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Monday morning’s release of the latest report on climate change is “a stark reminder that we have limited time” to prevent the worst of climate change, Minister for Environment and Climate Eamon Ryan has said.
Mr Ryan has warned that the cost of ignoring climate change would be “catastrophic.”
The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found it is now “unequivocal” that human activity has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land — with widespread and rapid changes across the world. It also found the opportunity for humans to take action to reverse or even slow the process was closing.
Mr Ryan said the Government would shortly publish the Climate Action Plan which would detail measures needed to reach Ireland’s 2030 climate action targets.
These would including “more renewable energy, decreased transport emissions, changes in how we heat our homes and how we grow our food and look after our land. These steps will be challenging but they will also create new opportunities, ” he said.
He said United Nations climate change conference, also known as COP26 scheduled for November would be “a critical juncture, where all countries must also agree solutions to support the most vulnerable in the world who face unprecedented climate extremes”.
The Minister said that the consequences of failing to bring Ireland’s carbon emissions down would be “beyond compare.” There was a need to move quickly because “the window for action is closing”.
Mr Ryan was speaking on both Newstalk and RTÉ prior to the publication of a new UN report which states humans are causing climate change. For Ireland, the first key thing that needed to be done was to stop using fossil fuels.
Farmers were the frontline of the climate response, he said, as they would manage the climate change that is to come, and also change the way land was monitored in order to reduce emissions, restore biodiversity and lower pollution at the same time.
“Doing nothing is not an option. The science is ever clearer and unequivocal. It’s our future we are talking about.”
The pandemic had shown that transport systems could be changed to return to a stronger sense of local community, with the development of “15-minute cities and towns”, where services, facilities and employment were closer to living spaces.
Financial supports
Irish international charity Concern Worldwide also referred to the effect of climate change on poorer countries, which it said were “already severely hit by the effects of climate change and need more help from wealthier and higher polluting nations”.
The humanitarian organisation which works in 23 of the world’s most vulnerable countries, said communities they work with need financial and other supports to adapt to climate-driven disasters, which are becoming more frequent.
The organisation called for “significantly more action and commitments ahead of this autumn’s COP26 conference, which is to be held in Glasgow, Scotland.
“The impacts of climate change are being felt now,” said Concern Worldwide’s Senior Policy Officer, Sally Tyldesley. “It is grossly unfair that lower-income countries that have contributed the least to carbon emissions are already suffering the worst consequences of climate change” she said.
Oisín Coghlan, director of Friends of the Earth has described today’s IPCC assessment report on climate change as a “final wake-up call” to governments and citizens to treat climate breakdown as the over-riding global emergency it is.
Mr Coughlan said there was “still a narrow path to avoid complete catastrophe but we are not on it and the window of opportunity to get onto it is closing fast”.
“What’s crystal clear now is that every time the Government faces a policy choice we need them to choose the option that reduces emissions rather than the one that raises emissions. That may sound obvious but it is all too often not what happens. We have to start treating climate action like the emergency it is” he said.