Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Friday, 12 July 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht

Heads of Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Bill 2013: Discussion (Resumed)

11:00 am

Mr. Joseph Curtin:

If the Chairman does not mind, I will not take all of the questions because I am not familiar with all of the issues raised and I do not want to waste the committee's time.

On the per capita target issue, essentially I have tried to say every country needs to move seriously down the decarbonisation path towards 2050. There will be some emissions in 2050; ultimately, therefore, how does one allocate them between various countries? Every country will state it has this or that; therefore, it will not have to do as much. I tried to choose some criteria that would be fair in allocating emissions. A global justice approach suggests everybody should converge on the same per capita emissions by 2050. That would be popular among NGOs, for example.