Any remaining doubt about global warming was finally dispelled in Paris yesterday when the highly authoritative United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered its latest assessment of the scale of the problem. It gave the strongest warning yet that our greenhouse gas emissions are likely to cause enormous damage to the earth's climate system over the next century, with terrifying consequences for hundreds of millions worldwide. In the coming months further reports from the IPCC's working groups will detail the impact of climate change and ways to mitigate its effects.
Six years ago the IPCC published its last, more tentative assessment, but the science has hardened since then and there is now more certainty that the problem we face constitutes the most serious environmental threat in the history of humanity. Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, helped to heighten awareness of the issue, as did the British government's Stern Review. But the evidence that climate change is happening has also been mounting, from Hurricane Katrina, to Greenland's melting glaciers, the late start to the Alpine ski season, and Ireland's unusually mild and wet winter.
The prognosis is not good for a "business-as-usual" approach. If we carry on pumping more and more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the scientists have warned that average global surface temperatures will rise by 3 degrees by 2100. This has alarming implications - an increase in storm severity and frequency, further melting of polar icecaps, rising seas, droughts, heatwaves and other devastating impacts. And while the IPCC's report is studiously scientific in approach, it is bound to inject a new sense of urgency into negotiations on deep emission cuts worldwide.
Against this backdrop, it is extraordinary that Minister for the Environment Dick Roche would have chosen this week to publish a document entitled Ireland's Progress towards Environmental Sustainability. Though he described it as "objective by any standards", the report highlights only the good news on a range of environmental achievements, such as waste recycling, water quality and measures to deal with climate change. But it fails to mention, inter alia, the alarming extent to which Ireland is locked into a level of car-dependent sprawl unmatched by any other EU country.
The results are to be seen everywhere today, so it is unlikely that the public will be deluded by Mr Roche's "green-washing" exercise. That is particularly true in relation to the Government's response to climate change, which relies far too much on buying carbon credits abroad rather than implementing measures at home to reduce per capita CO2 emissions that are among the highest in the world. Going into the next round of UN talks to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, he must produce a revised and credible National Climate Change Strategy containing concrete measures showing that Ireland will play its part in dealing with the issue.