Double Standards in new Trade Deal

Climate Change was the number one issue in the recent European Elections here in Ireland. Within a few weeks of the results however, the EU and South America signed a new trade deal that will increase global emissions and put more pressure on Brazil's rainforests.

The deal will allow 100,000 tonnes of beef to be exported across 4,000 miles to the EU increasing shipping emissions. More rainforests will need to be cleared to meet this demand, putting EU priorities at odds with the environmental significance attached to these forests.

The farming lobby are now starting to see through the duplicitous nature of the EU. Perhaps this is the beginning of a much needed examination of Ireland's relationship with the EU and the climate agenda that drives much of Irish politics.

I do not think they will take the Paris Climate Accord seriously at all. They will do whatever suits themselves. Once this deal is over the line, we will pay the consequences for that beef coming in.

It goes to show you the double standards, the double speak that they would allow that volume of beef come in. There is already almost close to 300,000t coming in already and you hear stories about rainforests cut down week on week to facilitate more agricultural production in Brazil.

If they were serious about climate change, they would have found some other way around it other than bringing in that volume of beef. [Farmers Journal].   

Air Travel Gets a Free Pass

Air Travel only gets a couple of mentions in the Government's latest Climate Plan where the aim is to offset emissions from air travel through the purchase of carbon credits. The main focus of the plan is on electric vehicles with legislation to be introduced to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars from 2030.

Meanwhile, on the same week that the Climate Plan was announced, the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar travelled to Brussels to obtain a €350 million loan from the European Investment Bank for investment in Dublin Airport - to facilitate European and global travel in the future.  

 It is perhaps one of the most astonishing cases of cognitive dissonance in Irish political history. Or it indicates that the European Union and the Irish government are not actually concerned about (or believe in) climate change except when it suits their own agendas.

Record Imports From China Has Offset Emissions Savings in Ireland

by Owen Martin

Ireland now imports a record € 5.3 billion of goods per year from China, higher than during the peak boom year of 2007 and double that of 2011. China is the biggest emitter on the planet so these imports come with a very high carbon footprint. Based on calculations made for other countries, I have calculated CO2 emissions of 6.1 million tonnes (MT) associated with our Chinese imports for last year.

CO2 emissions from electricity generation in Ireland in the year 2000 was roughly 17 MT. This has now reduced to around 12 MT . Imports from China since 2000 have increased by € 3.8bn, a consequent emissions rise for these imports of almost 4.3MT. 

So at a global scale, Ireland's efforts to reduce emissions in the electricity sector have been mostly offset by our increased outsourcing of emissions to China. 

This is something that's completely overlooked by the climate change advisory panel which essentially treats Ireland as an isolated entity with a separate climate to the rest of the world. In their most recent report, international trade only gets a single mention while carbon tax gets mentioned 57 times. China fails to get even a single mention. 



Sources:

1) https://www.cso.ie/en/statistics/externaltrade/goodsexportsandimports/

https://www.cso.ie/multiquicktables/quickTables.aspx?id=tsa01

2) USA imports from china was approx $400bn in 2012. Associated CO2 emissions was 512 MT according to carbonbrief.org. Which works out at 1.28 MT per $billion of imports, converted to euros is 1.14 MT per € 1 bn.  Emissions in china are up since 2012 according to the Guardian, so these emissions are actually understated.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anaswanson/2014/11/12/heres-one-thing-the-us-does-export-to-china-carbon-dioxide/#6f80b8e16a1a

http://www.carbonbrief.org/media/342862/ukcarbonexports7.png

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/03/this-is-what-the-us-imports-from-china/

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/05/brutal-news-global-carbon-emissions-jump-to-all-time-high-in-2018


3) EPA emissions from Electricity :

Figure 3: http://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/air/airemissions/ghgemissions2017/Report_GHG%201990-2017%20November%202018_Website.pdf

EU's Flawed Position on Climate Change Exposed by Trade Policy

Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's representative on Brexit, uploaded this video made by the Economist, in support of liberal policy in the EU. The video claims that populists favour domestic production over imported goods implying that liberals such as Guy do not favour domestic production. This is not true because the EU have for example banned US beef and have had tariffs on other non EU beef products for many years to protect EU farmers. But there is a bigger issue here. Guy is a strong advocate for a global climate policy :  

A global climate policy would require a reduction on emissions from shipping and air travel, which would mean more focus on local production of food and goods. So the liberal EU policy of favouring the importing of goods from thousands of miles away over domestic production would naturally result in a global increase in carbon emissions and indeed in pollutants such as sulpher and nitrogen oxides. 

There are signs that the EU will be lifting more tariffs on non EU trade in response to Trump and the populist movement. Recently, the EU signed a provisional trade deal with Mexico which is 5,000 miles away from Ireland.  Countries like Mexico are not expected to meet it's greenhouse emission reductions targets so importing goods from these countries will also increase the carbon footprint there as well as globally (in the seas).  

EU liberal policy will have the unintended consequence of driving global emissions up, not down negating the actions they take on climate here in Europe.