Greenwashingourclimate and our future away

October-November 2024 63

Greenwashing our climate

and our future away

The best lack all awareness of what implementing a

climate agenda requires, especially justiciability for

annual climate targets

By Michael Smith

he EU’s European Green Deal

commits to a 55% reduction in

emissions from 2021 to 2030

delivering net-zero greenhouse

emissions at EU level by 2050; with

Ireland committed – through the 2020

coalition Programme for Government — to

achieving a 51% reduction in emissions on

1998 levels between 2021 and the end of 2030

(working out with compound maths at an

average 7% annually), and to achieving net-

zero emissions no later than 2050.

Dauntless, former Green Party leader Eamon

Ryan declared in September 2020 that Ireland

would match the EU’s commitment of 55% by

2030. It was nonsense. Village estimates

Ireland’s reduction will be less than 55% of

Ryan’s 55% target: perhaps a 29% reduction.

In 2022 it was stated that the cuts for 2021-

2025 would average 4.8% annually while for

2026-2030, they would average 8.3% annually

(nearly twice the percentage).

The problem is that, according to the EPA,

Ireland’s emissions fell by just under 2%

between 2021 and 2022 as the Greens faﬀ ed

around in the ﬁ rst years of their second pot at

government.

So, on 21 May 2024, Eamon Ryan, by then

also Minister for Climate, said “the reality of

failure to reach carbon budget targets of a

4.8% reduction of emissions annually in the

2021-2025 period has to be faced up to,

though signiﬁ cant improvement during 2023

of 5% is likely to be conﬁ rmed”.

According to an Irish Times headline that

day: ‘Ryan: Measures would be ‘challenging’

but achievable’, “doable”. What was doable?

certainly not 55%.

“[New] measures”, according to the Irish

Times’ Environment Editor, “in combination

with actions in the climate plan are projected

to deliver 42% of emission reductions by

2030”. 42%.

Yet just six days later the EPA stated that:

“Ireland is projected to achieve a

reduction of up to 29% in total greenhouse

gas emissions by 2030, compared to a

target of 51%, when the impact of the

majority of actions outlined in Climate

Action Plan 2024 is included.

ENVIRONMENT

The problem is that, according to the

EPA, Ireland’s emissions fell by just under

2 per cent between 2021 and 2022 as

the Greens faffed around unprepared

in the ﬁ rst years of their second time in

government’

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64 October-November 2024

Many in the environmental sector have links

to the Green Party so I felt the need to remind

them of the failures of that party: “Some of the

loose thinking is brought to us by the same

people who actually allowed a clause in the

Green Party’s (2011) Climate Bill that expressly

said it would NOT be justiciable (because the

AG, who turned out not to be their friend, told

them to put it in)!”.

I tried to put the issue in context:

“Other legislation eg planning

legislation already gives third parties

rights. It is crazy not to argue for

enforcement regimes that are as stringent

as those that already exist for other

environmental imperatives. There is

established wording that could achieve

this, that you are not arguing for. History

won’t judge this too well. If you don’t

understand legislation don’t act as

spokespeople or lobbyists on it.

Legislation is diﬀerent from policy. Sorry,

but as you all know this is no small

endeavour and I see this as amateur legal

views from people who know only too well

how ludicrous and dangerous amateur

views are on climate science; and

therefore by analogy should know much

better. I’m trying to keep this concise and

apologise for the tone. If anyone’s replying

to this I’d ask, to save energy, that they

state up front if they consider I’m right or

wrong”.

Nobody did: there was instead some concern

that I had copied my email dangerously widely

among the activist group.

An Taisce was faﬃng about the need for the

Bill to include reference to a ‘carbon budget’

and ‘cumulative total emissions’ and to spell

out the consequences; and Friends of the Earth

was preoccupied about a National Mitigation

Strategy. There were obscure mutterings about

the composition of the Climate Advisory

Council. Neither then nor now did they own the

key message: climate legislation needs to be

enforceable and enforced.

