{"id":259380,"date":"2025-07-12T16:30:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T16:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/259380\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T16:30:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T16:30:23","slug":"ni-climate-change-act-mlas-voted-to-accidentally-tie-their-own-hands-now-theyre-going-to-do-what-they-hate-take-unpopular-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/259380\/","title":{"rendered":"NI Climate Change Act: MLAs voted to accidentally tie their own hands \u2013\u00a0now they\u2019re going to do what they hate: take unpopular decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom4 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Stormont set remarkably tough climate change targets \u2013 but is belatedly realising these are legally enforceable and are going to rebound on the very parties which championed them\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Northern Ireland\u2019s planned path to net zero doesn\u2019t stand up to scrutiny and is a legislative nightmare for Stormont\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/001779a4-eced-4aec-b63f-b90a4008ac08.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Northern Ireland\u2019s planned path to net zero doesn\u2019t stand up to scrutiny and is a legislative nightmare for Stormont<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cWhy do my actions have consequences?\u201d the hapless Homer Simpson once lamented. It\u2019s a question some senior Stormont figures must be asking themselves as they\u2019ve stumbled into another fine mess of their own making.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">What\u2019s happened is that MLAs have accidentally tied their own hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stormont set remarkably tough climate change targets \u2013 but is belatedly realising these are legally enforceable and are&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[99537,2311,924,84491,23668,39256,23669,99538,1434,1144,6410,11528,27348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-259380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-climate-bill","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-democratic-unionist-party","11":"tag-department-for-infrastructure","12":"tag-department-of-agriculture","13":"tag-edwin-poots","14":"tag-environment-rural-affairs-daera","15":"tag-lough-neagh","16":"tag-michelle-oneill","17":"tag-northern-ireland","18":"tag-sam-mcbride","19":"tag-sinn-fein","20":"tag-the-executive-office","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114841218238290256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}