Opinion

Like it or not, climate change is coming and politicians have to face reality

Why won’t our politicians do something say climate protestors? The simple answer is it would be mightily unpopular

A climate change protest organised by students at Trinity College Dublin is held outside Leinster House in Dublin on Friday. Photograph: Grainne Ni Aodha/PA

Pat Leahy's face
Pat Leahy
Sat Nov 12 2022 - 05:00

It is one of the better-established and more amply-evidenced criticisms of successive Irish governments that however well they respond to emergencies they’re hopeless at planning for the long or even the medium term.

I could fill the page with examples. For an immediate one, look no further than the chronic failure to plan last spring for sufficient refugee accommodation this winter. Are other countries also struggling? Yes. Is that an excuse for not moving faster on pre-fabs and other quick, medium-term solutions during the summer? No, it’s not.

Anyway. Short-termism is not, of course, an exclusively Irish failing. In Egypt this week and next, world leaders, NGOs, activists, experts, lobbyists and all manner of hangers-on have gathered to discuss the climate crisis and to resolve to do more to limit the effects of global warming, currently on track to exceed two degrees. If this Cop is like all the other Cops it will end with exactly that resolve to do more, without the means and measures to ensure that enough is done.

Climate change represents perhaps the greatest example of governments’ failure to plan for the long term. The pandemic came from nowhere. The financial crash built gradually, then quickly. The war in Ukraine was the choice of one unpredictable tyrant. But everyone has known for years that human activity is making the world hotter.

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This year, however, brought home in more immediately palpable terms just what the hotter future will look like. London sweltered in 40-degree heat; more than a thousand people died in England. India baked. Millions verge on starvation in the Horn of Africa. Droughts in the northern hemisphere, climate scientists say, are now 20 times more likely.

Meanwhile, a third of Pakistan was underwater for weeks after rains the like of which had never been seen before. And this is with global temperatures having increased by 1.2 degrees; the world is, let us repeat, on course to top two degrees of warming. And a goodish chunk of global heating is already baked in. Nobody really knows how much.

But you don’t have to delve too deeply into the abundant apocalyptic genre to find out what two degrees means. It’s there in the dull and terrifying predictions of the science: more intense and frequent extreme weather, meaning hitherto once-in-a-lifetime floods hit maybe every year, same with droughts, extreme heat, wildfires, and so on.

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It’s not true, as the pessimists insist, that nothing has been done. In fact, the changes in energy production that are underway are remarkable, and much of the world is on a path to decarbonisation, as the cost of renewables plummets. It often doesn’t sound like it, but the world is actually getting to grips with the problem – it’s just not doing it quickly enough.

What that means is that while we must continue with and intensify efforts to decarbonise our societies and economies, we must also prepare for the inevitable changes in our climate that are ahead. Ireland is likely to be a lot more fortunate than some parts of the globe, but we need to overcome our chronic inability to plan for the longer term. The recent tendency to be useless at this is not inevitable; the country planned for the long-term with mass third-level education and with industrial and taxation strategy, by joining the EU and embracing globalisation. It will have to do so again to maintain our way of life through the climate changes to come.

Our weather will get warmer and wetter. There will, it seems certain, be periods of drought and periods of unprecedently heavy rainfall. That will require changes in our water infrastructure, which will have to store more water that arrives suddenly and in great volume for the dry periods to follow. Flood defences will need to be rethought and rebuilt, and coastline defences in towns and cities like Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Wexford and Sligo adapted for rising seas. All areas, but especially the south and west coasts, will have to get ready to withstand far more intense storms. Agriculture will have to prepare for changing weather patterns. These are measures that need to be taken urgently by government, local and national, by utilities, businesses and homeowners.

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But it is the human effects of climate change that may pose an even greater challenge for Ireland and other EU members. Vastly increased migration from Africa and Asia seems a cast-iron certainty. This will require two responses from government – firstly, a humanitarian programme to take in large numbers of climate refugees, perhaps on a par with the current effort to help Ukrainians, and secondly, an efficient system for processing admissions and, in some cases, rejections.

Any programme will necessarily be finite; the public will not consent to uncontrolled immigration. Anyone who thinks otherwise is ignoring the politics of Europe for the last decade and more. You can’t have borders without an immigration policy, and you can’t have an immigration policy without turning some people away. The current situation, where asylum claims take years to be processed, will not be workable when multiples of the current numbers begin to arrive. The system needs to be prepared for this now.

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These are daunting challenges facing this government and the next one. But they are truly unavoidable. Many of the necessary measures may well be unpopular – or at least there may be more popular ways of spending the vast resources they require – but they will be necessary. The public will have to face up to reality, too.

Why won’t our politicians do something, wail the climate protestors. The answer, as we all know, is very simple: because they correctly think it would be mightily unpopular. The unpredictable, threatening, hotter future will demand changes from all of us – not just politicians.

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