Climate Report Card - Village Magazine

42 February 2016

Climate

Report Card

by John Gibbons

he Fine Gael/Labour coalition govern-

ment did manage to pull off one

headline act that had eluded the pre-

vious FF/Green administration, and

that was they managed to get climate

legislation, of sorts, on to the statute books for

the ﬁrst time ever.

In its 2016 Annual Report on the Programme

for Government, this fact is trumpeted as bur-

nishing the ecological credentials of an

administration that has, over the last ﬁve years,

shown a strong aversion to what husky-hug-

ging UK prime minister David Cameron once

memorably called “that green crap”.

The reason is hardly a mystery. Both IBEC and

the IFA are among the lead industry players who

have lobbied tirelessly to ensure any climate

actions that should emanate from the Cabinet

table would be so diluted as to be worthless.

And, with Fine Gael in particular basing its

entire political pitch on growth-at-all-costs,

nothing that looked like slowing that gallop was

ever going to be entertained.

"The recently enacted Climate Action and Low

Carbon Development Act 2015 builds on exist-

ing efforts to decarbonise the economy and

places the Government’s adaptation efforts on

a legal statutory footing”, according to the

Annual Report. And those “existing efforts”

would be what exactly?

‘The Act provides for a National Mitigation

Plan which will specify how we will achieve our

objectives as well as a National Climate Change

Adaptation Framework which will provide a

strategic policy focus”, it goes on to say. This

Mitigation Plan has been safely kicked into that

distant place known only as “later in 2016”

– somewhere safely beyond the shores of this

election.

Back in February 2011, Fine Gael and Labour

jointly published their Programme for Govern-

ment. Its section dealing with climate change

ran to all of 95 words, including the promise to

deliver a Climate Change Bill, which “will pro-

vide certainty surrounding government policy

and provide a clear pathway for emissions

reductions, in line with negotiated EU 2020

targets”.

The section also promised legislation to give

the relevant ministers temporary powers over

the State’s response to what it calls “natural

disasters”. This was at least prescient, given

the unnatural number of weather-related disas-

ters that have occurred in the term of the

outgoing government, up to and including the

severe winter ﬂooding that – yet again –

recently plunged much of the Shannon region

into chaos.

The last, brief, section in this 2011 document

promised to “further improve energy efﬁciency

for new buildings, with a view to moving

towards zero carbon homes in the longer term.

All new commercial buildings will be required

to signiﬁcantly reduce their carbon footprint”.

By ‘further improve’, this presumably meant, at

the very least, maintaining the progress of the

outgoing FF/Green administration regarding

energy efﬁciency in the building sector.

How has this one measurable commitment

worked out? One of the widely accepted suc-

cesses of the previous government was its

home-retroﬁt programme. In 2011, some 67,500

homes underwent an energy overhaul under

the scheme. By last year, under FG/Labour, this

had plummeted, to just 21,600 energy retroﬁts.

Indeed, efforts by the atrocious outgoing Envi-

ronment minister Labour’s Alan Kelly to stymie

local authorities from pushing towards ‘passive

house’ standards speaks volumes for the

“green crap” mentality that has pervaded the

Cabinet since 2011.

To be fair, the writing was on the wall from the

outset. Take a section in the 2011 Programme

for Government under the heading ‘Peat’. First

off, the incoming administration magisterially

granted "an exemption for domestic turf cutting

on 75 National Heritage Area sites subject to the

introduction of agreed national code of environ-

mental practices". What, you might wonder, is

the value of a bog being designated as a

National Heritage Area when the government

signs off on this free-for-all before even taking

ofﬁce?

Soothingly, they went on to promise to

"establish an independent mediation to resolve

outstanding issues associated with turf cutting

on blanket bogs". It would be unfair to single

out the private contractors and their political

accomplices for sole mention in this regard.

2016 ELECTION

IBEC and the IFA have

lobbied tirelessly to ensure

any climate actions tabled

would be diluted

"D-"

"Little real engagement on climate.

Promised little but delivered even

less: 'dog ate my climate policy’ not

a valid excuse. Avoided a ‘fail’ by

scraping in Climate Act)"

February 2016 43

Climate Legislation

Climate Change legislation promised.

Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 delivered, to mixed

reviews. Long on aspirations, short on the targets and enforceability that

characterise most other legislation. Climate Advisory Council, heavily laden

with economists, convened.

Home Energy

Promised to double funding for home energy efﬁciency & renewable energy

until end of 2013, then replace it with ‘pay as you save’ scheme.

75% fewer homes being retroﬁtted than ﬁve years earlier.

