Author Archives: John Gibbons
Lights out for Earth Hour? Save your energy
Dreamed up as a PR stunt by an ad agency 10 years ago, Earth Hour has become surprisingly succesful. This is, I suspect, because it’s long on tokenism and photo opportunities and desperately short on actual resolve, sacrifice or meaningful … Continue reading
Dublin airport censorship just doesn’t fly
There is a rich irony in the fact that an airline company sponsors the weather on RTÉ Radio One, with its “smart flies Aer Lingus” tagline transmitted into a million homes, on the hour, every hour. After all, aviation is … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged Advertising, An Taisce, censorship, Dublin Airport Authority
6 Comments
Time to push fossil fuel sponsorship beyond the Pale
Below, my article, as it appeared in the Irish Times earlier this month. Having had family members as past winners of the Texaco Children’s Art Competition made me leery about taking on writing about this long-running sponsorship, but then I … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged divestment, greenwashing, Rex Tillerson, sponsorship, Texaco, Valero
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A wealthy, kick-ass climate NGO: what are the odds?
There is never a shortage of stupid things to do with money, especially if you suddenly find yourself with loads of it. US socialite Theresa Roemer, for instance has a three-storey, 3,000-square foot closet; that’s a space twice the size … Continue reading
Toothless watchdog lets its Standards slip
{PROLOGUE} LOCATION: Bord Na Mona conference room* DATE: Early 2016. TOPIC: Ad planning meeting (*fictional) BnaM Marketing Exec: “I’ll cut to the chase. Here’s the challenge: we’re a company that, pound for pound, is the biggest polluter in Ireland. We’ve … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Media, Sustainability
Tagged ASAI, Bord na Mona, Greenwash, peat
18 Comments
Nine years later, and deeper in debt
It’s nine years to the week since my first posting on ThinkorSwim went live – on the last day of November 2007. It was, in many ways, a different world. The mood was radically different too. For starters, the Greens … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged 2007, Arctic, Green Party, NASA, Trump
17 Comments
A new age of endarkenment draws ever closer
Like millions of people all over the world, I’ve spent the last almost two weeks in a state of shock and disbelief. I had sat up with friends late on the evening of Tuesday November 8th into the early hours … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Psychology, Sceptics
3 Comments
A crisis in media and climate communication
Overlaying the climate crunch, there is a parallel full-blown crisis, in Ireland and elsewhere in the Anglophone world in climate change communications. This will not be news to regular visitors to this blog, but happily, there is now a lot … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sustainability
Tagged Media, Oxford, research, RTE
4 Comments
Cultivating hope, managing despair
There have been countless millions of words written and spoken in recent years on how humanity can and must begin at last to grapple in earnest with the existential challenges of climate change, resource depletion and the ongoing global biodiversity … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Psychology
Tagged acceptance, denial, psychology, workshop
6 Comments
Raising the bar on climate change coverage in Ireland
I’ve often wondered aloud what it might be like to live in a place and in a time where climate change, the world’s biggest, baddest and most persistent crisis, was given media coverage something even vaguely approaching its actual significance. … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged Denis Naughten, Irish Independent, Media
2 Comments
Battling for Ireland’s battered biodiversity
My interview below, with Dr Liam Lysaght, Director of the National Biodiversity Data Centre, was published in the September edition of Village magazine: IRELAND’S largely dysfunctional relationship with its natural environment was neatly summed up by former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Liam Lysaght, National Biodiversity Data Centre, Wildlife
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Welcome to the Climate Madhouse
Below my article, as published in the September edition of ‘Village’ magazine IMAGINE for a moment the dilemma: you’re a celebrated climatologist whose work has helped shaped the modern science of climate change. In the course of your work, you … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Sceptics
Tagged Climate deniers, hockey stick, Michael Mann
1 Comment
Who’d choose to bring a child into a climate-changed world?
Below is my article, as published in yesterday’s Irish Times, under the headline (not my wording) ‘Is having children bad for the planet?’ I’ve added in some of the sources below that I used when researching this piece. The features … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Psychology
Tagged 2050, pollination, population, solastalgia, WWF
4 Comments
It’s a Vision thing
Last week the Visions 2100 international roadshow came to Dublin. I first encountered it, driven by the irrepressible John O’Brien, as a side event at last December’s COP21 conference, where, as one of 80 contributors to the book from around … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Psychology
Tagged John O'Brien, Tailors Hall, Visions 2100
1 Comment
Flights of folly at Dublin airport
Fallout from the recent Brexit vote may prove something of a gift for the Dublin Airport Authority’s (DAA) ambitious plan to have a second runway built and ready for business by 2020. The huge cloud of economic uncertainty now parked … Continue reading
