Observations on Ireland’s Approach to Climate Law

Climate change is a matter of significance for each and every person living on the island of Ireland, to say nothing of the wider world beyond. The science behind the issue runs as follows. A stock of greenhouse gases present in the earth’s atmosphere traps a portion of the sun’s heat and duly contributes to the warming of the planet. Since the inauguration of the modern industrial revolution human activity has been contributing radically to an increase in this atmospheric stock through the sustained burning of fossil fuels. The scientific community has identified a correlation between this anthropogenic (i.e., human-induced) increase in the stock and an associated increase in global warming. It is this global warming that in turn produces the anthropogenic climate change with which climate law is chiefly concerned.