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Colm McCarthy

Net Zero How We Stop Causing Climate Change

Our climate change failings, and how we can do better

Dieter Helm is one of Britain's foremost experts on energy economics and he has written a terrific book on the next agenda item once the Covid emergency has passed. It is also an angry book: Helm believes that the last 30 years, since the science first clarified the extent of the climate threat, have been wasted. Emissions should have been stabilised many years ago and placed on a downward trajectory. Instead, they have grown inexorably and 2020 will see only a brief and fortuitous interruption.

POLITE: Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn recommended Google to Dáil deputies on Thursday. Photo: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Public houses plus a virus are bad for public health

Ronan Glynn, the Acting Chief Medical Officer, displaying admirable politeness, recommended Google to Dáil deputies at his Thursday media briefing. He was responding to queries from the electorate's champions, demanding evidence (from him) that bars help to spread the coronavirus. Google, I should explain, is a search engine available on things called laptops, and it directs users to information on things called websites. TDs get free laptops.

'Iceland welcomes visitors but tests on arrival (sets you back €100), requires self-isolation for a day in a hotel where the result is delivered, and quarantine is compulsory if the test is positive.'

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Better the Icelandic route than 'air bridges' linking us to wrong hotspots

New worldwide cases of the Covid-19 infection have yet to peak. The situation in Europe is mixed - most countries are reporting declines in both cases and fatalities but there have been several renewed outbreaks, including some in Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany and around the Portuguese city of Lisbon. Cases and fatalities have been on a falling trend in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. The figures have been comparable in both parts of Ireland and less severe than in England.
'It is far too early to draw conclusions but the success of public health measures in controlling the pandemic is reflected in economic costs' Stock Image

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Supporting every single firm will just create a zombie business community

Last Thursday's ESRI report should have ended wishful thinking about an early economic recovery. The authors were brave enough, two months earlier, to produce the first assessment of the damage, at a time when only a handful of fatalities had been reported and just before the lockdown commenced on March 27. They were too optimistic - the table shows their scenario in March and their current 'baseline' projection for 2020.
JUST THE TICKET: Economist and columnist David McWilliams backs repricing the entire debt structure

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Colm McCarthy Opinion We owe it to ourselves to reject idea of debt jubilee

According to the Old Testament, God advised Moses that rulers should arrange, once every 50 years, a debt jubilee, to include the freeing of prisoners and release for the enslaved, as well as the forgiveness of amounts owing to moneylenders. Since the Covid crisis has piled extra debt on over- borrowed governments and businesses, a debt jubilee sounds just the ticket. The Irish Times columnist David McWilliams likes the idea: "This means repricing the entire debt structure of the economy, which is something the ECB has given central banks permission to do."
'The emissions associated with the consumption of oil from Saudi Arabia get measured in Ireland and are not counted as part of Saudi emissions.  But if Irish butter ends up in Saudi supermarkets, the emissions also get counted in Ireland. ”.' Opinion

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Colm McCarthy: Constraining dairy output in Ireland might not even reduce European emissions

Climate change shares a critical feature with the Covid pandemic: it does not lend itself to narrow, country-by-country policy responses. The virus is unaware that humans have constructed national political frontiers, and the planet has just one atmosphere, its accumulating stock of greenhouse gases shorn of national identity the day they are emitted. Purely national responses will fail in both cases.

TROUBLE AHEAD: ECB chief Mario Draghi must move quickly to shore up economies across the Eurozone

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Europe must move fast and limit the economic damage

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave the world the motto ''Move Fast and Break Things'', celebrating the disruption culture of the Silicon Valley innovators. The things Zuckerberg proposed to break were the out-dated business models of stuffy old offline competitors, not the architecture of the international trade and finance system. If there can be a motto to guide Europe through the Covid-19 epidemic, it should be ''Move Fast, and Break as Little as Possible''. Don't damage the channels of international commerce, and don't place strains on government funding and the banking system, inflicting on the shrunken economies a financial crisis to accompany the unfolding public health tragedy.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion We've got one crisis - but it need not spread to economy

Coronavirus is a public health crisis with an economic crisis attached, rather than an economic downturn of the conventional type. It requires an unconventional economic policy response, not the simple demand boost that textbook macroeconomics prescribes. Budgets will go sharply into deficit, including in Ireland and in other heavily indebted countries, and so they should. In the Eurozone this will require a coherent response which recognises the unique character of the downturn already under way, especially from the European Central Bank.
INVESTMENT: Anne Graham of the NTA at the Bus Connects announcement last week

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Should central government take control of planning in our cities?

As the discussions about forming a government continue, the financial constraints, invisible during a carefree election campaign, are closing in. There is already evidence of a tourism slowdown due to the coronavirus. It was never guaranteed, anyway, that the next government would be awash with tax revenue and spending options. The incoming team, whatever its composition, will have to make choices, which means that affordable projects will have to take priority over the visionary stuff.

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