Government must introduce an annual carbon budget which has a path to near-zero emissions by 2050

Today’s launch of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report tells us that only rapid and sustained cuts to carbon emissions will allow us to avoid catastrophic climate change. Previous IPCC reports confirm that climate change is unequivocally caused by human activity and that the impacts of global warming, from extreme weather to reduced food production, pose a grave threat to humanity.

The problem is that human caused carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere and will continue warming it for thousands of years. We continue to add CO 2 by burning fossil fuels. It is accumulating so quickly that without radical global reductions in carbon emissions, beginning right now, catastrophic changes to the Earth’s climate will happen within the coming decades.

Ireland must play its part in the global solution. Cross party support is needed now to push the EU for global agreements at the meeting of key negotiators in Paris next year. The Government must introduce an annual carbon budget which has a path to near-zero emissions by 2050, the decarbonisation of electricity generation by 2030 and supported by strong climate law to back up the budget approach.

To increase the odds of avoiding disastrous changes that will destabilise our futures, we must reduce emissions deeply and quickly. We are not doing so. We must start now.