Climate Bill 2014 - highlights and summary of reaction

So, the Government has finally published the Heads of its Climate Action Bill.

In a nutshell:
It took two years for them to replublish last year the Fianna Fail / Green Party Bill - with all the targets taken out, and the "independence" of the expert advisory body further weakened. Ignoring the outcome of their own extensive public consultation along the way. And now, a year later, they have strenghtened the expert body but ignored some of the key recommendations of the Oirachtas Committee who carried out extensive stakeholder hearings last year.

Oh, and these are still only the Heads. They have promised to introduce the full Bill in the Dáil before the summer recess.

The longer version:
You can hear my analysis on the Bill for Drivetime on RTE by clicking here. The segment begins at minute 41 (after the 5pm news!)
And our press release is here.
Harry McGee's analysis in the Irish Times is here: "The Bill is more robust than earlier iterations"
The Journal's summary of reaction is here.

The Minister's own words - and the Bill itself.
So there wasn't a launch event as such, but Minister Hogan did brief the media in the Custom House

• The Departmental press release is here.
• The Minister's statment is here.
• The actual Heads of Bill are here.

But then the Minister upstaged the launch of his own Climate Bill by wading into the Cabinet row over the decision on water charges. And that is what the RTE newsroom and TV news ran with as a result. Who knows if it it would have been any different if RTE's new environment and agriculture correspondent had been there to argue the case (he's on leave). To be fair the News at One did interview the Minister on the Bill (before he made his water charges comments, phew!).

What did everyone make of it?

 IBEC gave it a "cautious welcome" providing "these problems are addressed in a flexible, efficient way that promotes rather than damages the economy". Well sure, and there are lots of business opportunities in the transition to a low carbon future. But you would be forgiven for thinking on reading their press release that if we do nothing to reduce our emissions our economy will sail on indefinitely with no climate change itself doing no "damage". If only. IBEC's press release is here.

There was a partial welcome for the Bill from the IFA too. Press release here. But weirdly they welcomed the dropping of something that was never there in any version of this or any previous Bill - sectoral targets. And then they started talking about feeding the world (again), a canard which I thought they had dropped after clarifying to the Oireachtas Committee that their actual target market is the Chinese and Indian middle class. Irish beef and dairy are not going to address hunger in sub-Saharan Africa.

 Indeed, in their press release Oxfam said
"The suggestion that including agriculture in our climate policies will threaten global food security (availability of food) has no basis in fact. In reality the opposite is true – the scale of global agricultural emissions is such that we cannot tackle climate change without controlling agricultural emissions."

 Christian Aid lamented the absence of targets for 2030 and 2050 and climate justice, despite ministerial prononcements about Ireland's commitment to it.

 And Ciara Kirrane of Stop Climate Chaos, said “We are disappointed that the revised Heads do not show significant improvements in the areas most needed."

Interestingly, while us NGOs pointed out where is should and could have been better some of those who favour climate action emphasized that progress had been made. Joe Curtin of the IIEA wrote that it was "much improved" and that the Oireachtas committee "would appear to have had a significant impact on the final outcome."

What next?

Well now the Heads have to get written up in legislative language as a full Bill - promised by the summer. And then it goes to the Dail and Seanad for debate, amendment and enactment into law. By the end of the year according to the Minister today. So now it's up to our elected TDs and Senators to stand up for the reccommendations their own Committee made to Government but which were ignored. Oh, and it's up to us to make sure those TDs and Senators know we demand that they do that. It's time to raise the political temperature on climate change.