Ireland's three big bets: Barry McMullin interview

Ireland has declared a climate emergency.
In this interview Barry McMullin looks at what can be learned from other emergencies in Ireland’s history. He does the maths on carbon budgets, discusses the growth of Irish diary, green growth, the distortions of per capita emissions and Ireland’s three big bets. 

Barry McMullin was co-Principal Investigator on a EPA-commissioned 5-year assessment on the potential of Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) in Ireland. 
He is an electronic engineer and long-time professor at DCU. 
He has given evidence to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action on numerous occasions. He’s on the board of SEAI and head of the Engineers Ireland division on Energy, Environment and Climate Action. 

If you’d like to find out more about how you can call on government to accelerate decarbonisation go to https://www.friendsoftheearth.ie/  or www.antaisce.org 

Topics discussed in the episode:

Caroline O’Doherty Irish Examiner article cited in podcast https://www.independent.ie/news/environment/climate-action-in-slow-motion-as-politicians-balk-at-prospect-of-change-42375175.html 

An Taisce assessment of Ireland’s 2023 Climate Action Plan https://www.antaisce.org/news/irelands-new-climate-action-plan-reads-more-like-a-delayed-actions-plan 

Journalist George Monbiot ‘Leave It In The Ground’
https://www.monbiot.com/2007/12/11/rigged/ 

‘How climate change paved the way to war in Syria’
https://www.dw.com/en/how-climate-change-paved-the-way-to-war-in-syria/a-56711650 

Green growth
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/green-growth-economic-activity-environment 
 

Links to Barry McMullin’s work

-       Prof Barry McMullin and Dr Louise Fitzgerald discuss the Climate Action Plan 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiHGCh9qKfs 

-       Excellent overview of the climate situation and Negative Emissions Technologies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BMiq_CTdEM 

-       Giving evidence to the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5taIEOOMOIo 

-       2016 project launched by Barry McMullin and others: A Citizen’s Convention for a Post-Carbon Ireland http://www.postcarbonireland.org/ 

-       Links to Barry McMullin’s academic articles
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=FOb060gAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate 

-       The latest climate updates on Barry McMullin’s twitter   https://twitter.com/autofac?lang=en

-       Barry McMullin’s website https://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/  

This episode was recorded on 10th March 2023

Tech support: Darren Loughran