Greens failing to impact on climate targets
Calls for government to instigate free and frequent public transport, an end to data centre proliferation and for the increase in the carbon tax to be scrapped
Reacting to reports that Ireland will miss its 2021 targets for emission reductions, People Before Profit TD and Dáil Climate Action committee member Bríd Smith said the reports were a red alert that the state was failing badly on climate and an indication that Green Party participation in Government was not delivering.
The targets the government set for the first 5 years are already below what is needed to be in line with the Paris commitments, and way behind what the science says we need to reduce them by- but it is now clear that even these inadequate targets are being badly missed.
Reports suggest the promised reduction of 4.8% will be missed by a wide margin.
This makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to deliver on subsequent years and this effective carbon debt will become insurmountable unless more radical policies are taken.
Deputy Smith pointed to transport and agriculture as two areas of real concern, criticising what she called an “obsession with substituting private cars with private electric cars that are beyond most people’s reach and a failure to take on big agri-industrial interest in the dairy sector.”
A serious rethink is needed by the Greens in government or else the failures would mount as the years pass.
We have seen in the last weeks the utter failure of imagination by Green ministers who are preoccupied with fake battles on banning turf use, defending carbon taxes on ordinary people, and advocating incremental lifestyle changes as solutions to deep-seated systemic problems. What’s needed is not shorter showers or bans on turf used by people with no alternative, but systemic and radical policies that can only come from the Government, such as free and frequent public transport, a stop to data centre proliferation and the abolition of the increase in the carbon tax.