This week, the EU announced that Ireland's carbon emissions must decrease by 20 per cent by 2020. What will it mean for you? Fewer fossil fuels? Cycling to work? €25,000 to make your home energy efficient? No more cheap flights? Are you ready to make the change, asks Harry McGee
A couple of days ago I clicked into YouTube to watch barely-remembered snatches from The Day After, a made-for-TV film from 1983. It depicted an intercontinental nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union and its horrific aftermath - a bleak irradiated landscape, people succumbing to horrible deaths from radiation sickness.
The movie has not travelled well through the intervening 25 years. It looks hopelessly dated, and it's all too over-the-top.
But back then I looked at it through a very different prism. The Cold War was still at its height and nuclear war seemed more than a remote prospect. The Day After was clever in that it graphically brought to the surface a communal fear that had never been exploited fully before.
One of the best themes to emerge from any of documentary-maker Michael Moore's films comes from a long passage exploring communal fear in Bowling for Columbine. Moore argues that politicians, the media, and authority figures in general foster a climate of fear because it serves their purposes. There have been many examples over the years of the hyping of fears: crime levels, immigration, Ebola, avian flu, atomic war, even the so-called Y2K computer crash. In all cases, the threat never fully materialised; the tide of fear reached a high water mark - and a flutter of mass panic - and then quietly ebbed into nothingness (with the exception of crime and immigration, which exist in a a state of permanent low-level hysteria).
But climate change is different. There is nothing passing about global warming. The problem is that when you hear the full-on apocalyptic stuff - the world at its warmest for thousands of years; the chilling prospect of a seven-metre rise in the oceans that will wipe out entire low-lying cities - it is not fanciful. The evidence underlying it is unequivocal.
On Wednesday, Ireland was given a jolting reminder of this new dispensation when the EU Commission imposed onerous targets on this country. Greenhouse gas emissions from Ireland will have to come down by 20 per cent from 2005 figures by 2020. The maths of that means a drop in emissions from about 70 million tonnes of CO2 to about 55 million tonnes.
Translating all that into English is a bit trickier. What can be said is that the Commission has hit us harder than everybody else except Denmark because of our profligacy over the past decade.
As one of our foremost experts on climate change, Prof John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth, says: "Ireland has no friend left in Europe when you look at the burden of distribution. The 20 per cent is a signal that we misused the benefits we were given under Kyoto."
What will this dramatically changed landscape look like? If Ireland is to achieve these targets, then radical changes must take place between now and 2020. You need to think the following: swingeing cuts in fossil fuel use for transport, energy and heating; windmills everywhere; wave energy; solar panels; fewer cars, more bicycles; public transport; congestion charges; carbon levies; huge bills to insulate and retrofit houses; smart meters; and the end of cheap air travel.
When you talk to people with expertise and a professional interest in this area, certain phrases recur. That Ireland has already missed the boat (especially on housing). That we need carrots and sticks - lots of sticks, such as carbon levies and congestion charges and penalties for wasteful use of energy.
For Prof Sweeney the proposition is simple: "What we will see is people thinking of energy as a form of currency, something that needs to be husbanded and to be managed frugally. I do not think that we will be looking at an Ireland that will be radically different than now. The landscape will be the same; we will still have pasture and cows, but there will be a bit more thoughtfulness about how we use energy."
Architect Duncan Stewart's television persona hovers between upbeat and singalong. And that makes his annoyance - bordering on anger - about Ireland's failures all the more surprising. His prognosis is very glum indeed.
"The writing is on the wall,"he says. "We are talking about a paradigm shift where there is going to be very profound change. Already we have left it too late. This fiddling has been going on for 10 years. The Government has done nothing except let our emissions rise. Pro rata we have the highest emission rates in Europe, 17 tonnes per person compared to seven tonnes in Sweden. We are regarded in Europe as the problem: a wealthy small country that has squandered the opportunity. At the moment there is no stick and there is no carrot."
For others, such as Donal Buckley, the head of business infrastructure at Ibec, there may not be as much wiggle room as we think in terms of reducing emissions in some sectors, such as agriculture and transport. "There are not a lot of low-hanging fruit," he says. "It's hard to see how we are going to get the gains."
