I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to discuss climate change at this critical juncture. The Government is currently preparing a new national climate change strategy against a background of unprecedented international interest and activity. Al Gore's movie and the Stern report heightened the global focus on the issue and the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has emphasised the basic reality that climate change is happening, human activity is causing it and we have very little time to act if we are to prevent global warming of more than 2° Celsius, which is the agreed threshold beyond which dangerous climate change will occur.
In addressing Ireland's position and role, I want to speak about three matters. The first concerns the principles that should lie behind Ireland's approach, the second concerns our performance to date regarding climate change, and the third concerns proposals for how this committee could help to ensure Ireland does its fair share to prevent climate chaos, which is the risk we ultimately face.
Friends of the Earth believes there are four principles: the urgency of the issue, the adequacy of the response, the equity of the response, and the doability, so to speak, of the response. On the principle of urgency, scientific evidence suggests we need to make global greenhouse gas emissions, which are still rising, peak and decline irreversibly within ten years. The decisions we take now and in the next few years, both in Ireland and internationally, are crucial to our chances of success in preventing our exceeding the threshold for dangerous climate change. This is our window of opportunity and it is time to act.
On adequacy, climate change is increasingly regarded as the greatest threat facing humanity. It threatens the viability and prosperity of the human community on earth. We undoubtedly have a climate crisis, which many call a planetary emergency, and the nature of the problem makes it unlike others faced by political leaders. We are very conscious of this because one cannot negotiate with the atmosphere. There is no honourable compromise in that either we take the steps required to prevent global warming going out of control or we do not. We will know the consensus position when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivers the third part of its report in May, but the best available scientific evidence at present suggests we need to halve global emissions from 1990 levels by 2050 to prevent warming of over 2° Celsius.
On the issue of equity, it is clear that climate change is caused by the First World. It is the burning of fossil fuels in our economies that has caused the problem, but the poorest countries are being hit first and will be hit hardest. More intense droughts will affect Africa, further undermining food security, while in Asia, rising sea levels could displace millions of people, especially in coastal communities such as those in Bangladesh. Simultaneously, retreating Himalayan icecaps will threaten the fresh water supplies of hundreds of millions of people in Asia.
The EU Heads of Government have already agreed that rich developed countries will have to make cuts in emissions in the order of 60% to 80% by 2050 to do their fair share. In the short term, it is agreed that the EU should make cuts of at least 20%, and probably 30%, if others will act with us, by 2020. I refer to cuts from 1990 levels. For Ireland to do its fair share, it must make cuts from 1990 levels of least two thirds, or probably much more, by 2050, and by at least 15% by 2020. That our level is already 25% above that of 1990 illustrates the scale of the challenge we face as a society, economy and polity.
On so-called doability, the aforedescribed shift in our pollution patterns cannot be achieved overnight and most certainly cannot be done at the last minute. There are no shortcuts, therefore, to climate stability. In Irish policy terms, it amounts to a paradigm shift of the sort represented by the Whitaker-Lemass model 50 years ago. It will require the sort of commitment from all sectors of society represented by the first social partnership arrangements 20 years ago. The only way to make the required adjustment is to make it in a step-by-step, year-by-year, managed way, starting now. The latest figures suggest that Ireland needs to reduce its climate pollution or greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 3% per year every year between now and 2050. We must therefore ask how we are doing so far.
Unfortunately, Ireland's record so far on climate change is one of relative failure. We signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and in 1998 agreed to limit the growth of our climate pollution to 13% above 1990 levels by the period covered by the protocol. That figure was agreed to by the Cabinet and was reflected in the national climate change strategy, which stated clearly that business as usual, so to speak, was no longer an option for Ireland if it was to meet its commitment. Unfortunately, business as usual is what occurred. The latest figures released by the Environmental Protection Agency place us 25.4% above 1990 levels and project that in 2010 we will at 28% above 1990 levels, which is exactly the level the ESRI warned we would reach by 2010 when it made its prediction in 1997. The outcomes of our policies so far are such that we are exactly on track to do nothing about climate change.
Some of the recommendations made to the Government did not make it into the national climate change strategy, including the one that we stop using peat to generate electricity. The latest Environmental Protection Agency report states the new peat-fired power stations are major contributors to the rise in emissions that was evident in 2005. Many of the proposals that made it into the strategy have since been shelved or abandoned, including the conversion of Moneypoint from coal to gas and the introduction of a carbon tax. Even the reform of VRT and motor tax, first announced in the strategy seven years ago, has yet to happen. The strategy has been officially under review since 2002.
