Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I see that the Minister is staying. I thank him for doing so.

We have all been waiting a long time for the national carbon budgets. Like everybody else, I am very keen to see them implemented and to see a new, harder, firmer structure to our climate ambition. We have a duty, however, to make sure we get the budgets right, and we need to be very clear that getting them right does not delay the process. The process is under way. We on the climate committee are not tasked with simply approving or disapproving the budgets but with scrutinising them and advising the Minister before the draft carbon budgets are finalised. Again, improving or changing those budgets does not delay the process. The Minister mentioned there has been a public consultation, so we are not simply looking back on the carbon budgets. I am sure he will be back here engaging with us again when he brings his final carbon budgets forward to us. I hope that when he does so, those budgets will have been improved in a few crucial ways.

I hope he will bring forward carbon budgets that will, at a minimum, deliver the 7% average emissions reduction rate per annum promised in the programme for Government. In fact, I hope he will do better and deliver the 7.6% average emissions cut the UN has said we need. A 7% cut would mean a cut of 27 Mt in the budgets, and a 7.6% cut would mean a cut of 41 megatonnes. I sat with the Minister on a previous climate committee where we discussed exactly why those targets really matter and why those levels of cuts matter. We are talking about real emissions and the very hard target of 1.5°C, which, if we go above it, will tilt our world into unlivability. I hope the Minister will reflect that in the final budgets.

I also hope he will accompany the final budgets with two hard guarantees: first, climate justice and real funding - that is, additional funding - for where we fall short on climate justice, and, second, that there will no accountancy tricks. I will be frank; I am deeply concerned by suggestions of forward-counting, for example, which would go against the science and the reality and undermine the entire credibility of the carbon budget process if that were to happen. I say that to give the Minister a few key points to consider.

In the report there are many very good recommendations. I was very happy that my colleagues accepted a number of my recommendations, including on peatlands, as has been mentioned, on a potential limitation on demolition and, crucially, that in the second carbon budget there can be no carryover after 2030 because of that hard target of a 51% reduction in emissions. We need to publish the roadmap for an exit from the €2.4 billion in fossil fuel subsidies a lot earlier than 2024. They are important recommendations. I am concerned, however, that Government members voted against my recommendation that the megatonnage in each carbon budget should relate to removals and omissions measurable within the period of that budget and that no projected emissions reductions or removals that would occur beyond the timeframe of that budget should be included when calculating or assessing the budget. It is really important that the carbon budgets are the carbon budgets. We may need incentives in forestry and so on but we cannot play with the facts regarding incentives. If we start to do that, the credibility of the entire carbon budget process will be undermined. We, therefore, need a guarantee on that. The Minister knows there has been kite-flying on forward-counting, and simply saying we will count cuts later does not cut it. The carbon budgets are real and we need to treat them as such. They are based on the physical reality of emissions.

I come to the reason I, for the first time in six years on five committees, was not able to support this report. It was because it was not ambitious enough and did not reflect the science and, sadly, did not reflect the scientists in the body of the report. Some of the scientists who gave us hard, stark, important, challenging, detailed information, such as Professor Kevin Anderson, Professor Barry McMullin and Dr. Andrew Jackson, are listed in the appendices but not included in the body of the report. We cannot afford to look away or down when we hear important scientific testimony. As Professor Anderson said, the reason we face challenges with these carbon budgets is that we have had 33 years of not listening to scientific advice. Some of the most crucial scientific advice we heard came from Professor Barry McMullin, who made it clear that the carbon budgets as currently proposed will amount to a reduction of less than 6% per year. That was later confirmed by representatives of the Climate Change Advisory Council who told us that the carbon budgets as proposed amount to only a 5.7% reduction per year on average over the ten years to 2030.To put that in context, the programme for Government committed to a 7% average reduction in overall greenhouse gases from 2021 to 2030. Even more important, the UN environmental programme stated we need a global average reduction of 7.6% every year if we want to stay below 1.5°C of heating. Over 1.5°C of heating, this world becomes unliveable, an actual hell for many across the planet. As a wealthy country, we should be doing much better than that average of 7.6°C. How can we conceivably justify the idea that we would be doing less than the average? Who should take up our slack because we find it so difficult to do these things? Are we asking countries like Malawi, where emissions for an average person are 100 times less than those of an average person in Ireland, to do more because we do not want to achieve even the average that is needed?

It is colonialism. That was put to us as a committee and Ireland needs to reflect on it. As one of the witnesses put it, we took their people, we took their minerals and now we want to take their carbon budget space. Our carbon budget is not something that sits within the Irish economy. It sits within the global carbon budget which sits within a planetary reality of the amount of emissions we can produce. If we produce more than our share, we are taking from others. We are directly taking from the poorest and from future generations and the space they need. We need to be honest about this. We talk about being real. That is the hard reality.

I urge the Minister to strengthen the carbon budgets and let Ireland show leadership. Professor Barry McMullin said it is no longer enough to do our best; we must do what is necessary. Sadly, this report does not demand enough. The carbon budgets as currently proposed do not deliver enough, certainly not for climate justice or for our planetary survival on this very beautiful planet in this opportunity we have right now.