Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and wish him every success at the COP26 summit.

He seemed to paint a reasonably optimistic view of the non-EU blocs and their approach to this session, particularly the US and China. I have heard from some European colleagues with whom I am still in contact that there is a slight lack of conviction at EU level about the commitment of some of those countries. Is that a potential fault line? Some of the US initiatives seem to be running into significant difficulties and one wonders about its ability to deliver.

My second question relates to something that underlies much of the conversation we have here. My view is that carbon dioxide is toxic. It may not smoke the way something toxic normally does but there is huge resistance, nonetheless, to applying the polluter pays principle to that toxic emission. I do not see a way of delivering the sort of change we need without pricing this pollutant and using that revenue, as the Minister has rightly said, in just transition to help us make the changes required. That seems to be an issue on which there is not a settled position. I am interested in the views of the Minister. Some parties have argued trenchantly that we should not have such charges.

I will also ask about how we assess the impact of carbon dioxide reductions as against methane reductions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, seems to be clear that if CO2 is cut, the pace of warming is reduced. The late Garret FitzGerald used to say the pace of acceleration slows down, or something similar. If methane is cut, the climate actually cools. There is a dramatic difference in the scale of impact that can be achieved through reductions in CO2 and reductions in methane, yet the EU measured them as if they were the same, albeit with a different ratio for each gas. Is that not a fundamental weakness in the EU approach? I have had the privilege of visiting Botswana, which is largely a livestock producing country that has very little income other than from its diamonds. How can we turn around and say Botswana must reduce its biogenic methane when that is all it has? Surely the measures used have to move in accordance with the science we now know about.