If we are to reach the target, this is how Buckley sees it happening: "About 50 per cent will be achieved through efficiencies and modified behaviour, about 50 per cent from technology."
BUT THERE'S NO doubt that political leadership will be required and the two most visible personifications of that will be the two Green ministers, John Gormley and Eamon Ryan.
Those who know Ryan, the Minister for Energy, know that he goes into Al Gore-visionary mode a lot, that he certainly talks the talk but has yet to produce a silver bullet. He is always positive, always upbeat, but rarely specific. You are reminded of the old joke about economists: "That's all very well in practice, but will it work in theory?"
But those close to Ryan and Gormley say they have done a huge amount of groundwork behind the scenes and the results will emerge this year. Ryan has spent a lot of time talking to business, to utilities and to experts, and he believes a a sea change has occurred. In the spring he will unveil an ambitious insulation and retrofit plan for the existing housing stock and pilot smart meters for homes. He also believes the ESB will be the world's leanest and greenest utility by 2020.
There have been announcements on VRT, car tax and light bulbs from Minister for the Environment John Gormley. But there's also a sense that the Green ministers need to make a big gesture and come up with a bold "smoking ban" type gambit that will capture people's imagination and lead them into the change of mindset that the Greens are so keen to promote.
Ryan puts the change in context: "Going back 14 years to 1994, no one had a mobile phone or e-mail and one or two people had access to the internet. Those three things have had a fundamental change on our lives. Technology has changed the way we live. So will climate change," he says.
So, down to specifics. In the long-term, there will be few one-off dwellings, and no long-distance commutes, although it's agreed the haphazard development of the past 20 years will take a generation or more to undo.
For Dr Pádraic Larkin, the deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the revision of the National Spatial Strategy will be vital to reduce emissions. "You need to get people beside their jobs. The way that it is at present is that people are living further and further away from their work. The correction of this is a long-term one, but a decision will have to be made to implement it."
Most of our food, too, will need to be locally produced, with little or nothing having high air miles.
The biggest change will be in housing. Energy and heating use will have to drop to a quarter of its present use, which means expensive retrofitting of the existing housing stock.
Stewart's outlook is grim: "It's going to cost an enormous amount of money. Our housing stock is 1.6 million. It will cost an average of €25,000 per house. That will be more than €40 billion. When you add in public and commercial buildings you are talking about €70 billion. Grants cannot cover that.
"We clearly missed the boat. We went through the Celtic Tiger. It was a very greedy and selfish time of people making profit. It left a legacy of disaster. What is it going to take to tackle that problem as we go into a recession, and there's no rise in property prices?" he asks forlornly.
For Oisín Coughlan of Friends of the Earth, some incentives are needed. He suggests that stamp duty be linked to energy efficiency. "The higher the rating, the less stamp duty will be. As a seller, it will be easier to sell as stamp duty will be lower. It will also be a better investment for buyers," is his proposal.
THERE IS A consensus on the next proposition: that cheap air travel will come to an end. Eamon Ryan doesn't pull his punches. "Ryanair's Michael O'Leary argues that aviation contributes only 2-3 per cent. It just would not be helpful if everyone adopted that approach and passed the buck. The truth is there has been a spectacular growth in airline emissions and they are much higher than 2 per cent in Ireland. Figures of 2-3 per cent are there because in the developing world few fly - in developed economies it is a much higher percentage. And emissions are much more damaging when released in the upper troposphere. Aviation has to play its part. The sector's inclusion in the emissions trading scheme is a positive step."
Coughlan also puts it bluntly: "The single most polluting thing any of us will do this year is fly outside Europe. We have to reduce." Surprisingly, he says that Friends of the Earth will not campaign against a second terminal in Dublin airport, because of the current inadequacy of the airport.
However, the group will fiercely oppose a third terminal at the airport. Government projections are to double passengers to over 30 million between 2005 and 2030 with this new terminal. That won't be possible if Ireland is to meet its targets.