Green Jobs

Ireland to be established as ‘a renewable manufacturing hub to attract interna-

tional and domestic investment’. Energy co-ops to be supported in order to

‘make it easier for small- scale renewable energy providers to contribute to our

renewables targets’.

Promises long forgotten. No renewable energy ‘hub’, and worse, the feed-in

tariff for small-scale energy producers, rather than being expanded, has

been scrapped by the ESB, under government guidance.

Transport

We recognise the need to rebalance transport policy to favour public

transport…’.

Bus and rail fares increased. Private car sales return to pre-2008 levels.

Trafﬁc chaos returns to M50. Instead of reducing, emissions from Ireland’s

transport sector set to rise by 12% between 2013 and 2012, according to

SEAI data.

PROGRAMME FOR GOVERNMENT COMMITMENT ACTUAL PERFORMANCE  - 

Three woefully inefficient peat-burning

plants in the midlands only remain open thanks

to the Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy on

electricity bills siphoning some €120 million a

year into these plants – that’s around €2.5 mil-

lion a week in subsidies to produce the dirtiest,

poorest grade and most ecologically damaging

form of energy possible. In 2014, this State-

supported madness exceeded the total PSO

support for the production of clean electricity

using renewable energy.

Meanwhile, the government has extended

the life of these monuments to parochialism

and incompetence by another 15 years, which

is nicely timed to coincide with 2030, by which

time Bord Na Mona will have completed its dec-

ades-long assault on some of Europe’s richest

ecological regions, as well as what used to be

our most efﬁcient carbon sinks. Quite where

this ﬁts with the government’s new climate leg-

islations that “builds on existing efforts to

decarbonise the economy”, it’s difﬁcult to even

begin to fathom.

To understand the true objectives of the 2011

Programme for Government, it’s necessary to

look elsewhere. For instance, under the section

headed ‘Growing the agri-food sector’, the

seeds of the agri-steamroller later known as

Food Harvest 2020 are clearly set out: “Further

expansion and innovation in our dairy and meat

sectors will be a key priority under a reformed

CAP and we will work with industry to achieve

more intensive levels of production”.

Note the blunt language above. Such sly

euphemisms as “sustainable intensiﬁcation”

hadn’t yet entered the lexicon of spin – this was

a straightforward declaration of expansion and

intensiﬁcation. Later in the same section, it men-

tions that Bord Bia will be given a number of

marketing tasks, including developing “value-

added Irish food brands, such as an eco brand”.

The State food board has been an enthusias-

tic ambassador of a ‘greenwashed’ Irish food

sector. Irish agriculture currently accounts for

well over a third of Ireland’s GHG emissions,

and this will, according to EPA estimates, rise

to 45% by 2020. In a stunning act of moral lar-

ceny, one small, albeit politically untouchable,

sector of the Irish economy has sequestered vir

tually half of the entire nation’s emissions

budget.

Its boosters, notably outgoing Agriculture

minister, Simon Coveney have made it abun

dantly clear that our most emissions-intensive

forms of agriculture (beef production and

dairying) are planning to continue to ramp up

as the national dairy herd expands

dramatically.

What jars for these agendas is the pesky EU-

mandated EU emissions cuts (20% by 2020,

rising sharply to 40% by 2030). This exposes

Ireland to ﬁnes that even An Taoiseach admits

may run towards half a billion euro per annum.

Just as the banking industry’s gambling losses

were ‘nationalised’, it seems clear that the beef

and dairy sectors are using similar political

clout to ensure the hapless general taxpayer

once again picks up the tab.

Anyhow, if all else fails, it’ll be Enda The Peni-

tent, cap in hand, off to Brussels later this year

to ask the big lads if they’d be able to do us a

dig-out on all these ﬁnes…by rewriting the

emissions rules as they might apply to Ireland,

in light of the ‘special position’ of our agricul-

ture sector (which is already, lest we forget, in

receipt of EU taxpayers’ largesse to the tune of

over €2bn cash transfers annually).

Enda Kenny completely misread the mood of

the COP21 Climate Conference in December. He

breezed in to Paris to tell journalists not to pay

heed to the high-sounding blarney in his formal

speech. This backﬁred spectacularly, leading

to some frantic back-pedalling as the gravity of

the Paris Agreement came to be better under-

stood. Whether this has helped loosen the iron

grip of corporate lobbyists on a new Fine Gael-

led coalition remains to be seen.

The Climate Mitigation

Plan has been safely

kicked into that distant

place known only as

“later in 2016”

Climate Legislation Report Card