Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

Yesterday Britain's leading scientist, Robert McCredie, the outgoing President of the Royal Society and the former chief scientific adviser to the British Government, with outstanding academic credentials, in a major speech to coincide with the worldwide conference on climate change that opened in Montreal this week stated that the potentially devastating impact of climate change "invites comparison with weapons of mass destruction". Such will be its impact on our culture.

We are talking about jobs. I personally believe in renewable energy. We heard a suggestion here about biofuels. There are many more jobs available. Let us look at this in a positive way. We must change our ways. Climate change is a reality.

The sad fact for the planet was that Mr. Bush was elected in 2000 and we have had to grapple with this for five or six years with a crowd of neanderthal American Government officials who will not accept the reality in front of our eyes accepted by every reputable scientist. Tonight the Minister and the Fianna Fáil Deputies prefaced their remarks by stating that climate change is a reality. That is why we are here, we are trying to discuss ways to address that.

Carbon dioxide is, of course, the primary greenhouse gas that is created by man-made emissions causing global warming and climate change. Such emissions rose from 280 parts per million before the onset of the Industrial Revolution to 380 ppm today. It is estimated that by the middle of this century they will have risen to an astonishing 500 ppm. The last time there were greenhouse gas emissions at this level was approximately 20 to 40 million years ago when sea levels were around 100 metres higher than today. A recent study published in the journal Science reported that current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years.

Like many colleagues, last night I watched coverage on one of the American news channels — I think it was ABC — of New Orleans, where there are only 60,000 people living in a city where once half a million people lived. It is a city bigger than Belfast and it has been reduced to this frightening position. This hurricane season has been the worst for two or three generations. We know what is happening, we need to take action to curb our greenhouse gas emissions drastically. We need to start thinking about it and tonight is a good opportunity for all of us to do so.

The European Environment Agency published a report, which is a shocking indictment of this Administration in the past eight or nine years. I do not have time to quote all the excerpts in this regard, but on our carbon emission targets and the likely 2010 targets, it is shocking that the European protection agency in Copenhagen feels that we are not addressing this problem seriously enough.

Climate change has been obvious across the European Continent, especially in the past few years. The hottest years on record were 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004. During the summer of 2003 temperatures across Europe were the highest on record, approximating at 3.6° centigrade higher than average. Approximately 50,000 Europeans died due to the extremes of heat during June, July and August of 2003 and there were serious and devastating forest fires across Italy, Spain and France, with considerable crop failures and river droughts in these countries. While people speak of changes in the economy, we are speaking of fundamental changes in the planet, and it is clear that we must address that.

Concerted political action is urgently necessary around the connected issues of climate change and planning for our energy future. Although global co-operation and action is essential for any practical and effective strategy in this regard, all states must put their own house in order first and do everything possible to ensure that they comply with agreed targets.

In recent days we have been reading frightening debates about the oil peak and whether oil production is due to peak in 2008 or 2030. The Minister probably saw the debate in the interesting magazine Prospect a few days ago. That is why there is general and widespread interest in the Bill.

We have failed badly on many of our environmental targets. One of them, about which I was very disappointed in particular and to which the Green Party also drew attention during the late summer, was the biofuels target. We had a 2% target for 2005, but we got nowhere near it. Less than one tenth of that target for biofuel was achieved.

The galloping emissions from transport are completely wrecking attempts to take control of greenhouse gas emissions. Obviously the Kyoto Protocol obligated all EU member states to reduce greenhouse gases by 8% from 1990 levels by 2012. There was agreement at the European Heads of Government and Environment Ministers in the spring of this year, as I understand it, on a 15% to 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and by 60% to 80% by 2050. Where did we hear those figures previously? People on the Government backbenches rubbished our Green colleagues in that regard. Often the Taoiseach does not really tell his backbenchers what he gets up to, but he seems to have agreed to this Bill in principle at a European Council meeting.

Clearly we must adopt a range of measures to begin addressing the problem that confronts us. I welcome the developments that have taken place in the UK, in particular, under its Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, where the system of assigned amount units, AAUs, and trading is up and running for the past year or so.

Besides the EU emissions trading scheme, recent EU measures that should start to deliver emission reductions soon include legislation to improve the energy performance of buildings from next January — the Irish Government is one of the EU states that has been extremely slow to bring the directive on energy performance into force and to promote combined heat and power generation. Many other existing EU policies and measures, according to the EPA, will hopefully start to deliver on these targets fairly shortly.

In general terms I welcome the Bill. It reminds me of the Bill the two British MPs, Dr. Alan Whitehead and Mr. Mark Lazarowicz, from our sister Labour Party in the UK brought before the House of Commons. Even the Tories supported the Bill and an early day motion went through. This Bill would mean we would have a debate on these matters annually and the public, both as individuals and communities, could get involved. As the Labour Party spokesperson on energy, I warmly congratulate the Green Party.

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