Irish Examiner view: Fine of up to €26bn should prompt Ireland to act on climate
EU fines that could cost Ireland as much as €26bn should spur us on to take action on climate change. iStock
We have grown almost inured to sobering headlines by now, with every day laden with fresh threats and menaces.
However, a story this week heralded a truly stunning prospect — one in which Ireland might be on the hook for a bill which is greater to our entire annual health budget.
As outlined in this newspaper, Ireland faces a bill that could be as high as €26bn for missing our EU climate targets.
This marks us as the worst in Europe per capita on the pledge to reduce emissions by 2030.
The figure comes in a major report from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac) and the Climate Change Advisory Council, with the two organisations warning that Ireland has already foregone €500m of potential revenue it could have had if it was meeting its targets.
To be fair to those two bodies, they offer some consolation while urging action.
“Yes, it will cost money,” Climate Change Advisory Council chairperson Marie Donnelly said of such action.
“But the key issue is that we need to spend the money now, rather than postponing it into the future at some time when maybe a leprechaun will find a pot of gold.”
Or an unanticipated windfall from a large tech company, she might have added.
It is worth pointing out that — as sometimes happens with European rulings — there appears to be some inconsistency in this area.
As outlined in his column today, Stephen Cadogan points out that European farmers will now be expecting a generous simplification package for their sector — one to match last week’s European Commission proposals to scrap many of the requirements of industries to disclose their environmental impacts.
Those requirements include the carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is being changed — now 90% of importers of goods covered by this measure will be exempt from the mechanism.
On that basis, is it fair to hold Ireland to a standard the EU itself is busily undermining?
There is no denying the seriousness of the climate crisis — nor the specific challenges facing Ireland. The collapse in electric vehicle sales here has been linked to the lack of supporting infrastructure, for instance, and we must improve our performance in this area.
By moving the goalposts on climate targets, however, the EU is undermining its own credibility on this challenge.
Earlier this week, US president Donald Trump addressed a joint session of the US congress. The blandest description of the event would be that Mr Trump was seeking to highlight some of the initiatives he has introduced since taking office in January.
A more accurate account of the address would be that it showcased the Trump project in all its glory, from shameless fawning over tech billionaires to wild inaccuracies and untruths — all delivered in a rambling monologue received with rapturous applause by the Republican politicians present.
Every day it seems that we enter unprecedented territory because of Mr Trump’s actions in the White House, but the level of trust in the president is now so low that scepticism about the existence of a letter from president Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine — which was trumpeted by Trump — was perfectly understandable. Like almost every sentence heard during the address, it needed rigorous fact-checking.
Yet, there were still significant lessons to be learned from the event.
The listlessness of the Democrats was clear to see. For instance: The reason for the lack of energy in countering Trump’s plans and schemes was immediately obvious, particularly when compared with the raucous support from the Republican benches.
That image of entirely disconnected and combative groups on either side of the aisle, two polar opposites in a deeply divided political system, was no doubt a source of deep satisfaction to another onlooker. President Vladimir Putin of Russia was surely encouraged by the chaos caused in Washington by the return of his old friend Trump.
There was also an occasional intrusion from reality. The US president had to acknowledge that his tariffs might cause what he called a “disturbance”, which rather undercut his campaign promises on lowering prices for consumers.
He strained to blame his predecessor for not solving such problems before leaving office. However, the more distant the Biden administration becomes, the less plausible that argument becomes in turn.
Such is the environment awaiting the Taoiseach in Washington next week. It promises to be a testing visit.
Dolly Parton ascended to the status of (inter)national treasure long ago.
One of the most successful recording artists and songwriters of all time, with songs such as and , she branched out into acting in the 80s to great acclaim. Her literacy initiative, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, helps hundreds of thousands of children all over the world — including in Ireland. Few celebrities of her standing enjoy such universal popularity.
Hence the outpouring of sympathy for Parton this week as she announced on social media that her husband of almost 60 years, Carl Dean, had died.
The two met outside a launderette in 1964, and Parton recalled years later: “He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”
He shunned the limelight but inspired one of his wife’s biggest hits. A bank teller’s innocent crush on Dean was the basis for , which regularly features in lists of the greatest country songs ever written.
