Sir, – The Committee on Climate Action is due to report soon on its stated goal of “making Ireland a leader in tackling climate change”. This goal was provided by the Citizens’ Assembly. After the amazing outpouring of energy of young people on the subject, the momentum to finally start acting should be unstoppable.
It is therefore somewhat unsettling to read reports that some members of the committee are trying to water down the recommendations (“Fine Gael accused of attempting to dilute key climate action target”, News, March 26th).
It seems that the doctrine of “laggard-ism” is baked pretty hard into some of our representatives. Given the complete failure of his predecessors to address the problem, it would be good to see Minister for Climate Action Richard Bruton come out strongly in favour of immediate, clear, measurable reductions in our CO2 emissions.
According to the latest UN report, we have years, rather than decades, to act.
The science is unambiguous, the people have spoken, and we’re way behind. The only question on every journalist’s (and voter’s) lips when confronted by plans to address climate change should be, “When will your plan cause our emissions to fall?” If the plan can’t quickly meet this clear goal, then this current generation of politicians will be remembered as the last that was still able to do something, but chose not to. – Yours, etc,
DAVE MATHIESON,
Salthill,
Galway.