Ireland and Kyoto

Z

Zeus

Guest
Remember the Kyoto Treaty and how trendy it was/is to blame America for not signing it and producing all those emissions? Well, our sanctimonious posturing then has all but caught up to us now.

Irish Times 13/8/04 p. 7:

"Ireland failing to meet Kyoto emission targets"

"Ireland's greenhouse-gas emissions are running far ahead of the targets set under the Kyoto Protocol, new figures published by the Central Statistics Office yesterday reveal."

The Green Party claim that massive fines will be imposed within the next 8 years if the targets are not met.

The US refuse to sign Kyoto and we posture. We sign it and then largely ignore it.
 
.

Irelands consumption of fuel in a year is less than the world civil aviation industry uses in a week.

World civil aviation is in no way constrained by Kyoto.

Its hard to get interested in a rod to beat out own backs with when this sort of situation exists.

What is needed is a much higher real price of oil ( and I dont mean some sort of tax so that it seems expensive - aviation fuel for example is almost universally tax exempt )

A real price increase will reduce the consumption of oil and get more money to the producer countries many of which are by no means rich.
 
Kyoto targets for Ireland

Hi Zeus,

One small point I would correct you on. As Ireland is a signatory to the treaty and it doesn't meet its targets, it will be fined, the US won't. Incidentally, the targets then become more stringent. I agree with you though that a heck of a lot more should be done by us......

As to the fines, figures range from 0.5 billion Euro to up to 6/7 billion.
The CSO and EPA have done some interesting work on who the great polluters are...

One way around it is to embark on a major re-forestation of the country which would act as a carbon dioxide sink. We currently "trap" over 7 million tonnes of CO2 this way...

Regards,

OpusnBill
 
[broken link removed]

If the above report is to be believed we are the fourth largest polluter per head of capita in the world!
Hopefully we'll get a hard slap for this and then keep in line with Kyoto emissions.
It should be noted that this is per head of capita.
Overall...the US's (or any other large industrialised nations) emissions are (probably) vast in comparison to Irelands....but I haven't searched for any conclusive evidence to back this up yet. Thus the significance of the US's withdrawl from the treaty.
 
emissions

Hi Piggy,

Probably the main reason for that is because of our rather large agricultural sector.....!

Of course, transport would also have a fiar bit to do with it.... Check out the latest environmental accounts with the cso. they should be on their website.

Regards,

OpusnBill
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top