Responding to the climate crisis – The Irish Times - The Irish Times
Responding to the climate crisis - The Irish Times
Sir, – John Leahy (Letters, November 16th) argues that as Ireland’s contribution to total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions comes to 0.11 per cent of the world total, we should forgo efforts to limit our emissions, and instead concentrate on mitigating the effects of climate change. This argument ignores two salient facts. The first is that Irish emissions per capita are second highest in the EU and 27th highest in the world, indicating our business-as-usual model is far more energy intensive and polluting than it needs to be.
Second, all but 16 countries contribute less than 1 per cent of world total GHG emissions. If each of these countries unilaterally decided they were too small to make a difference, climate mitigation would be impossible.
Just as one individual’s income tax contribution is minuscule compared to the total tax take, it requires every individual to pay their share for the total collected to prove sufficient for the country’s administrative needs. So it is with climate – all actors, big and small, must play their part if meaningful mitigation is to occur.
While the current UK government is making populist noises about rolling back environmental policies, the UK has in fact reduced its annual emissions by 45.8 per cent in total and 54 per cent per capita since 1990. China is installing 210GW of solar electrical generation capacity in 2023 alone, equivalent to twice the total solar capacity of the US, and is predicted to see a structural decrease in carbon dioxide emissions from next year. In the EU, renewable energy generation exceeded fossil fuel generation for the first time in 2022.
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Climate action is happening, and small countries like Ireland cannot afford to ignore their responsibility to contribute. Future generations will not thank us for compiling lists of excuses to stand idly by while the natural world upon which our civilisation rests enters a state of collapse. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN WALL,
Rialto,
Dublin 8.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.