Paul Murphy rejects carbon budgets as not aligned with Paris

I want to move our amendment, and I will actually read it, because I think it will be very clear for people what we are saying, that we delete the current motion agreeing to the current inadequate carbon budgets, and we replace it with, having reflected on the most recent IPCC report, declines to accept the carbon budgets presented for 2021 to 2025, and for 2026 to 2030, as they are not aligned with the State's commitments entered into at the Treaty signed in Paris in 2015, and call on the Minister to consult with the Advisory Council and amend the budgets accordingly, and further calls for a revision in the third budget to ensure it reflects our climate obligations based on the latest science and the principles of climate justice. I mean, listening to this debate, I just have to ask, what are we doing here? We are days after the third working group report of the IPCC, the co-chair tells us that it is now or never if we are going to avoid going over 1.5 degrees, the UN Secretary General very adroitly puts it that, and accurately, government and business leaders are saying one thing, but are doing another, simply put, they are lying. The IPCC report is very clear that we are on a trajectory to absolute disaster, absolute catastrophe, and that the only thing that can avert that is deep economic and structural changes. In other words, a complete revolution in terms of how our society, how our economy is organised. But instead, we, certainly most of the people here in the political parties, including the Green Party, and the world, are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I mean, even worse than that, in a sense, we are pushing the Titanic further into the iceberg, pushing it further into the water, by signing up with the EU, signing up for a long-term deal with the US, working to ensure demand for 50 billion cubic metres of US liquefied natural gas until at least 2030, signing up for more fossil fuels, more fossil fuel infrastructure, that will then have to be used in order to produce a profit for decades. And what we have before us is not in line with science, it is simply not. And the Chair of the Climate Committee, a member of the Green Party, earlier on, anticipated that we and people for profit would make this argument, that the budgets presented are not adequate. He knew we would do it, because he was there in the committee, when scientist after scientist said very clearly, this is not enough, this is not going to contribute to staying under 1.5 degrees of global warming. He went on to say, you know, he doesn't think free public transport is the answer, or that will help, or he doesn't think that banning data centres will help. I happen to think they will. I happen to think that what we need on a global basis is a significant reduction in energy usage and material throughput. But that can be done in a way that improves people's lives with measures like free public transport, with measures like a four-day week without loss of pay, with measures like retrofitting and so on, with measures like saying, no, we don't need the data centres with all the algorithms and everything else, let's use the energy that we have to actually improve people's lives. But fine, Deputy Ledin doesn't agree with those measures, no problem, but let's at least start with carbon budgets that are based on science, and then let's work out what policies we do to get there, but we don't have that. It's a complete abject failure by the government and by the Green Party and government to bring forward carbon budgets that simply don't measure up. So what is contained in the carbon budgets is less than what's in the programme for government. What's in the programme for government is less than the EU commitments. What's in the EU commitments is less than what's demanded in Paris. So bit by bit by bit, you just have a complete disconnection from what the science is saying, because it's attuned to political realities. Rather than starting with and making the case to people that this is what we absolutely need to do, and then we need to go and find a way to do it, and we think it certainly can be done in a way that improves the lives of ordinary people, as opposed to making the lives of ordinary people harder. Just to go into it in more detail, to start with the overall target contained in the Climate Act of a 51% cut in emissions by 2030, that is an insufficient target. It is particularly an insufficient target when you take into account the obligations set out in Paris to reflect equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities in the light of different national circumstances, i.e. Ireland is a developed country, the fifth wealthiest country in the world per capita of GDP. Obviously most people don't feel that, the billionaires that feel that, but therefore we need a much faster trajectory, we should be aiming for a zero carbon economy by 2030. Secondly, the budgets make no provision or account for emissions from shipping or aviation, particularly for a country like Ireland, that is quite an omission. We're just going to ignore these emissions over here, we're not going to count them on our balance sheet, other people aren't going to count them, other countries aren't going to count them on their balance sheet, and that way we all sail on towards catastrophe, our eyes very much wide open, but everyone can pat themselves on the back that they had a carbon budget and so on. The carbon budgets use a baseline of 2018, not 1990, which is what we should be using, not even 2015 when the Paris Treaty was signed. The consequence of that is that we get higher budgets than we would otherwise be allowed if we based ourselves on a baseline of 2020. Even to take the government's own programme for 7% per annum cuts, it doesn't even include that. So Barry McMullen, eminent scientist, calculates that they amount to an average of 6% reductions per year. That the Advisory Council total budget amounts to 495 metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent and not 468, which would be the amount if a 7% cut was delivered per year. The budgets are less ambitious than the EU. The EU looked to cut for cuts of 55% by 2030 rather than 51% and using 1990 as the base year rather than 2015. If 1990, for example, was used in the Advisory Council carbon budgets, it would mean the budgets provide for just 45% of a reduction, not the 51%. So there's clever accounting going on to try and pretend that something closer to the science is actually being done here. The budgets are less ambitious than the UNEP Emission Gap Report, which called for cuts from 2020 to 2030 of 7.6% per year to be in with a 50-50 chance of limiting warming to under 1.5 degrees. The carbon budgets, as I said, are not compliant with the Paris Treaty and its obligation to reduce emissions in a fair and equitable way between richer nations and poorer ones. In fact, quite outrageously, the Advisory Council essentially say that this is not our job. It is not the job of the Council or the Carbon Budget Committee to make such value judgments, whereas the point was made by the scientist Andrew Jackson that, according to the Climate Act, the CCAC, the Advisory Council, is specifically required by law to carry out its functions in a manner consistent with implementation of the Paris Agreement to reflect equity and the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities. The carbon budgets backload the carbon budgets backload the cuts to the second budget with cuts of just 4.8% per year for the first five years, then cuts of 8.3% for the second five-year budget. The consequence of that, obviously, as well as the political reality that this government will be gone, but is the fact that any slippage in the first five years, and there already is some slippage, will be very hard to fix in subsequent years. Obviously, some stuff takes time, no question, but there are things that could be done immediately, like, for example, free public transport, begin to roll out mass retrofitting and so on. Very concerningly, again, it's a point made in the recent IPCC report, is that the whole world, including these carbon budgets, are reliant upon the deployment of vast, unproven technologies in the future to deliver net zero by 2050. The Advisory Council itself admits that future targets rely on carbon capture and storage technology and massive carbon sequestration and land use that is neither planned for nor possible at present. That is, like, relying on a future fairy tale presented to us by some of the kind of techno-modernists who suggest we don't really need to worry about today because our magic solution is around the corner, as opposed to dealing with the science that is presented before us. What we propose, and I'll finish on this, in the committee, Deputy Smith, we propose reductions in the budgets of a further 67 metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent to account for aviation and shipping emission, as well as our obligations under Paris, but all of those amendments were rejected by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens. For that reason, we should not accept these budgets, we should send back and come back with budgets that are actually in line with the science. Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Murphy. Thank you. Thank you.