Prof. John Gilliland is a man whose views on agriculture’s response to climate change should always be respected.
So his statement – made last week – to the effect that Ireland’s climate change act should be tested in court is worthy of note.
Lots of the science around climate change goes way above my head. But the fundamental point made by Gilliland does resonate.
He makes the argument that all climate change targets should not be based on gross greenhouse gas (GHG) emission values emanating from Irish agriculture.
Rather, the real figures that should be considered are the industry’s net emission values. In other words, full consideration should be taken of farming’s ability to sequester huge quantities from the atmosphere on a daily basis.
Moreover, such an approach would serve to dramatically reduce the real emissions targets set for Irish agriculture.
Climate targets
All of this makes sense to me. But the clock is ticking, even more so, now that the government is calling for the establishment of a cull cow committee.
The only way to stop this process from getting off the ground is by going to court and actually testing the legal principles upon which Ireland’s climate act – and the targets emanating from it – have been established.
And, if this fails, then it’s off to Brussels, to take the matter to Europe.
At the end of the day, legislation only becomes legal once it has been tested in court.
Ireland’s response to climate change will shape the future of Irish agriculture for the coming decades and beyond.
Fundamentally, legislation is meant to be fair in the way that it impacts across society.
I have always argued that the EU and, subsequently, the Irish government acted long before all the information needed to implement climate change legislation was in place.
Or, at least, the legislation put in place should have the flexibility to fully recognise the role of science in determining what is actually going on across the entire gamut of climate change-related factors.
And the big black hole, in this context, is the role played by agriculture and farmers’ land management practices to sequester vast quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
It’s not too late to get this matter rectified.
But to do so, I sense that the only route now open to the farming organisations is to have the principles upon which Ireland’s climate change legislation are based, fully debated in open court.
And the various farming bodies are the only organisations that can make this happen.