In Ireland today, there’s a single number which absolutely everyone should be forced to learn off by heart.
It should be shouted from the rooftops using a megaphone. It should be plastered on billboards. It should be displayed on TV ads, and on the sides of buses.
And that number, dear friends, is 0.09%.
I repeat for emphasis: 0.09%.
Once more for the people in the back: 0.09%.
What’s so special about 0.09%, you ask? What does it mean?
Well, this is how much Ireland contributes to the global man made carbon emissions according to the EU’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR).
We contribute quite literally, without a hint of an exaggeration, a fraction of a fraction of a percent. If the entire nation of Ireland literally disappeared tomorrow, as pictured below, the entire global man-made emissions would not even go down by one tenth of one percent according to the EU’s own data.
For another visualisation, also from EDGAR, here is a pie chart of CO2 contributions by country. As you can see (or, more precisely, as you can’t see), Ireland’s slice of the pie is literally so small you can’t even identify it.
And yet, what’s Eamon Ryan’s take on this situation?
Well, apparently, we simply still aren’t doing enough about climate change.
As reported by the Journal.ie:
By “do more,” of course, Ryan here means you have to do more. He still intends on flying private, while telling you he’s going to end your cheap annual holidays. And he also thinks it’s unfair if you criticise him for that.
“Do more” also includes more carbon tax hikes and driving up the cost of fuel, energy and everything else during a cost of living crisis, which he can afford to absorb.
And meanwhile, bear in mind; when they say Ireland’s CO2 emissions increased by 4.7% here, they mean 4.7% of 0.09%. Which means a total global increase of 0.00423% because of Ireland last year.
Obviously this number is so small it’s actually hard to contemplate. So to put this in terms that we can understand, let’s imagine instead that instead of CO2 increases, we’re talking about money increases.
If you were on €49,000 per year, and you received a 0.00423% pay rise, you would take home a whopping – wait for it, drumroll please – €2.07 per year. Or €0.17 a month.
Oo-la-la! Check out the big spender over here. Don’t spend it all in one place, now.
It’s literally tip money that you would lose down the back of the sofa and not notice.
And that is the 4.7% CO2 increase Eamon Ryan and the media are panicking about. This is what we’re crashing the economy and driving up fuel costs over. To get this number down to half.
At this point people typically like to say “But Irish people contribute more to CO2 than other countries per capita.” And this is very true.
And as well as being true, it’s also completely irrelevant.
The fact is, either we contribute a meaningful amount to the world total, or we don’t. And the fact is, we don’t. The per capita figure means nothing.
This would be like someone saying “You know the stone you dropped in the ocean created a splash 5 times bigger than other stones of its size?”
“Oh really? And how big was the splash?”
“A few centimetres.”
And meanwhile there are lads dropping nuclear bombs in the Pacific, causing tsunamis which are wiping away coastal cities. All while your ripples are so small they’re within the margin of error and barely distinguishable from general background noise. There is absolutely no comparison.
The question, then, is not really “Should Ireland do more on climate change?” The question is, “What could we ever do on climate change? What can a country of our size actually do?” We have almost no noticeable emissions to cut.
There is absolutely no question that we will create even a moderate difference one way or the other to the climate no matter what we do. And therefore this entire green exercise, with all of its economy-destroying consequences, is purely a form of theatre to look like “we’re doing our part.” It’s showboating to our European neighbours, to look modern and trendy, while crippling people financially at home.
Every time a Senator, TD or journalist utters the words “climate change,” people should respond with one simple figure: “0.09%.” It should be repeated relentlessly ad infinitum. They should get no rest from it. It should haunt them at night like the Bogeyman.
Say it with me folks: 0.09%.