One of the authors of the latest report on climate change has said that Ireland is failing to make its contribution towards tackling climate change due its failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth also criticised the Government policy of purchasing carbon credits to make up for a major shortfall in the reduction of emissions.
He said such a policy "can't substitute for taking individual responsibility . . . It's incumbent on us not to buy our way out of trouble," he said.
He described the current climate change strategy as "an abysmal failure because the Government failed to take on the vested interest and implement the policies in it".
He said that "fairly drastic and visionary steps" were now needed by the Government in the new climate change strategy, to be published early next month.
"They need to be meaningful, not simply aspirational," he said.
He said the need to reduce transport emissions, which have nearly trebled in the last two decades, had to be prioritised in the new strategy.
Ireland currently has one of the worst records in Europe on greenhouse gas emissions, which currently stand at 25.4 per cent above 1990 levels.
This compares with its Kyoto target of 13 per cent above 1990 levels.
Dr Sweeney also rejected recent criticism on the climate change issue by a number of academics and meteorologists, who have questioned whether the current changes in temperatures and climate change have arisen from manmade carbon dioxide emissions.
Various theories have been put forward, including suggestions that the temperature rises have been caused by cosmic rays and sun spots.
"These sceptics are getting a disproportionate amount of media coverage," he said, adding that they constituted a tiny proportion of the scientific community.
He said the research on carbon dioxide emissions showed that they had been the overwhelming cause of temperature increases in the last 50 years around the globe.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said that public authorities should now have to take climate change issues into account in their planning. Gerard O'Leary of the EPA said that apart from the need to reduce emissions, Ireland would have to adapt to "changes and impacts that are now unavoidable".
He said local authority development plans should now take into account the potential impact of climate change, from flooding to higher temperatures, when making decisions on zoning and infrastructure requirements such as water.
"We need to start planning now for climate change," he said. "Some of the impacts of climate change are now unavoidable and we now need to factor in the inevitable into our long-term planning decisions."
Ireland's emissions: current levels
Ireland now has one of the highest emissions per capita of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
In terms of carbon dioxide alone, recent work by Sustainable Energy Ireland suggests that the average Irish household with one car produces 10.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide from electricity, transport and heating.
This includes 2.86 tonnes from using the car, 4.5 tonnes from central heating, and a further 3.1 tonnes from electricity use.
It is the combined impact of these levels of emissions, mainly in developed countries, which is the main cause of global warming, according to most scientists working in the field of climate change.
The latest Environmental Protection Agency report states that, even if current greenhouse gas emissions were cut drastically by 50 per cent, there is just an even chance of meeting the two-degree target.
If greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, the chances of making the two-degree target were far less likely.
1°What's the big deal about a one-degree increase in average temperatures?
An average increase in temperature of one degree might seem very small, but such a change represents a very significant change in climate conditions.
It should be remembered that the increase in temperature is average, and that there are very significant increases in the number of significantly hotter days within that.
Contained within the one-degree increase across the country are areas that will experience average temperature rises well in excess of one degree.
The best illustration of this is that some of the hottest summers on record in Ireland have been in the last 10 years, yet the average temperature for these years is less than one degree above normal.
The impact of an increase of the most modest amount is very visible. For example, temperatures have increased by less than one degree in Ireland in the last century, yet many older people would report that the weather they experience is significantly different to what they experienced in their childhoods.
They would say it is much warmer, that snow is much less likely than before, and that stormy weather is much more likely.
Every astute observer of nature will report that plants and trees are budding and flowering earlier, and that the growing season for grass has increased.
There is statistical evidence of these trends caused by this modest rise. Records at the Vartry water reservoir in Wicklow show significant changes in rainfall patterns where in some months rainfall has increased by up to 300 per cent, with a corresponding fall during the summer.