Ireland Declares Climate Emergency

[dergside]

..... particularly when something like climate change gives them a carte blanche to raise taxes.

Agreed, but tax policy has long been a key tool to affect behavioural change, not just in terms of transport.

A perfect example of both the danger of it and the effect of it is the change in tax policy around VRT in 2008 when it changed to CO2 based charging instead of CC based. It was somewhat misguided in terms of creating additional problems while addressing the stated desire to reduce CO2 output (incidentally, this is something that the Green's have, unsurprisingly, kept quiet about in this whole debate, but need to be pulled up on) - validating your Carte Blanche comment, while also clearly having a very significant effect on people's actions in diverting them from petrol to diesel cars.