Climate change seems set to become an even bigger issue this year with the publication of a long-awaited assessment of the risks of global warming by the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This scientific body, acknowledged as the most authoritative on the subject, is to publish its multi-volume report over the next few months, starting with a comprehensive evaluation in February of the latest evidence for global warming. In April and May, the IPCC will move on to deal with the projected effects of climate change and strategies to avert these damaging long-term effects.
What the report will do is to underline, as last year's review for the British government by its chief economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, has already done, the urgency of this unprecedented threat facing humanity. Although the European Union has committed itself to a policy of seeking to ensure that average global surface temperatures do not rise by more than two degrees Celsius by 2050, member states have yet to agree on the measures that will be needed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Even if the EU was to cut its emissions by 30 to 50 per cent relative to 1990 levels, the world would still have a major problem unless the US - as the single biggest culprit - and major developing countries such as China and India followed suit. This will only be achieved through twin-track negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.
Ireland must play an active part in this process, not only by supporting EU initiatives internationally but also by taking measures to curb its own emissions. This will require serious domestic measures and not merely the purchase of carbon credits for reductions achieved elsewhere. In that context, it is deplorable that Minister for the Environment Dick Roche saw fit to allow a lead-in period of up to two years before the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive - adopted as long ago as 2002 - is brought into operation here. What the delay means at a time of record housing production is that tens of thousands of homes will be built in Ireland over the next two years without having to meet the directive's tougher standards.
Last year was the warmest on record in many parts of Ireland, and measurements at the Phoenix Park meteorological station in Dublin show nine of the 12 hottest summers since 1855 occurred over the past 11 years. While warmer weather here would generally be seen as quite welcome, it cannot be isolated from the trend internationally, as measured by the World Meteorological Organisation; its provisional figures show that global temperatures are now almost 0.5 degrees higher than the average for the three decades prior to 1990.
If this trend is to be moderated or reversed, governments throughout the world - including our own - must start facing up to their responsibilities.