Instead of reducing pollution in Ireland, the Government has opted to buy pollution permits overseas. The latest figures suggest that direct costs to the taxpayer will be approximately €375 million over the five years covered by the Kyoto Protocol, and Irish business will spend another €150 million buying credits through the European trading scheme. It is important to note that this does not even constitute "buying our way out of Kyoto", as it is often put, because any reductions we fail to make in the current period will simply be carried forward to the next commitment period. The Government and everyone agrees that stricter and more challenging cuts will be necessary in the future.
Friends of the Earth is not saying trading has no place at all. It is simply saying it is neither in Ireland's long-term nor short-term interest to rely on it to the extent we are doing at present. We will have to make the cuts at some point but we seem to be opting for a policy of pay now and cut later rather than cutting now and saving later. I refer to the financial cost in addition to the impact of climate change.
If everyone in the world consumed and polluted like the Irish, humanity would need the resources of three planet Earths to survive, but we only have one. Among rich countries, Ireland is the fifth most polluting per person. By 2012, the same year we plan to overshoot our Kyoto commitment by a factor of two, we plan to be the fifth most generous donor of overseas aid in the world per capita. This is very laudable and we can be justly proud of it. It makes little sense, however, if we continue to pollute at a rate that will allow climate change to undermine the prospects of meeting the UN target of halving poverty in the poorest countries.
In the short term, we can trade a little with countries that are not polluting to the same degree but, in the long term, we will have to make cuts to do our fare share. At present, the Chinese, Ethiopians and Brazilians can trade with us but, by 2050, when we will need to have taken control of climate change and when we will want to have eliminated global poverty, there should be no reason to expect the average Irish person to be polluting more than that the average Chinese, Brazilian or Ethiopian. At present we are polluting at more than ten times the rate of the average Chinese and 100 times the rate of the average Ethiopian. The upshot is that the sooner we make the shift to reduce our pollution at home, the better it will be for us and everyone else.
I will outline Friends of the Earth's proposals for the committee. It is clear that long-term targets pose difficulties for modern democracies which are dominated by the 24-hour news cycle and the five-year electoral cycle. Ireland's failure even to move towards meeting the Kyoto target it agreed ten years ago is evidence enough of that. The timeframe for reaching the target was always considered too distant to be immediately relevant to political decision makers whose job it was to make the difficult decisions that would have moved us forward. That is why Friends of the Earth proposes that the targets that represent Ireland's fair share of pollution reductions should be enshrined in law. That would create a public policy framework that would drive the innovation needed. California has already made a move in this direction, inserting the figure of an 80% reduction by 2050 into law. Three similar proposals are now before the US Senate, the most well known of which, the McCain-Lieberman-Obama proposal, is bipartisan and sponsored by two of the leading contenders for the US Presidency next year. The British Government has announced it will introduce a similar law. We argue that the targets should be annualised in a carbon budget to make them immediate and real for people and policymakers. In Britain both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats support this approach, while the Labour Government has yet to publish its Bill.
We would like the committee to review the best practice proposals in other countries and report on their application in Ireland. Friends of the Earth is concerned at the level of public debate in Ireland so far. While catching up fast with our European counterparts, the debate has not properly prepared the ground for the Government to take adequate action or show real leadership of the sort displayed in ensuring Ireland ratified the Nice treaty.
The public consultation on the review of the NCSS lasted only two months, one of which was last August. There was no State advertising or promotion of participation. Five months later we have not seen the submissions published on the Department's website. We ask the committee to request that the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government publish the submissions, as the Department stated it would, on the website before the climate strategy is published to facilitate public debate on Ireland's response to the threat of climate change.
The first Kyoto Protocol commitment kicks in in ten months. The new NCSS will shape Irish policy for the five years. There is a real danger, however, that the opportunity to move Ireland onto a low carbon pathway will be missed, unless there is a collective public commitment to real action which the committee could do much to facilitate. It could hold public hearings on Ireland's climate change policy before the national strategy is finalised in order that it is not just published by the Department but that there is a sense of ownership on the part of society as a whole in the reduction of emissions.
The Stern review made clear the economic imperative to act. The IPCC report from the United Nations makes clear the scientific imperative to act. Global warming and peak oil mean that change is coming whether we welcome it. Our choice is what kind of change and whether we manage it by making the shift to sustainability in a planned step-by-step way, starting now, or whether we wait and let change happen to us by way of shocks, disruption and upheaval down the line. It is time to act.
