Tony Blair is right: our climate change policies are irrational

Meanwhile, Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s new interior minister, has ordered that asylum seekers be turned away at the border, causing large traffic tailbacks as the result of new border checks at Poland’s frontier crossings to Germany.

The LGBTQ+ agenda suffered a key reverse when the Supreme Court in the UK ruled that the definition of women and men under equality law related to biological sex rather than chosen gender. In America, huge corporations including Mastercard, Citi, Pepsi, Nissan, PwC, Deloitte and Diageo have withdrawn funding from various Pride festivals.

To top it all, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, in April called for a radical reset of “irrational” net-zero policies because they were “doomed to fail”. To have the most gifted politician of the last half-century in these islands — just reflect on his impact in conjuring up peace in Northern Ireland — rain on the international climate change parade is significant. Blair has his own well-funded think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, behind him to provide intellectual ammunition for the political battle ahead. Maybe it’s time we started raising funds for the Micheál Martin Institute for Global Inertia.

Blair made his comments at the launch of a paper, published by his institute, titled The Climate Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change. The first sentence of the foreword is explosive but sadly accurate: “People know that the current state of debate over climate change is riven with irrationality.” Elsewhere Blair claims that voters “feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know the impact of global emissions is minimal”.

Blair’s most brutal assertion is that any strategy based on phasing out fossil fuels in the short term or limiting their consumption is doomed to fail. But that, in essence, is the basis of Irish government policy on climate change. Blair reckons that without turning some of the emerging technologies into financially viable options, the world will choose the cheapest option: “This applies to everything from nuclear fusion to sustainable aviation fuel, to green steel and low-emissions cement.”

The paper’s author, Lindy Fursman, a former climate adviser to the New Zealand government, made several salient points along similar lines. Blair and his foundation do not deny climate change or its potential costs; it is the West’s policy response that they question. Her key conclusion was that we must choose between, on the one hand, innovation and co-operation and, on the other, escalating climate chaos.

One of the first to respond to Blair was Ed Miliband, the British energy security and net zero secretary. Miliband was a close adviser to Gordon Brown when the latter was chancellor under Blair, and was catapulted into the cabinet when Brown became prime minister. I am a fan of Miliband. During the 2009 UK parliamentary expenses scandal, Miliband was named by The Daily Telegraph as one of the “saints” of the scandal, due to his claiming one of the lowest amounts of expenses in the House of Commons and for submitting no claims that later had to be paid back.

Miliband criticised Blair for being defeatist. It is notable that Blair was criticised for his conclusion rather than for any of the individual intellectual planks on which he based that conclusion.

Nicholas Stern, the economist whose seminal climate change report was published by Blair’s government in 2006, criticised the Blair institute’s report as “muddled and misleading”, adding: “There is far more progress being made around the world to decarbonise the global economy than it suggests … Delay is dangerous.”

The government here set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 51 per cent on 2018 levels by 2030. This target is part of a broader national strategy to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021 legally mandates this 51 per cent reduction.

According to a report last month, the Environmental Protection Agency says that we are set to badly miss the 2030 target even if we take additional measures being contemplated. Some experts conclude that the state could, in consequence, face financial penalties up to €28 billion. That exceeds 10 per cent of our modified figure (GNI*) of annual national income for one year, or more than 1 per cent for each year covered by the obligation.

It is insane to levy fines of this scale for not doing enough to push a public goal. They would hit Ireland particularly hard as we experience considerably faster economic growth, and thus greater upward emissions pressures, than our European partners. But I anticipate the fines not being imposed because rule by EU committee, even if democratically sanctioned, simply won’t fly. As noted by Mark Foley, the former EirGrid boss, “the climate targets were never realistic in the first place”.

I expect the EU to change its stance on climate change. There are plentiful examples of when Europe’s graduate, lanyard-wearing policy elite went way beyond what its ordinary citizens want. Here, we have a new Leaving Certificate subject that aims to encourage students to become activists on climate change. Is it in Ireland’s interests to raise a generation combining political belligerence with an inability to master basic tasks?

One thing that Ireland, and the rest of the EU, could do to significantly reduce carbon emissions would be to invest heavily in nuclear power. But our ruling class simply won’t dare. For this and other reasons, the global climate crisis will continue to get worse.

PS:

Recently Tom Gilligan, director of services with responsibility for housing at Mayo county council, proposed a community-led boycott of holiday homeowners. Such a call had a strong resonance in the yew county, where the boycott was invented.

A century and a half ago, the Land League aimed to improve conditions for tenant farmers. It was a grim period, with large numbers leaving the country to head abroad. Charles Boycott was the land agent for Lord Erne for a 1,500-acre tract in Co Mayo. Unfortunately for Boycott, he antagonised locals just as the Land League commenced the Land War, a period of intense agitation between 1879 and 1882. The organisation so successfully organised the ostracism of the land agent that he and his family were forced to return to Britain — and a new term was added to the English language.

The crisis in Irish housing is in urban areas rather than in remote spots where you typically find holiday homes. It is therefore unlikely that holiday homes are a significant source of our housing crisis. It is a perverse for Gilligan to call for a boycott of any homeowner when he is the person responsible for delivery of council services. In my opinion he should be removed from office, even if he has subsequently apologised for his remarks. How can anyone expect an even-handed operation of services under his authority?

One of the first things his replacement might think of doing is to sort out the Imperial hotel in Castlebar. The building is where the Land League was founded in 1879 but has been allowed to fall into disrepair since it was bought by the county council in 2011.