Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

Carbon trading is not the answer to climate change. A recently published analysis of carbon trading entitled Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power, argued that carbon trading slows the social and technological change needed to cope with global warming by unnecessarily prolonging the world's dependence on oil, coal and gas. As many environmental justice organisations have pointed out, carbon trading is nothing more than the proliferation of the free market into environmental policy making. As the former World Bank chief economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, put it, the very basis of emissions trading is the assigning of property rights to emitters and then allowing them to be traded — in other words, business can buy the right to pollute.

In the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, governments have handed out to industrialised countries alone several times more rights to the world's carbon cycling capacity than are available if global temperatures are not to rise by more than 2° Celsius. Permits worth €170 billion have been given to 11,500 of the EU's largest polluters. Even such a small increase as 2° Celsius could have catastrophic effects for the globe. The industrialised north is buying its way out of its commitments to reduce emissions and the expense is being passed on to the consumer. According to Feasta, a Dutch study has shown that electricity companies in four countries have already increased their prices to make the customers pay. The current price of the permits and the generators were given for nothing to use in producing their power. The cost to companies of buying their way out of their commitments will be borne by the consumers aggravating fuel poverty and hitting low income families the hardest.

I will focus on the fastest growing contributor to the State's greenhouse gas emission levels which has shown a growth rate of 144% between 1990 to 2004, namely, the transport sector. It accounts for 18.4% of total greenhouse gas output in this State with road transport accounting for an estimated 93% of that sector's output. Despite this, the Government's commitment to biofuels is minimal. The target for biofuel substitution of 5.75% by 2020 is nothing other than pathetic. What is all the more galling is that this State has, or perhaps could have, the potential to become one of the leaders in biofuel production. I urge the Minister to look again at this area and to have more realistic targets we can achieve so that we can be a world leader in regard to biofuels.

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