Letters

Climate crisis and political leadership

Ireland’s emissions are moving in the wrong direction

Tue Nov 08 2022 - 00:04

Sir, – As the Cop27 climate talks start, we’re once again faced with earnest declarations from our political leaders about the need to rapidly reduce our emissions (“Leaders have ‘special responsibility’ to help tackle climate change, says Taoiseach”, News, November 6th).

It’s about time that journalists and voters started ignoring declarations such as these and to focus on the underlying actions (or lack thereof). The data from the Environmental Protection Agency show that Ireland’s emissions are currently moving in the wrong direction, particularly in the areas of transport and agriculture, and it doesn’t take too much analysis to figure out why this might be the case. On transport, for example, many members of the Taoiseach and Tánaiste’s parties continually oppose and dilute cheap and easy measures in their local areas that support reductions in car use in our cities, often also supporting road-building measures that we know will increase emissions.

A lot is made in the media of the anxiety felt by younger people about the climate crisis, and it’s hard to think of something more likely to induce these kinds of feelings than the spectacle of political leaders declaring in lofty terms the seriousness of the situation while being seemingly incapable or unwilling to support many of the easiest steps along the path to lowering emissions.

We’re lucky to live in a country where outright climate denial is politically largely untenable, and that has, in the Climate Act, a legislative framework agreed by all Government parties that sets out the pathway for reductions. We just need our leaders to show the political courage to do, rather than say, the right things. – Yours, etc,

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DAVE MATHIESON,

Salthill,

Galway.