Climate & Environment | Business Post

Free legal aid for environmental cases in major planning overhaul

The change is primarily for covering the costs of judicial reviews, to ensure the public can still bring environmental justice challenges

Five Degrees of Change: Erinch Sahan

Head of Enterprise at Doughnut Economics Action Lab explains why the ownership structures and governance of businesses need to change

Business Post's View

Editorial: Major overhaul of planning laws will require some difficult trade-offs

Limiting judicial reviews is just one of the areas likely to prove problematic for some in the Green Party as the new Planning and Development Act will soon be brought to cabinet

Planning bill sparks concern among Greens

Tightening of rules around judicial reviews could deny basic rights and lead to legal challenges, say party members

Five Degrees of Change

‘The way we are living, with such intense consumerism, is not sustainable’ – Erinch Sahan

We need to completely rethink our economic structures – but luckily we already know how to do this, says Erinch Sahan, head of business and enterprise with the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, who supplies five policy and personal changes he would make for a greener world

Climate & Environment

Government to publish environment policy position next year

Laura Burke, director general of the EPA, said a national policy position on the environment should be a “no brainer” but still hadn’t been devised

Five Degrees of Change: Michelle Murphy

The Social Justice Ireland analyst discussed reducing food waste, putting a carbon tax on food, and how to address transport emissions in rural Ireland

Transport sector has a hill to climb to meet climate targets

Department modelling shows public transport fares will need to halve and volume and frequency of provision triple by 2030 to meet sectoral emissions ceiling

IFA calls for Leaving Cert course to recognise agriculture’s ‘environmental credentials’

Organisation says famers are being ‘vilified’ as the sole cause of climate change while minister says it’s time to move away from 'adversarial’ positions on the issue

Climate & Environment

Action stations: Turning Ireland’s climate ambitions into reality

Our national targets for reducing emissions, set out in the new Climate Action Plan, are now among the most ambitious in the world – and each sector has specific carbon budgets and pathways to deliver on by 2025 – but how achievable are they?

Five Degrees of Change

‘Those most impacted are the least well off’ – Michelle Murphy, Social Justice Ireland

Michelle Murphy, a research and policy analyst at Social Justice Ireland, advocates a carbon tax on food, regular meetings for communities to decide the best way to tailor a just transition to their particular needs, and targeting electric vehicle grants at those living in rural Ireland

Five Degrees of Change: Laura Burke

The director general of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gives her five degrees of change for a greener world

Up for debate: The best from the Business Post’s columnists

Insightful analysis of the main developments in business and politics from our team of writers, including Elaine Byrne, Matt Cooper and Ian Guider

Editor’s picks: Sit down with the best of our big reads

Our editors handpick the best writing in this week’s Business Post – including a charmingly winding evening with Shane MacGowan, and the lowdown on the Qatar World Cup

Today's headlines

Ryan warns industry over climate change cost; New poll shows rising prices are hitting consumers

The top stories from business and politics in today’s Business Post

Climate & Environment

John Gibbons: We’ve got to change our choice of food to feed our growing population

Half of all the habitable land on Earth is now used to feed our vast livestock herds, and for crop production for direct human consumption, with profound impacts on the biosphere

Climate & Environment

CCAC warns urgent action needed on firms’ carbon emissions

EPA research shows we are on track to cut emissions by only 12.8 per cent by 2030 instead of government’s target of 35 per cent

Five Degrees of Change

‘What’s happening with targets is less greenwashing and more time washing – Laura Burke, EPA

The environmental protection agency’s director general says the gap between aspiration and action and the polarisation of debate on the environment are major challenges that need to be addressed for a greener future

Five Degrees of Change: Andrew Murphy

The head of buildings and industry with the Environmental Coalition on Standards spoke about how to include aviation emissions in national climate targets, and ban emissions offsetting

Climate & Environment

‘Risk of bad outcome’ at COP 27, Eamon Ryan warns

The Minister for Environment also said fossil fuel, aviation and shipping companies should have to contribute money to new loss and damage funds.