Author Archives: John Gibbons
Time for a Department of Food Security
Food, glorious food. It has been so abundant and relatively cheap in the developed world for so long that it has become largely invisible to us. Where it comes from, what its ecological and carbon impacts and whether we are … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Pollution
Tagged Bord Bia, Coillte, Dutch, Horticulture, Teagasc, UN FAO
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If they work hard, if they behave
Here’s a piece I chipped in to Village magazine during the summer on the hopes and fears that prospective new parents must navigate when considering taking on the awesome responsibility of bringing a new life into our climate-wracked, overheating world. … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged Morgan Stanley, NOAA, Village Magazine, WMO
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To hold on, sometimes you have to simply let go
When facing seemingly impossible odds, we are sometimes capable of rising to the challenge, no matter how unpromising the situation, as I explored in this piece in the Irish Examiner at the end of June. On the other hand, value … Continue reading
Rationing our way to a rational aviation policy
To see the enthusiasm with which politicians have been co-opted to help Dublin Airport Authority to overturn the planning permissions that govern its operation in order to facilitate ever more flying is indicative of just how much of a vote-getter … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Pollution, Sustainability
Tagged aviation, DAA, Irish Examiner, Ryanair
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Laying waste to Europe in pursuit of short-term profits
The bitter ongoing battle this summer to get the crucial Nature Restoration Law enacted and the dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by the EPP on behalf of agri-industrial lobbyists is not yet over, but below, I reported for the Irish Examiner … Continue reading
To cut or to cull, that is the question
It’s amazing the power of a single word or phrase. A headline writer in one of the Irish dailies deployed the word ‘cull’ to describe proposals to modestly reduce the total number of Irish cattle in line with our climate … Continue reading
We’ll miss them when they’re gone
The insect kingdom, sometimes described as the “tiny empires that rule the world” is now facing its gravest threat in its 400 million-year reign, with human impacts taking a devastating toll, as I explored in this piece for TheJournal.ie in … Continue reading
Good ancestors demand a Ministry for The Future
While the title for this piece was borrowed from the Kim Stanley Robinson cli-fi classic novel, I wanted to explore our paradoxical relationship with the future and how we struggle to engage in intergenerational stewardship to take into account the … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Politics, Sustainability
Tagged Business Post, Citizens Assembly, Nature Restoration Law, Paul Hawken, Sweden
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Airline industry’s sky-high emissions crash climate targets
All the clever plans the aviation industry is developing to reduce emissions have one thing in common: the one sure-fire way to truly reduce emissions, ie. by flying less, is absolutely off the table. Just like in so many other … Continue reading
When nature is the enemy, whose side are you really on?
The iron grip of agri PLCs and the farm lobbyists who work on their behalf on the EU’s agriculture policy was seen yet again in the outright rejection of modest proposals to give nature restoration a chance amid an ever-deepening … Continue reading
Nothing ‘natural’ or safe about gas hobs
Was there ever a cleverer sleight of hand than the labelling of the fossil fuel methane as ‘natural gas’? Oil and coal are also natural, but have you ever heard of ‘natural coal’ as a marketing slogan? Mercifully not, yet … Continue reading
The Late Late no-show on climate emergency
Back in more innocent times, i.e. before the whole soap opera over how much Ryan Tubridy was getting paid, and by whom blew up into one of the biggest “stories” of the year, there was the small matter of who … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged David Bellamy, Late Late Show, Pat Kenny, RTE, Ryan Tubridy
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Beware the radical climate inactivists
It has long puzzled me that those promoting ecocidal policies that in the short term impoverish and kill millions and that in the longer term may well kill us all have somehow managed to maintain the illusion that they are … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming
Tagged Antonio Guterres, heatwave, Ministry of the Future, Peter Kalmus, PNAS
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Between the AMOC and the deep blue sea
The Environmental Protection Agency hosted a public meeting as part of their ongoing series on climate change in the Round Room at Dublin’s Mansion House in late April, chaired by Ella McSweeney. I met the guest speaker, Prof Stefan Rahmstorf for … Continue reading
Posted in Arctic, Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged AMOC, Antarctic, EPA, Stefan Rahmstorf
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A defining moment for humanity
A number of people active in the area of climate science and activism were asked by the Irish Times in April to contribute a fairly short vignette on where we saw the current situation. My contribution, titled ‘Few options available to … Continue reading
