Most Irish people, I rather suspect, are entirely unaware of the scale of the changes that the state will have to demand of them in order to meet the – and this is only one word for it – ambitious climate targets that the present Government has enshrined in law.
There are two key milestones in those targets: First, Ireland must reduce net carbon emissions by more than half – 51% – by 2030. Second, Ireland must be entirely carbon neutral by 2050. At the moment, Ireland is on course to miss the 2030 target by a country mile, despite all of the Green Policy implemented by the current Government.
Yesterday, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council – which has some jurisdiction in this area because of the eye-watering fines the taxpayer will have to pay to the European Union should these targets not be met – set out the scale of the problem, and perhaps more troublingly, the scale of the solutions. The Irish Independent had the details:
Ireland needs to “urgently” cut the sale of petrol-guzzlers, hybrid cars and city centre parking spaces to meet current climate targets, academics and regulators have warned.
More renewables alone won’t cut it, a conference heard on Thursday, with drivers, farmers, data centres, households and businesses called on to slash their energy use to get Ireland “back on track” to meet its 2030 targets….
…..Professor Daly said the current carbon tax is “far too low to bring about the level and speed of change required”.
So there you have it: We’re talking about substantial tax increases, and a full-on war on motorists, farmers, data centres, households, and businesses that is still required just to meet the 2030 target, let alone the 2050 target.
It is worth at this point mentioning, perhaps, that should Ireland manage to meet these targets, it will fall from producing 0.1% of global net carbon dioxide emissions to around about 0.04% – while our own emissions will fall by half, our percentage of the total will fall by slightly more than that, because global emissions will decrease by far less than that. In fact the estimate at the last COP summit was that global emissions would fall by only 2% by 2030.
In other words, Ireland is legally obliged, thanks to the present Government, to cut global emissions at 26 times the rate of the world as a whole.
It should be obvious that this cannot be achieved without whomever is in Government, so long as they are committed to these targets, suffering almost immeasurable political pain. Indeed, one reason that the country is presently off target is that the current Government, exercising a little bit of political realism, “back-loaded” the climate plan to ensure that the most politically painful stuff would not have to be implemented until the term of the next Government. This was done at a time when Sinn Fein looked, it’s fair to say, more certain to be in Government in 2030 than they currently do.
Of course, all of this needs to be placed in the political context of the Government’s existing difficulties with the measures it is trying to take just to keep us halfway towards the target: As things stand, they are in open war with one of the state’s most successful companies, Ryanair. They are also facing increasingly angry revolt from farmers. Motorists have yet to make their displeasure felt over measures like the new proposed speed limits, but there is discontent burbling beneath the surface. And then of course there’s the likely reaction to large increases in the carbon tax, which will prove universally deeply unpopular.
All of which leaves us with a rather obvious question: Can these targets be met by any Government that relies on democratic legitimacy for its power? Or in plainer language – can they be met in a democracy?
It’s worth mentioning that if there’s one area of public policy where the Government benefits from a universally friendly and sympathetic media, it’s in the area of climate policy. Despite this, they’re still facing revolt on multiple fronts. That should not give them confidence that the rest of the plan can be implemented.
The Irish public tend to get angry at one thing at a time: We had an economic crash, followed by an unemployment crisis, followed by housing, followed by covid, and now immigration. It’s very likely that over the coming few years, the unpopularity of the net zero agenda will be the next big issue to divide the Irish public from those who rule us.