Carbon, Commuting, and Corruption

But I want to start, though, with carbon tax.

And the reason I want to start with carbon tax is we've had a major UN report this week saying basically we're failing in our aspirations to contain global warming.

The 1.5% increase in average temperatures.

Forget about it.

We're breaking through that.

It's a question of stopping it going much further than that.

And Ireland, of course, has its role to play in relation to that.

Carbon tax has been one of the measures introduced as a way as opposed to nudge behaviour in relation to how people do things which emit carbon, but also to raise money which can be put into mitigation measures.

And yet we have the situation where the excise duty on fuel, the restoration to previous rates has been deferred to November.

start in November, and a lot of us think that that won't actually happen, that the government will kick that can down the road again.

But what's the point in doing that if carbon taxes go up in the budget in October? So I want to talk about whether they should be increased in October, but also Have carbon taxes actually outlived their usefulness to an extent? Let's start with you, Áine, on this.

I mean, is there a logic in putting up carbon tax on petrol and diesel, home heating oil in October if you're actually suppressing the excise duties on the same product?

Yeah, there's a massive contradiction, obviously, at play now and a tension point between the short-term need to respond to what is happening in this poly-crisis moment and in the markets and doing what they've done in terms of deferring any increases again in the excise duties.

And that can be argued in the cost of living crisis.

That is right and appropriate.

We like to see it more targeted, of course, but we get the responsibility of a government in the short term to be responsive in that manner.

But what's lacking in parallel to that, though, is a long-term plan that is futuristic, that is looking at those climate change targets, looking at a UN report like that, that did not scenario plan for scenarios where we might exceed 1.5 degrees and beyond, and instead has the reality moment coming out the back of what? Heat waves? We've seen the tragic events in Nepal.

We all know what conditions were like this summer where we went from heatwave to monsoon weather.

We are living in this climate change crisis moment and having to think about those future generations.

But we are without a long term plan.

And we sit here today in September without a climate action plan for 2026.

Now, in my business and organizations and charities, if you want a plan for 2026, you were publishing that 12 months ago, not sitting here in the month of September, still without an unpublished plan for a year that is about to enter its final quarter.

So we're left in this scenario of being unclear about that climate action plan and therefore where does a carbon tax now sit? And you can argue a carbon tax was well-intentioned.

You want to ring fence for funding, retrofitting, EVs, charging at home, all of that good stuff.

But to your point there, it was part of this nudge behaviour.