Climate crisis – a stark warning from UN

Sir, – The latest warning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“Climate decisions made this decade will last ‘thousands of years’, IPCC report warns”, News, March 20th) is a very stark, concrete warning about the impact of failing to act on climate. Absolutely nobody in the world of politics can credibly claim to be unaware of the decades of increasingly urgent warnings from scientists about rising emissions, and with very few exceptions the public messaging from politicians is supportive of climate action.

Yet we continue to see emissions rising, with the highest emissions per capita in the EU by the latest count. There have been some good initiatives around energy generation and efficiency, but it appears that this has been countered by very little ambition in other sectors. Transport in particular is the closest thing we have to “low-hanging fruit”, but as we see time and time again, at local level politicians from many parties, whatever pronouncements they may make at a national level, are at best lukewarm and often outwardly opposed to measures that will reduce transport emissions. In fact, where electoral politics are in play, ministers from the Taoiseach down are prepared to actively support projects that will further increase emissions.

It’s obviously difficult for politicians to push for changes that can seem unpopular in the short term, but coming back to the IPCC’s warnings, it’s surely time for our elected representatives to realise that, no matter what they tell themselves they’re doing to avert a much more unstable and dangerous world, it simply isn’t working. – Yours, etc,

DAVE MATHIESON,