{"id":594174,"date":"2026-05-20T10:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/594174\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:48:10","slug":"ignoring-irish-greenhouse-gas-emissions-is-morally-bankrupt-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/594174\/","title":{"rendered":"Ignoring Irish greenhouse gas emissions is morally bankrupt \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir, \u2013 It is reassuring that \u201chigh-profile members of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/irish-academy-of-engineering\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/irish-academy-of-engineering\/\">Irish Academy of Engineering<\/a> have distanced themselves from the organisation\u2019s call for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/\">Ireland<\/a> to revert to burning coal to generate electricity\u201d (\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/environment\/climate-crisis\/2026\/05\/18\/members-distance-themselves-from-engineer-bodys-call-to-burn-coal-for-electricity\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/environment\/climate-crisis\/2026\/05\/18\/members-distance-themselves-from-engineer-bodys-call-to-burn-coal-for-electricity\/\">Members distance themselves from engineer body\u2019s call to burn coal for electricity<\/a>\u201d, Climate Crisis, May 18th).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The attitude that regardless of what Ireland might achieve in reducing GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, it will have no impact on the country\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/climate-change\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/climate-change\/\">climate<\/a> is a myopic, solipsistic, not to mention morally bankrupt, way of looking at the situation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">All the small countries of the world combined are responsible for around a third of the world\u2019s GHG emissions, comparable to China\u2019s share.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">If they all adopted this attitude, it would certainly have an adverse impact on all their climates, with all that would bring, especially for the poorest people around the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">What if China, then, being also \u201conly\u201d responsible for around a third of the world\u2019s GHG emissions or only 9.9 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per capita, then adopted the same attitude?<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">What if the US and all the rest adopted this attitude too?<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Thinking like this is a recipe for planetary disaster which would affect every single country in the world.\u2013 Yours, etc,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">ROB SADLIER,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Rathfarnham,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dublin 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 It is reassuring that \u201chigh-profile members of the Irish Academy of Engineering have distanced themselves from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[22689,556,1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-594174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}