The Greens ﬁnd it all too easy to — ethically

– justify being in government to achieve a

Green agenda, even when they don’t.

In 2007 the then Green Party leader, the

utterly decent and dynamic Trevor Sargent

declared “We have to be in government if we

are serious about climate change. We cannot

sit on the sidelines when the science is clear,

and the need for action is urgent. Ethically, we

are bound to take responsibility where we can

actually make a diﬀerence”. The Party then

duly lurched onto what John Gormley had

properly feared could be Planet Bertie, and

never went fully back.

13 years later, during the 2020 general

election campaign, Eamon Ryan told the Irish

Times that “if the Green Party is returned with

a signiﬁcant number of TDs, it will insist that

any potential coalition partner embrace its

To achieve a reduction of 29% would

require full implementation of a wide

range of policies and plans across all

sectors and for these to deliver the

anticipated carbon savings”. 29%

More speciﬁcally, the EPA noted:

“Almost all sectors are on a trajectory

to exceed their national sectoral emissions

ceilings for 2025 and 2030, including

Agriculture, Electricity and Transport. The

ﬁrst two carbon budgets (2021-2030) will

not be met, and by a signiﬁcant margin of

between 17 and 27%”.

So, if there is full implementation (which

there won’t be) the ﬁgure is 29% which is just

under 57% of the er legally binding 51% (and

less than 55% of Eamon Ryan’s 55% target), at

least it would be 29% if we had “full

implementation of a wide range of policies”, if

the carbon budgets weren’t ex facie deﬁcient

(don’t ask), and if we had a Green-type minister

in power until 2030. But we won’t, the Greens

have annoyed a lot of people and we’ll probably

face a backlash, perhaps starting as early as

this year, when this coalition government

leaves oﬃce. Full implementation is a pipe

dream. 29% if we are very lucky.

I do not believe Ryan. I do not believe the

Irish Times is doing its duty in reporting the

magnitude of the likely failure and its cause. A

headline from last year is typical of its inept but

all-encompassing conclusion: “Greens in

power: How the party has quietly become the

most eﬀective member of Coalition”.

The Green Party is delivering 57% of its

paramount agenda. Let’s be clear: its other

agendas — electric cars, renewables,

retroﬁtting etc — feed into that overarching

agenda making the headline figure the

deﬁning gauge. Superior performance in one

sector, meaning beating the overall level of

57% delivery, implies there has been inferior

performance in some other.

Overall 57% is not eﬀective. Imagine if only

57% of targets were hit by the Departments of

Health or Finance.

So how do the Greens get away with saying

51% is legally binding when we’re looking at a

maximum of 29%; and get parroted by the Irish

Times?

I do not trust that campaigners, academics

and NGOs, key members of whom are close to

the Green Party, are doing their duty in

informing society of how bad the failure is.

None of them ever criticise the Greens in the

mainstream media for being weak.

The problem that it is taboo for them to refer

to is that the Green Party is so soft-minded it

has failed to introduce binding near-term

targets for Climate legislation despite being in

Government 2007-2011 and 2020-2024 (that’s

8 years out of the last 17 years of climate crisis).

An analogy is the failure, despite being

warnings by me and others, to introduce

binding legislation to stop Shannon LNG which

as a result was greenlighted in the High Court

on 30 September despite the bleating of the

astonished Green Party.

In the 2007-2011 government it drafted a

toothless Climate Bill and failed to get it

enacted despite four years in power. It failed to

reach its unambitious target of 3% annual

emissions reductions though the economy was

imploding. And then it got booted out, to a

backlash.

Let’s look at how the environmental-NGO

sector has dealt with these misﬁres.

Learning from Green failures 2011-2015, in

2015, as a campaigner, I wrote the following

memo to the great and the good in the climate

lobby as the government that followed the

Greens’ produced a predictably limpid Climate

Bill in the name of Alan Kelly:

“As some of you know already I have strong

views about this. You should argue to the

Minister - and more particularly to opposition

politicians - that the Act should be ‘justiciable’

ie enforceable by the public in the courts.

