Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, has said there will be a climate law passed this year. Friends of the Earth say that we need to hold him to that promise.Just before Copenhagen the government produced a framework document laying out what a climate law will be like. There are some worrying weaknesses in this document, say Friends of the Earth –
1. It talks about putting carbon budgets as they exist now into law. The problem with this is that the carbon budgets as they exist now are weak, especially when compared with the financial budgets that the government also produces. The existing “carbon budgets” are reports on the emissions that happened in the year before, rather than budgets in the true sense of the word.
2. Offsetting must not be used to meet the targets. If the law says a 30% reduction in emissions by 2020 then we believe that there must be 30% less emissions coming from Ireland by 2020. This may seem obvious but the government might try to buy their way out of their promise by purchasing “offset credits”.
3. The law is no good if it contains huge gaps. All emissions must be covered by the proposed legislation and this includes emissions from aviation and shipping and from the big power stations and factories that are covered by the EU emissions trading scheme. Allowing any of these emissions to be left out will be letting Big Business off the hook.