At last, a law that recognises reality of global warming
IT took 15 years, nine attempts and the changing of many minds, but Ireland finally has a climate law that fully recognises the grim reality of global warming and requires fast and forceful action to address it.
The law is still a bill so it has to be passed by the Oireachtas but, with all three coalition party leaders jointly presenting it, that process should, barring unforeseen circumstances, be as close to a formality as any transformative legislation can hope for.
Unfortunately, everything else about the law was foreseen.
Unabated greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature rise, climate chaos, extreme weather and the knock-on effects on everything from the reliability of the growing seasons for providing the food we eat, to the replenishment of the rivers that fill our taps, to the ability of our homes to withstand furious floods and ferocious gales.
All of that was laid out in 2005 when the first attempt at enacting climate law was made via the Green Party’s Climate Change Targets Bill, which the Fianna
Fáil government defeated following debates where its TDs denounced the proposal as madness, a recipe for redundancies, the ruination of farming and an overly generous response given the size of Ireland in an international context.
There was also a bit of, not quite climate change denial, but certainly climate change downplaying, thrown in.
Six more bills followed which were also defeated or, more often, allowed to lapse without even the courtesy of a debate, before a government party finally came up with the 2015 Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act.
It was a start, but a flawed and weak start, as the Supreme Court ultimately decided when ruling this summer that the Act’s great undertaking and chief accomplishment, the National Mitigation Plan, was so flawed and weak, it went nowhere near to meeting the country’s climate action responsibilities.
And now we have the Climate Action (Amendment) Bill which promises to go further than any of its predecessors in pushing us, as a society and economy, to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to the point where they will no longer pose a threat to the planet. To the point of net zero.
This piece of legislation differs from all the others not only because it is backed by the three government parties, not only in its ambition, but in the fact that it sets a target at all.
The handy thing about targets in government policy is that they’re endlessly moveable.
Whether the aim is building so many homes within a certain time, ending child poverty by a given date, or reducing hospital waiting lists to within a set length, targets are invariably missed, moved, or muddied.
It becomes a habit, supported by the certainty that there will be another term in office to fight for, another group of voters to win over and a collective forgetfulness or confusion over what was really promised in the first place.
That’s why governments very, very rarely and very, very reluctantly, ever put a target into law.
But climate change is different and it demands a different response.
To hit net zero, this bill requires the creation of a complex arrangement of tasks, boundaries, checks and balances for every government department and state agency that will have an impact on every person in the country through the way they work, travel, consume and power and heat their homes.
Failure to co-operate with those arrangements essentially means breaking the law.
It also means crushing a last chance at redemption for 15 years of time-wasting.