Constant media assertions that Irish agriculture is responsible for the largest portion of Ireland’s total carbon emissions feed the pressure to alter agricultural practices in the interests of mitigation, that is, reducing emissions as distinct from adaptation to climate change.

Adaptation is an acceptance that mitigation could be a lost cause and that the best course of action is to adapt, take whatever evasive actions are feasible to minimise the damage in Ireland as extreme weather events become more frequent, more intense and anyway beyond our control.

There is a third option, denialism, the belief that it’s all a hoax, to quote Donald Trump, and just drill, baby, drill, with Venezuela – the next opportunity for the US fossil fuel industry. Since the first reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the early 1990s, it has been clear that the climate scientists’ early expressions of alarm have largely been borne out.

ADVERTISEMENT

They are supported by the real-world evidence, the planet is warming, the essential reason is carbon emissions and there are solid reasons for believing that a planetary catastrophe is gradually building, perhaps 50 or 100 years from now, maybe sooner, unless emissions are reduced sharply.

Blessed

Earth is a tiny planet in a small galaxy, but it is blessed with no fewer than 200 hundred sovereign and independent governments which have failed dismally at the annual COP meetings to agree on mitigation measures.

COP 2023, the 29th annual get-together, was held in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, rated by Transparency International as 154th most corrupt country in the world out of the 180 to which they could ascribe ratings.

Ireland comes an honourable 10th least corrupt, with Norway the winner.

It tells you something about the stature of the UN that Azerbaijan was chosen as the venue for this pointless jamboree at which nothing of substance was agreed.

The COP 30 meeting in Belem, Brazil, last November was another disappointment while next year’s COP 31 moves on to Antalya on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.

Working together

The planet shares just one atmosphere and has too many independent states with little or no incentive to embrace upfront costs to mitigate emissions for the benefit of others who may not bother.

One of these is the USA, which has abandoned any pretence of a national policy to control emissions, withdrew formally from the Paris agreement on mitigation targets in one of Donald Trump’s first executive decisions and did not send a delegation to Belem.

If you think that doing nothing risks a planetary catastrophe 50 years from now, the US is responsible for 150 times the carbon emissions of Ireland, so if the USA does nothing over that period and everyone else does nothing too, Ireland would have to disappear 150 times to make up the difference.

Even if it agreed to disappear, the catastrophe for the planet is delayed by only a few months.

Mitigation as a national policy is fine if everyone takes the same view, but is naive if you have little faith in everyone else.

Ireland has weather but is not a planet and does not have its own atmosphere. A go-it-alone mitigation effort makes little sense.

Ireland’s policy on climate has been aligned with the EU’s approach and the EU has been more active than many others. Perhaps China (the world’s largest emitter, with the USA in second spot) will take the same view but it is too early to say. Between them, China, the USA and Europe generate just over half of planetary emissions.

All three in concert could drive a serious worldwide mitigation effort, but the USA’s denialism places that prospect in doubt, including the Irish choice of active mitigation.

Why precisely should the Republic choose expensive national mitigation measures if nobody else, or not enough others, are planning to do the same?

The EU stance may be ethically as well as scientifically grounded, but Europe cannot achieve enough on its own, responsible for less than half the USA’s emissions, while Ireland’s enthusiasm for tough mitigation benchmarks has not been translated into measured emission reductions.

It is not credible that the EU as a whole can make enough of a difference and there is already evidence of a retreat from the more demanding targets.

Ireland has adaptation policies too, and numerous projects are under way designed to improve flood defences and to diminish flood risk through re-afforestation for example.

If the worldwide mitigation effort is faltering, the emphasis will shift away from emission reduction towards an acceptance that adaptation measures are the more realistic choice in small countries – the Republic generates just one tonne of CO2 out of the planetary total of 800.

A policy shift towards adaptation would relieve some of the current pressure on Irish farming.