When it comes to climate change, everyone seems to be pointing the finger. Governments point to levels of carbon emissions in other countries, industries blame other industries to detract from their own responsibilities, individuals seek a scapegoat.
But the reality is every single person has a role to play in this carbon crisis.
This message comes through very clearly in the government’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) which sets out what we as a country and a society need to do to meet the target of a 51% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 and carbon neutral by 2050.
In fact, citizen responsibility is the basis of an entire chapter.
That may be all well and good, but hands up if you want to do the right thing but sometimes you feel completely bogged down in complex information relating to climate change. Here in Irish Country Living, we want to break down the jargon and make the content really relevant to our readers.
So let us explain the National Dialogue for Climate Action (NDCA) which will be a term many of us are going to become familiar with. The Government will engage with the NDCA to guide us through these climate challenges.
Individual voices
First job on the list: education and climate literacy. This will start at an early age and when the kids arrive home from school – whether they are in primary or secondary, you can expect climate conversations to be part of their homework. It will be incorporated into work in the classroom but it won’t stop there, it will also be part of the learning experience in adult education. The focus here will be explaining the importance of climate change and what every person and household can do.
Climate change will also form the basis of many upcoming conferences and lecturers. A National Climate Stakeholder Forum (NCSF) will meet twice a year to feed into a consultation about how we are to move forward. People from Government, representative bodies, local authorities and community and voluntary groups will all have their say.
But the plan is for it be even more inclusive than that and not just hear the voices of the officials. So there will be a Youth Climate Assembly which will allow children and young adults between 12 and 22 to have their say and feed into the conversation; what is going on in their lives that is impacting what they can do to help climate change? And there will also be an annual public consultation.
Community change
Next, the NDCA will see what can be done at a local level, in the community. And there will be financial supports to make this happen. There is a fund called the Climate Action Fund (CAF) and its aim is to help shape and build low-carbon sustainable communities.
So if a community group wants to do something locally such as hold a local conference or get support for innovations, there will be finances available to help make that happen. There will also be a “creative fund” which, through cultural and creative projects, will help increase individual and community awareness of the behaviours we need to change to support the environment with a focus on innovative ideas and scalable solutions.
The local groups that we are all familiar with – the GAA, the Tidy Towns committees, the Irish Countrywomen’s Association etc – will also be supported by the NDCA. The thinking is that these organisations will explore new initiatives and encourage wider participation, getting more people on board with the environmentally friendly work that they are already doing in communities.
National voice
All these blocks build and build, and all these individual voices and community actions will then feed into a national plan.
This will result in a national climate change behavioural insights and implementation unit being established in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as a national social and behavioural advisory group on climate action.
What does this actually mean? It mean that a study will be undertaken every two years to analyse all these individual behaviours across different demographics. What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? What do we as a society need to focus on improving?
In truth, this may seem like a lot of talk and arguably not enough action. But to achieve real change, we need to act collaboratively. Education and information is needed so people fully understand the situation and what they can do.
We need a plan so that all the stuff we do on a day-to-day basis, whether it’s on an individual level like recycling or as an industry all feeds into one cohesive change to get those emissions down by the deadline.
Everyone has a voice and an opinion but at the same time we all need to be singing off the same hymn sheet with one goal in mind: reducing our emissions whatever way we can.
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