the most controversy, Dr Patrick Bresnihan, a geography lecturer at Maynooth University who studies the environmental impact of energy-devouring data centres, questions the 75 per cent target set for the electricity sector.
“To get there by 2030, even people in the alternative energy industry — as happy as they are to see those kinds of targets — would say that that doesn’t seem that realistic,” he said.
Models of agriculture
Dr Bresnihan says it is “hard to take” the Government’s “ambitious talk” about a radical shift in policy when it is not grasping the contradictions between its climate ambitions on one hand and the data centre expansion and the models of agriculture it is embracing on the other.
“I am not saying it is easy, but unless those patterns of development are really grasped and there is a real desire or commitment to transform them more fundamentally, I don’t see how we are not going to be in the same position in 2030,” he said.
Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue’s admission that the changes demanded from farmers would be voluntary was another example of failing to tackle the problem, he said.
“I don’t see how things are going to change to the extent required in response to the urgency of the crisis,” said Dr Bresnihan.
Pat Goodman, a professor specialising in air pollution and human health at Technological University Dublin, views the emissions-cutting plan as a political exercise to appease all sides.
As he sees it, if the Government did not force changes in agricultural practices, then climate will ultimately result in farming having to change due to more extreme weather patterns.
“Whatever way you want to parcel it, we have to do something about it and the more we do and the sooner we do it, the better,” he said.
