Dublin Airport and climate crisis

Sir, – Your piece on the predicted economic impact of failing to expand Dublin Airport (“Dublin Airport capacity limits could have ‘very significant’ impact on Irish economy”, Business, January 15th) does a good job of highlighting the cognitive dissonance at the heart of how we treat economics and climate change.

If, as the article suggests, the economy will suffer without increased flights into and out of Dublin, then instead of treating this as an argument in favour of expanding the airport, surely it could also be seen as a weakness in how economic activity is being managed?

Both Government policy and climate science require rapid decarbonsation, but the fact that your report doesn’t even mention climate or emissions shows how deeply entrenched the dichotomy is whereby climate is still seen as something that’s largely unrelated to the important business of the economy. I’m not singling out The Irish Times here; this view is prevalent in most reporting of such issues, and also seems to hold sway in a lot of party politics.

Of course, there are always special cases that can be made to justify individual schemes that do increase emissions. But these must be accounted for in the context of the overall drastic cuts that are required, and the days of simply not talking about the emissions of certain projects and policies because they are economically attractive should surely be behind us. – Yours, etc,