"Green" policies are destroying this country

Countries very often have a surplus of energy to export. Ireland regularly exports electricity to Northern Ireland

Plus, Wind turbines are regularly shut when they could be generating electricity because there is surplus electricity being generated.

Dumping cheap electricity into the European electricity market by going back to burning coal would do way more harm than good to the long term energy infrastructure as it would hugely distort the market for electricity and delay the transition to a modern carbon neutral energy infrastructure

The current Green plan seems to be power on a windy day, sit in the dark on a calm one. How long do you think that type of idiocy will be tolerated?

In case you weren't paying attention, the fuel price increases are caused by the war in Ukraine and Ireland's reliance on imported oil and gas

Not caused by taxes as much as you'd like to blame the greens.

Note, the government cut excise by 20c and the prices haven't come down and are unlikely to come down until we are no longer held hostage to importing fossil fuels from the most corrupt and dangerous places in the world.

€2k a year Tax would have most of the country contributing to a gofundme page to send the government to that euthanasia clinic in Switzerland,

Eh, Texas had their blackouts because their Fossil Fuel power stations shut down because the pipes froze, and because Texas didn't want to meet the standards of the wider US grid so did not have interconnectors with other states.

Only the propaganda from the Fossil fuel sector and their mouthpieces keep blaming it on the Wind power, and the right wing climate change denial media and blogs were happy to spread those lies around the world

Just look at historical precedent in this country alone. Everyone is all for Green policies and virtue signalling in the good times - but when those times end and the harsh economic realities take hold, that support evaporates rapidly.

It's why the Greens will be overruled on their LNG stance yet, why the Government cut excise on fuel this week (and probably will have to do so again), and why the upcoming carbon taxes will be postponed if Putin continues to drive to the Polish border as he's likely to do.

If you think that's the plan then you're grossly misinformed.

But the old straw man argument is always nice and easy to throw out for some easy thanks

I think you've hit on the real reason for this crusade. It's all about Ireland's "image" on the world stage. We already know we love that "everyone loves the Irish" and make big deals about plastic bag levies, smoking bans, and even "how far we've come" when Leo became Taoiseach - Paddy loves to be approved of and validated! It's a massive inferiority complex that I don't think we're ever going to grow put of.

As for the rest.. you expect a massively indebted country of 5 million people with significant social and economic problems as it is to outmanoeuvre the likes of China (who are not only many magnitudes larger but have a political system entirely different to ours). How do you expect to PAY for this by chance? WHO do you expect to pay for this? The same people I referenced earlier who are struggling to pay their bills and even GET to work at the moment?

Like I said, it's all well-intentioned but its idealistic fantasy!

After just 15 months in storage I would not see it as requiring much cost or effort to get it operational. Same for reassembling.

The projections from the likes of the IPCC are very far from the worst case scenario. They're actually very conservative and the science itself often produces much more alarming results than the IPCC report.

The plausible worst case scenario sees the Hothouse Earth scenario emerging within this century, runaway climate change that ultimately causes the extinction of the human race. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810141115

The IPCC say climate sensitivity is about 3c up to a plausible maximum of 4c (these are extremely damaging btw)

We will reach a doubling of CO2 (560ppm by about 2060 based on our current trajectory) and while it takes a bit of time to reach the equilibrium temperature, we would be essentially committed to 3-4c of warming by mid century, and that's only if we can cap concentrations at 560ppm, which is not likely to happen especially if many of the people on this thread get their way)

The actual worst case scenario is that warming of this magnitude will cross certain tipping points where positive feedback amplifies warming and takes it completely out of human control. Methane could be released from permafrost for example, which could see GHGs increase dramatically over a very short period of time

We do NOT want this to happen, but we do not know what the threshold for this is, and every additional % of a degree of warming we cause, increases the risk that we will pass these points of no return.

My figures are probably a bit out of date, but here's what I found about how much of a window we have to keep warming below 2c

There are 8 billion people on the planet and we have a fixed carbon budget to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. How would you allocate that carbon budget

The carbon budget to stay below 2c is about 275 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent emissions

thats 34 tonnes of carbon emissions per human on this planet.

Ireland emits about 8.3 tonnes of carbon per person per year.

If we were to distribute this fairly, Ireland would run out of our allocation in 4 years

China would run out in about 5 years (Much of their carbon pollution is actually used to produce and transport goods for sale in the west, so its really our carbon emissions)

Globally we will run out of our carbon budget in less than 8 years

Basically, we're not going to be able to keep warming to below 2c, so the new best case scenario is to try to keep it below 3c

Given that we have so little room to play with, how would you allocate the remaining carbon budget in a fair and reasonable way?

If Per capita is stupid, what is a better way? (I have a suspicion it's along the lines of 'Let Me pollute as much as I want...)