The UN summit in Copenhagen failed to secure an international agreement on climate change. The attempt to agree a binding treaty on climate change has now been postponed until this December when negotiators will meet in Mexico.

We must not allow the failure in Copenhagen to become an excuse for not taking action on climate change at home. Thanks to all the campaigning of Friends of the Earth Activists like you, Minister Gormley has said there will be a climate law passed this year. Now we need to hold him to that promise. Just before Copenhagen the government produced a framework document laying out what a climate law will be like. There are some worrying weaknesses in this document.

1. It talks about putting carbon budgets as they exist now into law. The problem with this is that the carbon budgets as they exist now are weak, especially when compared with the financial budgets that the government also produces. The existing "carbon budgets" are reports on the emissions that happened in the year before, rather than budgets in the true sense of the word.

2. Offsetting must not be used to meet the targets. If the law says a 30% reduction in emissions by 2020 then we believe that there must be 30% less emissions coming from Ireland by 2020. This may seem obvious but the government might try to buy their way out of their promise by purchasing "offset credits".

3. The law is no good if it contains huge gaps. All emissions must be covered by the proposed legislation and this includes emissions from aviation and shipping and from the big power stations and factories that are covered by the EU emissions trading scheme. Allowing any of these emissions to be left out will be letting Big Business off the hook.

Please email Minister Gormley now and tell him that the law must be strong if its to be something he and his party can be proud of.