The budget, climate change and our ‘duty of hope’
Future historians will find it hard to forgive Paschal Donohoe’s failure to raise the carbon tax, but we must resist sinking into cynicism about the planet’s future
When historians in the future seek to understand how and why the world ignored the threat of climate change, they might do well to study the Irish budget of October 2019.
The previous May, they will note, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that Ireland would miss its 2020 emissions-reduction target by 95 per cent, achieving a 1 per cent reduction on 2005 emission levels instead of the target of 20 per cent. That ...
