ENVIRONMENT:The lesson for Ireland is that tackling climate change is not only a challenge, but also a business opportunity
Nothing was going to be settled at the 13th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali last month, other than a timetable for negotiations leading to a broad international agreement - by the end of 2009 - on how to tackle global warming, with further conferences in the Polish city of Poznan next December and in Copenhagen a year later.
Whether a deal is struck in Copenhagen will depend on a number of factors, not least the stance taken by whoever takes over from George W Bush as US president. The Bush administration has been the principal obstacle to progress over the past seven years, but it will be gone on January 20th, 2009.
Public opinion in the US has changed since Bush repudiated the Kyoto Protocol in March 2001. Cities and states throughout the US have led the way, and corporate America has followed. Most of the big corporations are now in favour of a "cap and trade" regime to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, which came into force on January 1st, 36 developed countries are obliged to cut emissions by an average of 5 per cent below 1990 levels between now and 2012. A mere fraction of what climatologists say is needed, it's still an important first step on the long and difficult road towards a low-carbon future.
The EU is prepared to go much further, pledging to cut its emissions by 20 per cent unilaterally by 2020, and by 30 per cent if economic competitors such as the US were to follow. But given the problems some EU countries have had in complying with their Kyoto commitments, such a range of cuts may be simply too ambitious.
Take Ireland, for example. Under the EU "burden-sharing" (now called "effort-sharing") arrangement to implement Kyoto, the Government agreed in 1998 to limit the increase in our emissions to 13 per cent above 1990 levels in the 2008-2012 period. But unparalleled economic growth since then has pushed emissions up by 24 per cent.
If the EU is to achieve an overall 20 per cent cut in its emissions by 2020, it is clear that even small member states such as Ireland will be required to play their part. And while it's unlikely that we would be obliged to cut our already burgeoning emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels, it is clear that some extra effort will be needed.
Tough negotiations will get under way in Brussels this month to agree on a new "effort-sharing" deal. The EU's commitment to its 20 per cent reduction target is crucial to its credibility as a world leader on tackling climate change, so the level of each member state's effort may be imposed in the absence of an agreement.
The Kyoto regime is, in effect, a preview of things to come when much deeper cuts will have to be made. That will involve more than changing lightbulbs and making new homes more energy-efficient. It will involve a conscious decision to wean ourselves off fossil fuels - oil, gas, coal and even peat. One of the factors that will help this is the rising price of oil and gas. With crude oil hovering around $100 (€68) per barrel, renewable energy sources become more competitive.
"Technology is absolutely fundamental", according to Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the highly influential economic review of climate change for the British government, published in 2006. The aim, he says, should be to assist developing countries to move to a "low carbon-growing economy" by adopting cleaner technologies.
The best way of achieving this would be to have a "strong trade in carbon" that would allow finance to flow to developing countries. But Stern also said developed countries would have to cut their own annual emissions from 10-15 tonnes to three tonnes per capita between now and 2050, as "the absolute minimum that equity demands".
The Fourth Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also suggested that cuts of such magnitude would be needed in order to avert the worst consequences of "dangerous human interference with the climate system". Indeed, it was the unequivocal nature of its reports that drove the Bali conference.
There is a momentum at the moment. But as the memory of the IPCC's assessment recedes, and with another full assessment of climate change not due for four years, the danger is that the forthcoming negotiations in Poznan and Copenhagen may lose sight of what's at stake, and delegates will need to be constantly reminded.
They might look out the window at all the wind turbines. Denmark pioneered wind energy in the late 1970s. Thirty years on, wind meets more than 20 per cent of its electricity demand and Danish manufacturers supply almost half the world's wind turbines, employing 20,000 people and generating some €3 billion a year for the economy.
The lesson for Ireland, another small European country with a much more favourable wind regime than Denmark's, is that tackling climate change is not only a challenge, but also a business opportunity. And now, with Green Party ministers for the environment and energy, the wind is beginning to blow in the right direction.
