Professor Kevin Anderson:

The budget I am using is for energy only. I would argue that the budget for Ireland is somewhere between 120 and 300 million tonnes. If you are more committed to 1.5°C and care more about our own children's future and the impacts on poor parts of the world that are already being felt, you would go for 120 million tonnes. If you are more gung-ho about our children's future and less concerned about people outside Ireland, you would go for 300 million tonnes. There is a moral choice to make when choosing between those budgets.

However, let us also be clear that the Paris Agreement is not a nice coherent document. It is a political document. The agreement says that we will cut emissions in line with what is necessary to stay well below 2°C warming and that we will pursue 1.5°C. It then has a commitment framework that is based on nationally determined contributions and the highest possible ambition, which does not necessarily fit with the commitments in respect of temperature. It asks everyone to give a voluntary agreement. Every country underplays the amount of effort it is going to make so the emissions exceed the budget required for the temperature everyone has committed to. There is an innate incompatibility in the two framings within the Paris Agreement. That was done deliberately because it was thought to be the only way to bring people together politically. The Copenhagen Accord showed more scientific integrity but no one committed to it. Something was made that was so weak that everyone could say they had committed to it but, when everything is added up, it aims for 3°C to 5°C of warming. You should be careful in how you read the Paris Agreement. I take it based on the temperature commitments and the physics. That is different from the politics and the short-term economics.