As world leaders meet in Marrakech to follow up on last year's landmark Paris agreement on slowing climate change, the news from home on this front continues to get gloomier while the impending US presidency of Donald Trump puts the whole project of a global climate strategy at risk.
Yet the challenge of reversing human impacts on climate becomes ever more urgent: the World Meteorological Organisation has announced that 2016 will be hotter than the previous record-holder, 2015; 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have occurred in our short century.
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency's four-yearly State of the Irish Environment Report showed that our landscapes and waterways, on which our economy and society ultimately depend, continue to deteriorate. A further EPA bulletin a few days later warned that provisional figures indicate "significant greenhouse gas emission increases were recorded across all the main sectors in 2015, particularly energy industries, transport, agriculture and residential".
The agency links these to economic growth and argues that it is essential to decouple welcome recent increases in employment from greenhouse gas emissions; it adds that we must “ensure that increases in agricultural production aren’t at the expense of the environment”.
Yet each sector responsible for increased emissions tends to blame others, claiming its own contribution to the economy is so vital it cannot change. This was evident again on RTÉ radio yesterday when Irish Farmers’ Association’s environment committee chairman Thomas Cooney rightly criticised the Government for failing to sufficiently incentivise electric car purchases to reduce transport emissions, and for not supporting solar energy initiatives by farmers.
But agricultural emissions represent 33 per cent of the national total and are largely generated by methane emitted by dairy and beef herds. Cooney argued that “not a huge amount can be done without reducing the national herd”. Yet the IFA’s policy – and the Government’s – is to greatly increase this herd under the Food Wise 2025 strategy.
Minister for Climate Action Denis Naughten, speaking on the same programme, conceded that "dramatic changes need to be made in relation to our economies" and that "we have to drive down emissions in agriculture". But then he fell back on the tired argument that our beef and dairy production is emissions-efficient in relative terms – a fact that does not support the Government's case for increasing those emissions in absolute terms.
Compared with Trump’s ridiculous claim that climate change science is a “scam”, it is some relief that most political leaders in Marrakech recognise that the climate crisis is the defining issue of our era. Unless they embrace courageous and decisive action, however, their recognition will do nothing to avert the gathering storm.