Climate Action Plan
Dail Éireann — 2021-03-10
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Bríd Smith (PBP), Dublin South-Central

That is fair enough as an answer but it does not get to the point I am making, which is that the Bill the Minister published had an over-reliance on negative emissions technology. That is a sort of dream into the future because when one unpicks the models of negative emissions technologies, NETs, and a large-scale deployment of them, if it was possible, in the words of the scientist, Kevin Anderson, it is taking a high-stakes gamble in the hope that such technology can be invented in time and on scale but the problem is that we do not have that technology. Moreover, the touting of negative emissions technology often comes from the same sources of existing fossil fuel interests and much of what we hope and are promised seems to be a version of medieval indulgences - sin today with the promise of atonement tomorrow or the next few decades. In this case, NETs allow the continued sinning and profiteering of the fossil fuel industry and big agri-industry and allows us to continue with the fiction that it is okay to issue or renew licences like Barryroe or to build liquefied natural gas plants because somewhere down the line we will have new technology that can carbon capture and store that. It is not there.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-03-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-03-10