The Guardian: "Ireland's staggering hypocrisy on climate change"

[Brendan Burgess]

Ireland's staggering hypocrisy on climate change

Last week Varadkar introduced Ireland’s first national mitigation plan (NMP) in more than a decade, and said that addressing climate change would “require fundamental societal transformation and, more immediately, allocation of resources and sustained policy change.” If success could be measured simply by repetition – the word “sustainable” appears no fewer than 110 times in the NMP – Ireland would undoubtedly be among the world’s leading countries.

But looks can be deceiving. The promised “fundamental societal transformation” turns out to be a soothing combination of words entirely lacking in substance.

The climate action minister, Denis Naughten, glossed over the gaping holes and staggering lack of ambition in the NMP by declaring it a “living document”, with the vague understanding that it will, zombie-like, spring to life at some point closer to 2050.
...
When it comes to a coherent climate policy, Ireland’s turns out to be more greenwash than green.

 

[Purple]

While I regard climate change as the biggest threat facing humanity I find the whole discussion in Europe deeply hypocritical and self congratulatory.
We could easily meet our targets if we stopped producing beef and milk; get rid of the cows and we get rid of the problem. What would happen then? Would we stop consuming beef and dairy? No, or course not. Instead we'd import our beef and dairy from other parts of the world so all we would be doing would be to move the climate damage to another country. That country would probably have lower environmental standards so that would actually increase the environmental impact. The carbon miles generated when transporting the produce can also be added to the equation.
That' in effect, is what Europe is doing. We could easily produce far more food and therefore import less but we choose to outsource the environmental damage and then pretend we aren't causing it.
As for drilling for oil in the porcupine beds; it's been tried and tried again and nobody has found a viable well. Anyway, we will consume the amount of oil we consume, if it is sourced locally it will just have shorter to travel to get here.

The line that "Ireland’s claim to be a “food island” was further undermined by UN data for 2011, which found it to be a net importer of food calories since 2000" has more to do with us not producing sugar any more and the fact that we import animal feeds. It also highlights the flaw in this entire argument; do we want food security and to be a net exporter of food energy or do we want to meet the Paris targets on emissions?

The other line that got me was "most Irish beef farmers are losing money, and only remain afloat due to EU subsidies".
So what? The same can be said for just about every farmer in every sector in the EU.
We have a high level of carbon emissions per Euro produced because we produce more beef and dairy than other countries. Does the author suggest that we should import these products from South America and similar areas, and our EU customers do the same? That will just make things worse.

This article highlights the flawed thinking behind much of the ideologically driven climate change agenda.

 

[odyssey06]

We could easily meet our targets if we stopped producing beef and milk; get rid of the cows and we get rid of the problem. What would happen then? Would we stop consuming beef and dairy? No, or course not. Instead we'd import our beef and dairy from other parts of the world so all we would be doing would be to move the climate damage to another country. That country would probably have lower environmental standards so that would actually increase the environmental impact. The carbon miles generated when transporting the produce can also be added to the equation. That' in effect, is what Europe is doing.

This is what the EU (and I'm including the UK in this for now, where the Guardian is based) has been doing also, in industrial Production. Imports are undercutting EU produced steel etc partly because they are being produced subject to less carbon emission costs. Outsourcing production (whether of food or industry) and then importing the outputs produced to lower standards is another example of EU madness.
I think questions need to be asked about the Common Agricultural Policy in general, but to attack it purely from this angle is ridiculous.

 

[Purple]

A good indication of this is that wool prices have collapsed because China has strengthened its environmental protection around carpet production.

 

[RichInSpirit]

Interesting article in yesterday's Sunday Business Post.

Emissions impossible? The Cork dairy farm aiming to cut methane by 80 per cent

The Farm Zero C project aims for a huge reduction in dairy farm emissions by 2027 and if successful, could pave the way for farmers to maintain their herds while also meeting carbon reduction targets

www.businesspost.ie