Anything else misses the point”.

I explained why:

“Legislation has NONE of the useful

characteristics of legislation

[‘bindingness’] if it is not justiciable. [For

example the fact it was legislation would

be meaningless if it provided for “7%

targets, if it suits”]. Appropriate,

aggressive targets that are legally

enforceable by third parties would be

enough in themselves to constitute a

great Act, since failures by the Minister

would see him hauled expensively and

embarrassingly into court - a big incentive

for him to ensure compliance”.

It seemed the environmental sector was

getting diverted into issues that were much

less important than justiciability and taking its

eye oﬀ the only prize that mattered, so I went

on: “Appropriate, aggressive, justiciable

targets would render an advisory council etc

secondary indeed almost redundant. The

environmental sector is actually oﬀering views

on a piece of legislation without having

obtained a professional (ideally barrister’s)

legal opinion on what the legislation could

contain”.

In fact Ireland’s reduction

will be less than 55%

of Ryan’s 55% target:

perhaps a 29% reduction

VillageOctNov24.indb 64 03/10/2024 14:27

October-November 2024 65

demand to meet EU carbon emission reduction

targets by 2030. If we’re in any sort of talks with

anyone if people elect us in the numbers we

hope, then we will be saying ‘Let’s be honest

here now, a 7% reduction in carbon emissions

per year is needed’”.

As I had with NGOs in 2015, in 2020 I raised

the issue of the justiciability of climate

legislation at the Greens’ manifesto launch,

but their focus too was elsewhere.

Readers who can remember the discussions

on coalition government will remember Ryan’s

six-page letter to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with

seventeen questions and lots of demands. As

the Mirror put it: “On top of Eamon Ryan’s list

of demands for forming a Government is a

commitment to cut emissions by “at least 7%”

per year”.

At the time I wrote, in Broadsheet.ie: “Until

they acknowledge their tendency to soft-

mindedness and acknowledge they need to

put in place mechanisms such as the use of

indicators and a focus on enforcement,

especially through a more intelligent use of the

law, I will remain sceptical as to whether

Ireland’s Green Party is a force qualiﬁed to lead

the ﬁght on behalf of its environment.

Optimists and analysts know that the past is

not a pointer to the future – unless its lessons

remain unlearnt. The Greens seem

unreconstructed. At least its leaders and

negotiators do”.

After their success in the 2020 general

election the Greens then drew up a Climate Act,

the almost incomprehensibly complex Climate

Action and Low Carbon Development

(Amendment) Act 2021.

A legal action by the always heroic Friends

of the Irish Environment (on the failures of the

National Implementation Strategy, as it

happens) had by then extracted a judgment

from the Supreme Court that — although it had

been intended to be litigation-proof — in fact

some provisions of the 2015 Climate Act were

justiciable.

To be enforceable provisions in that and

subsequent Climate Acts had to be “speciﬁc”;

and if they were indeed “speciﬁc” they would

be enforceable. That was key.

It was extraordinary therefore that the

Greens did not insist on putting 7% annual

cuts into their Act.

A press release from now-Minister Ryan

stated “Ireland is now on a legally binding path

to net-Zero emissions no later than 2050, and

to a 51% reduction in emissions by the end of

this decade”.

The rest of this article shows how while on

one level true, the failure of implementation

means it is naïve, disingenuous and — at the

moment, for example — looking highly

unrealistic: and therefore not true.

Instead of legislating for the 7% (if they fell

short one year there would be an obligation to

step up proportionately the following year)

cuts — as there was no excuse, except

spinelessness and stupidity, not to — they

made hitting the 2050 target binding and they

made it binding for government departments

to provide carbon budgets mandating ceilings

for the sector of the economy they each

covered. Crucially though, the budgets would

not kick in for two years, until 4 May 2022.

