Mr. Paul Price:

We are signed up to the entire Paris Agreement. That says that every party's successive nationally determined contribution will represent a progression and also has to represent highest possible ambition. That is what one has to look at. If the science takes politics at face value that is what we have to look at then that is what we have to address.

Similar to what Professor Anderson has done, Professor McMullin and I have looked at the global situation. We take a slightly different approach but effectively we are, again, following the physics. Therefore one has to distribute a climate budget which in our case included all the three gases, not just CO2, and did that at a global level and at Ireland's level. One sees that one really has to reduce emissions of all those gases very seriously and that most of all, early action is what counts.

When one thinks about making a transition, the thing that is really important for lower costs is to deliver that early because that helps everybody. If one has to make real sudden changes later on, that is a shock to the economy and in every way. In the physics, what matters is cumulative CO2 emissions and that means that early action counts most of all. If one is at a high level of emissions right now, one needs to get them down very quickly, very soon. That is what counts most of all. The serious challenge we have is that the physics is not forgiving. When it comes to really severe, stringent climate targets that are in the Paris Agreement, and this is true at global level and certainly for Ireland, at this stage one really has to cut methane which particularly has a big effect. One has to cut CO2 very quickly which is the energy side but in agriculture and fossil fuel methane, and whatever methane a country has going out, one has to cut that pretty substantially, very quickly. The earlier one does that the bigger effect it has on 2050. Again, it is the same for methane as it is for CO2 and nitrous oxide. Cutting those early really helps. Addressing those early actually helps economically because then we are not faced with sudden changes that we have to address too.

These things all go together, and the longer we hold off, the higher will be the costs and the shock, potentially.