Steward is also harsh: "Aviation is out of control. Every trip to the US costs a tonne and a half of CO2. It's a luxury that we can no longer afford. What is worst is people with private jets and helicopters flying around. We are paying for them."
Sweeney has a little balm for air travellers. "Unnecessary air travel should be discouraged," he says, but adds that "we should not let countries become insular again. We need to have shared experiences and avoid the risk of creating fortress Ireland."
AT THE MOMENT, agriculture is the biggest emitter of all, at 28 per cent, but, as the EPA's Larkin points out, the trend is downwards. He sees a distinct move away from ruminant animals to energy production from willow, from rape, and even from grass. He says there is huge biomass and biofuel potential from crops, for both transport and energy. But the bogs need to be left alone for a simple reason: "The boglands are all potential carbon sinks if they are managed properly."
On the energy front, Eamon Ryan has vowed that every household in the country will have a smart meter and that the ESB will become a world leader as a green-energy utility. His position is that the meters will be able to turn off appliances - including freezers - to reduce wastefulness. They will also help people steer away from consuming too much at peak times, and will help change people's mindsets, changing the way they think about using power, he argues.
Ryan sets out the argument: "At 5pm each evening, demand shoots up. That's very dirty power, you often need to fire up a power station to use it. If you can manage demand across the country, especially at those times, you save a lot of money and a lot of emissions." He is also very confident that 42 per cent of electricity generation will come from renewables by 2020, mostly from wind, but also from advances in the technology of tide energy and wave energy.
At a micro-level, too, there will be alternatives, as technologies like solar power and wood pellets improve, and small factories produce their own power from locally grown biomass. Solar panels will be seen on rooftops everywhere, supplying most of a household's hot water supplies.
But collectively, that will not be enough. Stewart is scathing about the failure to include a carbon tax or levy and insists it is needed now. "It was included in the National Climate Change Strategy in 2000 but it was ditched in 2004. What short-termism. We need a carbon levy that is ring-fenced and goes into transparent account for the purpose only of saving energy. We also need to protect the old and the poor."
He also blasts Transport 21 which is heavily tilted towards road rather than rail. In a memorable put-down, he rails: "All this waste with new motorways - in half a century they will be used for growing potatoes."
Will car use be targeted further? Certainly. And the consensus is that a congestion charge will be introduced sooner rather than later, maybe in 2011, coupled with a big expansion of the bus fleet. Most say we cannot wait until the metro is complete, and some, including Coughlan, argue that the bigger the car, the greater the congestion charge should be.
Larkin says Transport 21 needs to be speeded up. "Congestion charges for cities will have to be put in place. It will have the same effect as the introduction of clamping. You could find that it will reduce congestion and get people to use public transport or bicycles. Of course you need to have the buses [in place]. But you cannot wait forever."
Car ownership has ballooned in the State, with many people buying bigger cars as status symbols. The result is that emissions have shot up by a huge 160 per cent since 1990. "It's very difficult to deal with this problem," says Buckley. "We had the highest oil prices last year, yet emissions went up by 6 per cent. The problem is that many cars and houses are new."
Ryan has made it a personal mission to encourage far more people to cycle. "It needs radical leadership and courage to show government thinking has changed," he says.
Much will be determined by how much oil prices increase. Stewart says that they could double in the next five years. Larkin points out that 20 per cent of the diesel bought in the State is "fuel tourism" - bought by people from the North because it is cheaper. The problem is that it adds to the South's emission total for cars. Larkin believes price increases will be necessary to counter this and to reduce car use generally.
The Day After leads me to one final theme: the power source that until recently dared not say its name. In the past year, nuclear power has come back onto the agenda in a dramatic way, although opposition in Ireland remains very high.
But according to Buckley, nuclear is going to be part of the solution. "We already have an inter-connector with the North and to Britain and receive nuclear power that way. The debate is whether we are going to have a reactor on the island or not," he says. "It's a geographical debate. Some of the [existing reactors] are not that far away from us. They do not respect borders."
But, in a strange way, nuclear power by the back door will be one of the less dramatic changes that will occur. For once, the communal fear is real and has been scientifically authenticated. There may be no mushroom cloud, but the result will be the same - a scorched earth, everything changed.