Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 11:

In page 7, to delete lines 4 to 6 and substitute the following: " 'complete decarbonisation' means zero greenhouse gas emissions, combined with nature-based solutions that enhance biodiversity to sequester greenhouse gases from sectors where some emissions remain inevitable. 'Completely decarbonised economy’ shall be construed accordingly;".

This is very straightforward and is interesting in the context of what we have been discussing regarding the 2050 targets. It speaks about complete decarbonisation, which is zero greenhouse gas emissions combined with nature-based solutions that enhance biodiversity to sequester greenhouse gases from sectors where some emissions remain inevitable. It is a definition of complete decarbonisation that allows for the fact there will be certain very small and marginal areas in which it is not possible and we need some sequesterisation. It is a protection against a version of net zero, which is effectively what we currently have in the Bill.

It is not clear in "net zero" whether we will be speaking about 50% removal or offset and where it will come from. We are in danger that the reduction to zero we are aiming for in 2050 because it is a net zero may well be made up either of emissions that are traded or removals and, effectively, we will not have reduced our emissions to zero, or as close as we can possibly get to zero, but we will simply have managed to make them disappear in the accountancy tricks, which I spoke about earlier and with which we are very familiar and on which we have heard testimony. We only need to go to the climate talks to see very elaborate forms of accountancy that can help almost anybody get to net zero with imaginative accounting.

Amendment No. 11 in particular is pragmatic, in that it states when we speak about "best reasonable efforts" or "as far as practicable" the neutral economy or zero target for 2050 should be about absolutely everything we can do to reduce emissions to zero, with a small recognition of nature-based solutions only where absolutely entirely necessary and where no other option is available, for example, where there is a natural leakage that cannot be stopped.

Amendment No. 12 is philosophical and I will not speak for too long about it. A carbon-neutral economy is our national climate objective for 2050. In the climate neutral economy we include economy and society. I want to point out what is happening in this, which is that we are not aiming for carbon neutrality applied to the economy and society but aiming for a climate-neutral economy and including society in a definition under economy. Perhaps this is philosophical but it is important.

When we speak about 2050 and being able to stand over the fact that Ireland has zero emissions in 2050, we really should be aiming for Ireland to have zero emissions and not just the Irish economy to have zero emissions, be it net or gross, in 2050. It is a small thing but it is a concern. It shows the framework whereby we are placing the economy almost as the permanent thing that may change, and the definition of which may change. We are placing this as the outward frame. I remind Senators of the actual sequence of frames we have. We have an environment and within that environment and our planet we have a society, and within societies we form our states and democracies and we have economies. We need to get the pieces in the right order. That will be key to our survival.