Irish Government Greenwashes Consistent Emissions Cut Failings

The Irish Government has today approved the purchase of almost €3 million worth of carbon credits from Slovakia as it seeks to meet the EU’s emission target compliance deadline, according to The Journal.

While this is a legal process that is permitted under EU law, and will allow Ireland to meet this week’s deadline, it also allows the Irish Government to cover up their woeful inaction on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the face of the Climate Crisis.

Find out more about the implications for the Climate Crisis, Irish public health, and the cost of inaction to the taxpayer.

The utter failure to meet these targets has major implications not only for public health, with air pollution still rampant and resulting in 1,300 premature deaths in Ireland each year, but also confirms the nation as one of the world’s greatest climate laggards.

The consistent failings of the Irish Government to cut emissions at all, let alone in line with the urgent deadlines in place under EU law, makes it considerably more likely that we will blast past 2°C of warming and head towards runaway climate breakdown that will lead to the deaths of millions, the loss of one third of all animal and plant species on Earth by 2070, and the displacement of billions of people by 2050.

As a result of its recidivistic inaction, Ireland must buy its way to compliance by buying credits from countries with lower emissions. But this doesn’t undo the actual harm that Ireland is doing, it just covers it up.

This is the same lie that car companies have been selling for years through emissions pooling – pretending that you can move emissions around from one place to another to hide away from the repercussions just a little longer.

The reality is that there is an incentive for Irish politicians to cover up their consistent failure to act in the face of the Climate Crisis. Their declaration of a Climate Emergency in 2019 was nothing more than an empty PR stunt designed to win favour, with little effort or interest in actually acting in accordance with climate science.

By purchasing carbon credits from other nations they can hide their cowardice and keep lying to the people of Ireland that they are acting in their best interests. Failure to comply with EU law would expose their inaction and jeopardise their plush taxpayer-funded jobs.

At this point, it would have been better to have missed the deadline and faced the consequences so that the people of Ireland could confront the Government on their unceasing failures and replace it with a Government that will take the necessary steps to be transparent and cut emissions.

The Earth doesn’t care where the emissions are coming from – only that there are too many, and that delaying action perpetually will worsen the situation exponentially.

A minimum of 1.2 billion people are expected to be displaced by the Climate Crisis by 2050, while multiple famines and severe weather events caused directly by the Climate Emergency are causing loss of life around the world this very minute.

Our Government’s failure to cut emissions is an act of Climate Imperialism.

In the same way that the British Empire subjugated the people of Ireland and bent them to its will, so we today are doing the same, irrevocably changing the lives of billions of people to fit our high-carbon lifestyles. Causing death, destruction and ecological desolation in the process.

All this is occurring at a time when our own TDs, and even our Taoiseach, are stoking racist anti-immigration rhetoric, which is spilling over into violence on the streets of Ireland.

Our current refugee policies are based on abusing the human rights of those who are seeking solace here in Ireland, they are racist and they are not fit for purpose. And, like our emissions failings, efforts to replace Direct Provision with a compassionate and humane system are also woefully behind schedule.

Be in no doubt that our Government’s inaction on cutting greenhouse gas emissions is creating a climate refugee crisis that they are to failing to acknowledge, while point-blank refusing to provide care to those who suffer at their hands around the world.

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