Tackling climate change

Sir, – John FitzGerald's opinion piece ("Solution to global warming will be found in new technologies", Business, March 24th) contains some excellent good sense. The threat of global warming is real, and impacts are already very serious. Our actions (or inactions) over the next small number of decades will have repercussions – for good or ill – over millenia to come. But I fear Prof FitzGerald is mistaken in implying that the consequences will affect only "our grandchildren and great-grandchildren". On many current scenarios (of continuing growth in greenhouse gas emissions), very severe disruptions to global society may unfold well within the lifetimes of people already living. Yes, it might happen that the direct local effects on Ireland's own climate may be relatively modest in that timeframe; but that cannot and would not protect us from global food insecurity, conflict, mass migration, and disruption or breakdown in global trade. I wish this were all unreasoned alarmism on my part. Regrettably it is the sober judgment of thousands of experts who have contributed to the ongoing work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In its most recent synthesis report, the IPCC was unequivocal that only “substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” can effectively limit climate change risks. Nonetheless, Prof FitzGerald is right to highlight the practical difficulty of effectively limiting emissions by “downstream” controls on all the diverse products and services in which these emissions are “embedded”. Which makes it all the more puzzling that he fails to even mention the obvious complementary possibility of “upstream” controls. It is now clear that the majority (perhaps as much as 80 per cent) of known fossil fuel reserves must simply be left in the ground. Fortunately, as the sites of extraction are limited in number and well known, this is a much more practical challenge than controlling end use.

The mechanisms needed are straightforward and already well understood – “all” that is lacking is political leadership. Ireland, as a small country but a global nation, with diplomatic access completely disproportionate to its home population, is uniquely placed to champion this historic global transformation. Prof FitzGerald would do a great service to both his living neighbours and his future posterity if he would lend his undoubted skills and expertise to this, the inescapable moral challenge of our age. – Yours, etc,

Prof BARRY McMULLIN,

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Faculty of Engineering

and Computing,

Dublin City University.

Sir, – John FitzGerald rightly emphasises that urgent action is required to stop the potentially catastrophic deterioration in global climate which has already manifested itself in an increased frequency of extreme events in many locations, including Ireland. He also identifies the political and economic inertia at national levels which has inhibited efforts to achieve the emission reductions necessary to enable the current and coming generations to avoid the damaged world which our current short-sightedness will otherwise bequeath them.

His pessimistic conclusion that a technological “fix” is the only solution to the problem in the long run is deeply flawed and betrays the fallacy of framing the climate change problem solely in an economic paradigm. His solution of gradual increases in carbon taxes and a hope that a technological fix will appear in the long term are not realistic options. A report from the highly respected US National Academy of Sciences only last month concluded that “current technologies would take decades to achieve moderate results and be cost-prohibitive at scales large enough to have a sizeable impact”.

Narrowly focused economic perspectives on the climate change problem frequently reinforce political inertia by emphasising the “what’s in it for us” issues that enable procrastination based on perceived national self-interest. But this is also a two-edged sword. Prof FitzGerald rightly identifies trade in manufactured goods between China and Europe as resulting in a net surplus flow of embedded emissions being imported into Europe as a result of our imports of Chinese products. That this occurs is of course because such products are produced more competitively in China than Europe. Yet as regards Irish agricultural exports, he suggests reducing our embedded emissions would be a bad thing to contemplate. The contradiction involved here is that we look to China to reduce its emissions while feeding our demand for manufactured goods, but facilitate Irish agriculture via Harvest 2020 to increase its emissions in order to supply powdered milk to meet the demand from middle-class Chinese consumers.

Although the article is dismissive of altruism, issues of responsibility have to be faced up to. We in Ireland currently emit 75 per cent more greenhouse gases than China on a per capita basis. Historically we have an even greater share of responsibility for addressing the problem. So, understandably, political backsliding on our international commitments does not go down well either with our EU colleagues or, more seriously, with developing countries to whom we contribute a disproportionate share of their climate change burden.

Economic arguments about the balance of trade or carbon taxes seldom factor in the reality of the human costs of climate change. The World Health Organisation estimate that currently occurring climate change causes over 150,000 deaths annually. This is 15 times the total for Ebola for example, and rising. It is time to realise that climate change is a game changer which cannot be accommodated in conventional economic paradigms. The science, and not economics or national self-interest, must drive policy. As the US National Academy of Sciences conclude in their aforementioned report: ”There is no substitute for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the negative consequences of climate change.”

JOHN SWEENEY,

Emeritus Professor

of Geography,

Maynooth University.