Full coverage: Climate change

In a special podcast following COP26 and the publication of Ireland’s Climate Action Plan, four of The Currency’s writers focused on climate change discuss the vast distance left to cover between official discourse and reality – and its implications for the role of the state.

Humanity’s latest experience of climate change was the Little Ice Age in the 17th century, which resulted in widespread upheaval and loss of life – but also led to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, with lessons on the role of the state.

As the food group continues its strong recovery, it is selling its historic dairy business back to farmers, distancing itself from controversial expansion in the industry – and providing a price benchmark for a stalled similar plan at Kerry Group.

The latest Climate Action Plan falls short of the Government's own targets, showing that ministers continue to dither on making hard decisions. By default, a growing share of steeper efforts will fall on electricity generation – and there, at least, some action is happening.

It might not be immediately obvious but there is a strong link between the Glasgow climate conference and the Central Bank's mortgage rules. It is time to include energy efficiency and commuting factors into the real cost of a mortgaged property – not to mention their value to wider society.

The Climate Change Advisory Council has laid out what is feasible to cut Ireland’s greenhouse gas emission by half in ten years. It boils down to balancing disruption between the power, transport and heat used by every home and business or the agri-food sector supporting entire rural communities.

German governments do what voters have elected them to do, under the watchful eye of the Bundestag. This previously led to austerity-laced EU bailouts. This time, Germany’s big election issue was the environment.

Adam Tooze’s latest book chronicles the year between January 20, 2020, and January 20, 2021, as the world realised Covid for the threat it was and moved to deal with it. The economist and historian talks about how the crisis has altered the world, the nature of geopolitics and the future.

The Climate Change Advisory Council is about to publish Ireland’s first carbon budgets, which will set hard limits on greenhouse gas emissions for the next decade. Its chair Marie Donnelly details, step by step, how this overall figure will translate into obligations for individual ministers, businesses and households.

With no momentum to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, removing carbon from the atmosphere is our next best hope of slowing global warming. Yet planting trees is not happening either, which means it is time we put the right price on it.