And they certainly did not make the 7%

annual targets “legally binding”. That was the

failure. A failure of political professionalism on

the crisis of our times.

Nor, for reasons touched on above, did either

the environmental NGOs (any of them) (yes you

read right any of them) or any environmental

journalists (again, any of them) spot the

problem.

Some were concerned that the cuts could be

backloaded to the years running up to 2030 but

they were not concerned that there was a two

year hiatus at the beginning before the

departmental carbon budgets kicked in or that

it wasn’t just that the cuts could be backloaded,

it was that the legislation could be overturned

by a new government after 2025, in a backlash,

before they’d made a signiﬁcant diﬀerence.

Indeed, ever since, they’ve gone on and on

as if the Act’s key provisions were justiciable,

as if they were legally binding. The Irish Times

and RTÉ in particular cannot be stopped going

on about how the failed Climate Act is legally

binding, even though if it had been legally

binding it could not have failed (or looked likely

to deliver 57% of what what was promised).

It is a horrible thing to say but the

environmental NGOs should have arranged for

challenges (the Supreme Court found that

corporate bodies can’t take these cases

themselves) to the lack of binding legislation

the minute the coalition entered power. They

should have highlighted the ineptitude of the

Greens in implying they would immediately get

to work but delaying two years.

Then after two years — perhaps earlier when

it was clear the political preparation was going

to be inadequate — they should have

challenged the government for not

implementing the binding parts of the

legislation.

A huge failure of NGOs has been to litigate

those departmental sectoral carbon budgets,

after they became justiciable two years into the

government, in 2022.

In both cases immediate relief — an

injunction or declaration — should have been

sought. If the High Court delayed, the NGOs

should have immediately appealed the failure

to provide the injunction or declaration and

mounted enormous, righteous campaigns

explaining what was at stake, and how the

courts were selling it short by delay.

Instead, litigants, co-ordinated by NGOs,

have made ‘rights-based’ claims that climate

chaos breaches their constitutional, EU or

European Convention on Human Rights rights

to life, bodily integrity, a good environment or

whatever — typically using IPCC reports as

evidence. But that doesn’t depend on climate

legislation or targets, and it generates

nebulous redress rather than a government

scuttling to implemented its legislated

headline targets. It’s not easy. Though Eamon

Ryan sat cross legged on the ﬂoor in the

crowded High Court during Friends of the Irish

Environment’s Mitigation Strategy case, the

State sent a full legal team to Strasbourg to

argue against the human rights of the ‘Swiss

Grannies’, last year.

There is a suspicion some of the cleverest

lawyers advising NGOs are not determined to

bring down the legislation in embarrassing

flames so the government has to draft

something better as a matter of urgency, but

merely to beat the government in court, even

where the redress is limited. That makes for

good law but a bad future for humanity. It’s a

strategy that chimes with the Greens’ own

inertia and self-righteous confusion. Because

climate litigation for NGOs must be largely ‘no

foal, no fee’, the pool of experienced junior

counsel to draw up these actions has grown

painfully slowly, leaving even key cases to

await their turn. Then too within NGOs there are

strong arguments that biodiversity must be

litigated equally with climate – there is no point

in saving the world if all the keystone species

have been destroyed.

So on the eve of the end, after four years, of

this benighted Green-aligned government,

neither the embarrassing case nor the

implementation case have been heard in full,

though several cases by Friends of the Irish

Environment and one by ICM (explained at p55)

of this magazine) are underway. By the time

they, and the inevitable appeals to the

Supreme Court, are heard, the Greens will be

long out of government. By that stage the

Greens will be there on their bikes outside the

Four Courts, supporting the cases. Angry.

By the time the Greens get a decent haul of

TDs into government for a third time, it will be

too late for the planet.

And no-one will remember whose fault it

was.

legislation has NONE of

the useful characteristics

of legislation if it is not

justiciable

VillageOctNov24.indb 65 03/10/2024 14:27