Author Archives: John Gibbons

About John Gibbons

ThinkOrSwim is a blog by journalist John Gibbons focusing on the inter-related crises involving climate change, sustainability, resource depletion, energy and biodiversity loss

Dire warnings falling on deaf ears

Late March saw the launch of the IPCC’s AR6 Synthesis Report, which brings together the three main strands, as well as other IPCC special reports, into a unified, albeit hefty, document. Despite its quite shocking conclusions, it made barely a ripple in … Continue reading

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To save our world, we must fall in love with nature

“In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught”. These words were spoken at the 1968 General Assembly of the International Union for the Conservation … Continue reading

Posted in Biodiversity, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Feeding aircraft while people go hungry

As the squeeze on heavy users of fossil fuels to be seen to be cleaning up their act intensifies, there is now a flurry of activity especially from the aviation sector behind promoting “renewable” fuels such as biofuels and synthetic … Continue reading

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Bringing airborne plastic pollution down to earth

What goes up, must eventually come down again, and so it is with helium balloons, a pernicious form of pollution that rarely receives the critical attention it warrants. One happy side-effect of writing the below piece for the Irish Examiner … Continue reading

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A 15-minute walk on the wild side

There is no idea too moderate or sensible that conspiracy theorists can’t tar as a Marxist plot to turn us all into slaves in some dystopian new world order. Well, at least that’s the impression you might have gotten in … Continue reading

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Violent words beget violent actions

By and large, Ireland is a tolerant country, spared the worst excesses of polarisation that have blighted post-Brexit Britain and the US after Trump. There has, however, been a creeping slide towards ugly extremism in the last couple of years, … Continue reading

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Oil giants struggle to wash blood off their hands

It may be making more money than ever, but the fossil fuel industry is rapidly losing whatever semblance of social licence it could still cling to. And despite the high salaries on offer, more and more young people are turning … Continue reading

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Watch out for quick-fix climate techno solutions

Decades of abject failure to curb carbon emissions has left us in a perilous situation as global climate destabilisation begins to bite in earnest. Numerous techno-fixes are now being seriously explored, backed by some big names as well as attracting … Continue reading

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There’s no vaccine for the greenhouse effect

The future is an Undiscovered Country. Things are done differently there. For those who follow the science of the climate and ecological crisis, it’s also an overwhelmingly scary place. Climate fiction, or cli-fi, is our best available vehicle with which … Continue reading

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Oh! What a Lovely War for fossil fuel profiteers

While 2022 may have been the year when full-scale war returned to Europe for the first time since 1945, with massive spikes in energy prices impacting tens of millions of households, it was also a great year for fossil fuel … Continue reading

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Best of times, worst of times

The annual ritual of seeing whether the famous Doomsday Clock moves closer to or further from midnight took a worrying turn this year, as it inched to its closest point to the witching hour in the last 75 years, in … Continue reading

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Spreading a deadly smokescreen of disinformation

Long before the fossil fuel industry began using its money and influence to spread doubt and disinformation about the climate crisis, the book on how to dupe and deceive the public by peddling doubt had been practically written by the … Continue reading

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Bracing for the coming climate refugee crisis

The millions of people displaced by wars and conflict in the 20th century and in the early part of this century are likely to be eclipsed by a vast waves of forced migration in the decades ahead, as rising temperatures, … Continue reading

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Ozone recovery offers sliver of optimism on climate action

Good news stories on the climate beat are few and far between, and offer occasional relief from the quickening drumbeat of bad news on the climate and biodiversity front. I didn’t have to be asked twice to file this piece … Continue reading

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Step by step towards a lower carbon future

Here’s a piece that ran in the Irish Daily Star in the first week of January, my 10-point guide for those dipping a toe in the water of climate action in 2023. It’s not intended to be either definitive or … Continue reading

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