Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will speak on amendment No. 34 which states:

In page 6, between lines 28 and 29, to insert the following:“(e) specify the projected total national emissions for the period of the plan on the basis of all the policy measures specified in the plan.”.

The national mitigation plan should include the projected total national emissions for the five year period covered after all of the policy measures specified in the plan have been implemented. The purpose of this amendment is to embed a little more detail in the legislation. As it stands the Bill does not require that the plan achieve anything at all. There are no targets, measurements or solid objectives, just fluff about the ill-defined low carbon economy. This amendment would mean that, in theory, the plan had some type of objective or at least those drawing up the plan would have to make an argument for the decisions that made some type of logical sense as regards the specific outcomes of individual actions specified in the plan.

I do not know if people noticed it, although I am sure some did, but yesterday Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of the England, made an interesting statement about this very issue. He outlined in very stark terms the financial risk of global warming and he acknowledged there was a danger the assets of fossil fuel companies could be left stranded by tougher rules to curb climate change. He said the exposure of UK investors, including insurance companies, to these shifts is potentially huge, with 19% of FTSE 100 companies being in natural resource and extraction industries. He said:

The challenges currently posed by climate change pale in significance compared with what might come. ...once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late.

He went on to say the carbon budget the world could afford, if it is to meet the 2° Celsius target, amounts to between one fifth and one third of the world's proven reserves of oil, gas and coal. If that estimate is even approximately correct, he said, it would render the vast majority of reserves stranded - oil, gas and coal that would be literally unburnable without expensive carbon capture technology, which itself alters fossil fuel economics. A wholesale reassessment of prospects, especially if it were to occur suddenly, could potentially destabilise markets.

Those like Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, have not been the ones we have associated very much with taking strong action on climate change. I think people are slowly waking up. I would like the Government to take his thoughts on board because we seem to be very slow to wake up to what is happening. Scotland was doing things better many years ago than we are doing now. It is not good enough and the Government needs to reconsider its position.

See this speech in context