THREAD 1/n: @merrionstreet @Dept_ECC: does the proposed new Irish climate action law actually, legally, COMMIT to stringent GHG emissions reduction over the period 2021-2030? (#spoileralert: “Probably not.”)
2/n: The IE Govt claims explicitly that “few, if any, countries have legislated for as steep an emissions reduction” as required by this bill: irishtimes.com/news/politics/…
3/n: However: Prof John Sweeney, @AndrewLRJackson and I wrote to the Govt on 14th April pointing out that the relevant section of the Bill (inserting a new s. 6A(5) in the existing 2015 Act) was defective in both law and science: docs.google.com/a/dcu.ie/viewe…
4/n: It expressly failed to transpose into law the near-term commitment stated in the Programme for Government 2020 to “... an average 7% per annum reduction in overall greenhouse gas emissions from 2021 to 2030 (a 51% reduction over the decade)...”
5/n We received no substantive response to this letter.
6/n: IE Govt has now tabled its own proposed committee-stage amendments to the Bill: data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/…
7/n: #107 addresses the section in question. The text now proposed corresponds to what we called “interpretation B” in our original letter...
8/n: … but it entirely ignores the criticism we submitted of that specific approach.
9/n We have today written again to the three Govt ie leaders, re-iterating our view that this key component of the Bill remains legally obscure and scientifically unsound: tinyurl.com/IEClimateAct20…
10/n In brief, the proposed language gives the appearance of setting a statutory emissions reduction target for the period of 2021-2030, but without in fact setting any corresponding numerical constraint on the carbon budgets that the Climate Change Advisory Council can propose.
11/n: This is illustrated in this chart. ALL these emissions pathways (and more) meet the stated requirement for annual emissions in 2030 to be 51% of annual emissions in the baseline year (2018)... 
12/n: … but the equivalent (“average”) rate of reduction in annual emissions could still - legally - vary from the -7% of the PfG down to zero (or even become positive!):
13/n: NB: we assume the Advisory Council would not, in fact, propose budgets as large as the largest shown here. But the point at hand is not that, but whether the Bill provides any LEGAL constraint on the Council’s proposals. In its current form, this is entirely fudged.
14/14 #TLDR: We reiterate our view that the currently proposed Government amendment of s. 6A(5) remains both bad law and bad science. Sadly. /ENDS [@threadreaderapp unroll please]
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