Families may have to forego second cars if farmers do not meet emissions targets

31 comments
  1. Why are they limiting agriculture with possible food shortages and drought and famine in climate affected parts of the world?

  2. Lazy governance strikes again.

    Ireland is a net exporter of food, we make enough food to feed like 40m people, most of which goes to continental Europe and Britain where they don’t meet their food needs. Unless there is some massive change in eating habits at a European level, then the only thing this will achieve is increasing the importation of beef from fucking Brazil where they’re actively burning down the rainforest for farmland. Which is more hurtful to the environment, a cow raised on land in Tipp and eaten in Germany – or a cow raised on burned down and intensively irrigated rainforest, shipped halfway across to be eaten in Germany?

    Why not be creative about this problem. Build more wind generation capacity than we can possibly use, subsidise home solar far beyond the pathetic grant we have now, and mandate that if a home needs a second car that it be fully electric. Also get rid of all taxes on electric cars and give a 10% grant up to 100k. Or better yet how about more train and tram lines, and electric buses so people can go without the second car.

    More than 50% of our carbon comes from transportation and energy generation. We could practically decarbonise that part of our country if people like Eamonn Ryan had a fucking modicum of sense.

  3. Very logical.

    Have 1 car instead of 2, doing twice as many journeys, cause people have places to be…

    Interesting

  4. Climate change isn’t going to go away. We have to accept that we can’t keep operating as if it doesn’t exist. People are crying about public transport but you can see that since the greens have come in fares have gone down and new routes and services are coming in. We are transioning to green energy rapidly. All of those measures won’t be enough so we need to ask ourselves what low hanging fruit remain….. Its beef exports lads. They arent talking about abolishing beef, they’re talking about putting a cap on it.

    I know Brazilian beef remains a problem and we should get assurances that if we cut back they don’t expand. But we can only control what we control.

  5. If they want people to get rid of cars they need to seriously increase the standards of public transport.

    As it stands, anyone who works nights, starts early or works on a Sunday has very little options to use public transport.

    Planning and accommodation policies also have a lot to answer for. If you force everyone to move to massive housing estates 50 miles outside the employment centres then people are going to have to drive

  6. Pitting the average joe against farmers. Let’s bicker among ourselves while the real culprits live and operate carefree.

  7. Oh no, my second car. What will I do without my second car. How will I be in two places at the same time. Oh Lord. Does this affect my fourth car as well? I hope not, I drive in 4d space. This is unfair.

  8. Classic.

    We’re bitching in one thread about climate change because governments aren’t doing enough and then bitching in this thread when they try to explain that climate action will be costly.

    That’s why climate change is still barrelling ahead. Most of us simply don’t want to accept that it’ll require massive changes in our lifestyles.

  9. Urgh, the only thing this headline says to me is that our news reporting outlets are in the toilet. No one actually cited one option against the other. Its a clickbaitey headline wrote to generate negative discourse between middle class and farmers. Its very irresponsible reporting.

    From the article…
    “A reduction in the number of cars on roads is among the options that would have to be considered if a 30% reduction in carbon emissions from agriculture is not met.” \ “Senior Government sources have told the Irish Examiner that limiting the overall number of vehicles on roads and looking at the second family car would all be in the mix if the higher targets are not reached.”
    That’s as close as anyone gets to saying cars v farmers, and that’s not a ministerial quote, its from the “writer” of this article.

  10. I would gladly change to an electric vehicle. Currently driving an A6 S-Line. Gonna stick with Audi I think, so its going to be the A6 e-tron for me. By the way, how much of the 103k price tag will a grant cover?

  11. And yet the legislation talks for the likes of escooters and ebikes has been pushed back to 2023. The exact sort of thing to reduce the number of second cars families are likely to have in or close to cities. I know it won’t help families in rural Ireland but it’ll help all the same.

  12. Why is the finger always pointed at the average person, and not massive companies who have been shown to be the biggest contributors to climate change? There is never a thing said about corporations, just that they can buy their way into being carbon neutral.

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