Editorial: ​Stormont faces tough choices on climate change - meet their ambitious targets or pare them back

​Emma Little-Pengelly’s opposition to a new climate commissioner for Northern Ireland is welcome, and shows that other Executive parties need to be more serious about how they govern.

The creation of yet ​another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy is not only wasteful, but symptomatic of a political class all too happy to outsource their responsibilities.

The Assembly backed a climate change act in 2022, and was warned then that its targets were too ambitious. It was that law which provided for a climate tsar to hold government to account.

However, as the DUP politician pointed out, that is supposed to be the job of MLAs. In an Assembly debate this week, various parties sought to link the recent wildfires in the Mournes with the new role.

UUP deputy leader Robbie Butler said the fires were “avoidable” and that a climate change commissioner could “play a specific role” in addressing deliberate fires. He did not elaborate on what that role might be.

But the additional bureaucracy doesn’t end with a climate tsar – Stormont’s law also places a duty on DAERA to establish a ‘Just Transition Commission’ to oversee implementation and provide advice to departments.

Climate change is an incredibly important issue, but not one that will be impacted in the slightest by yet more publicly funded Stormont quangos. Especially quangos that are doing jobs MLAs should be doing.

Instead, both the Executive and the Assembly either need to start taking the actions on climate change that they said they would – or pare back their plans.

That means deciding that hitting their own targets of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with a reduction of at least 48% in net emissions by 2030, is a priority they’re willing to invest in – or it isn’t. A £1m per year climate quango won’t help them do that.