The Kyoto Protocol, which requires Ireland to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to just 13 per cent above their 1990 level by 2012, came into effect yesterday, more than 10 years after it was originally agreed.
Minister for the Environment John Gormley described the event coinciding with New Year's Day as a "historic moment for the world" and a "hugely significant first step in the global response to climate change".
The protocol, part of the climate change treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, requires developed countries, except the US which refused to ratify it, to reduce their total greenhouse gas emissions to at least 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.
The 37 industrialised countries which have committed to the protocol have all been given different targets to reach by the end of 2012. Ireland has one of the least stringent targets to achieve at 13 per cent above 1990 levels. The US, had it signed up, would have had to achieve a target of 7 per cent below 1990 levels.
The most recent official inventory, taken in 2005, shows Irish emissions at about 25 per cent above 1990 levels. Measures introduced by Mr Gormley in the carbon budget, published the day after the full Budget in early December, will not bring Ireland's emission down to the target level. The carbon levy on fossil fuels, hoped for by the Greens, was not introduced in the Budget and may not be implemented next year either.
This will require Ireland to buy carbon credits, known as the "flexible mechanism" of achieving targets. While their cost will be decided by the free market, Ireland could be spending more than €100 million a year on credits.
The recent climate change conference in Bali has proposed more stringent targets from 2013.
Welcoming the start of the protocol, Mr Gormley said much more needed to be done if the worst effects of climate change were to be avoided.
"Recent scientific advice from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change leaves no doubt about the fact that the earth's climate system is warming, that the temperature increase is widespread across the world and that the underlying cause is human activity. A more comprehensive global response is needed in order to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a safe level."
The international agenda was focused on a successor to Kyoto, Mr Gormley said. "A key element of the negotiations will be the development of a shared vision for long-term co-operative action, including a long-term global goal for emission reductions. For me that means not allowing global surface temperature to exceed two degrees above pre-industrial levels."
Beyond this temperature the threat to people and the environment becomes unacceptable, with the possibility of severe and potentially irreversible damage due to increases in droughts, heatwaves and floods, Mr Gormley said. "That prospect is not acceptable and must not be allowed to happen. We have a very short window of opportunity in which to get the global response right."
Environmental group Grian said that unless Irish climate policy changed radically over the next two years, when carbon credit payments kick in, Ireland would face bills of €2 million per week.
"This is dead money in terms of the national exchequer in the double sense, that it is both money paid abroad to foreign investors, and also that it is money that is therefore not available for investment in directly reducing Irish emissions, and hence ongoing Kyoto liability, at home," said Grian spokesman Pat Finnegan.
