Author Archives: John Gibbons
Climate impacts hitting home
The below piece ran as full pages in the Irish Mirror and Irish Daily Star in late October, to mark the UN’s International Day Against Climate Change. IT IS ALMOST certain that 2023 will be the hottest year globally since … Continue reading
Posted in Extreme weather, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged flooding, Irish Mirror, Storm Babet
Leave a comment
Nature holds key to tackling flood risks
Flooding remains Ireland’s top climate vulnerability, and it once again came home to bite in county Cork in October 2023 when the town of Midleton and some surrounding areas were inundated, with millions of euros in damages, but thankfully, no … Continue reading
Posted in Extreme weather, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Climate Action Plan, Eamon Ryan, flooding, Midleton, OPW, Pickering
Leave a comment
Planetary lines we shouldn’t cross
I filed this piece with Village magazine in October, charting the growing number of critical planetary boundaries that have now been breached, and why this matters. ON ANCIENT mariners’ maps, areas of uncharted waters were often marked with illustrations of … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged CFCs, nitrogen, ozone, PFAs, Planetary boundaries, Stockholm Resilience Centre
Leave a comment
When it gets too hot, things die
Heat is a silent, stealthy killer. As climate change accelerates, the regions in the world becoming too hot for human habitation or even survival are set to expand rapidly. US journalist Jeff Goodell has been on the climate beat for … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Sustainability
Tagged Business Post, Friederike Otto, Jeff Goodell
Leave a comment
Green shoots of climate progress appear
Budget 2024 was announced in mid-October and was, by any stretch, a very good day for the Greens in government. Despite being the perennial butt of political and media jokes, they have by and large kept their heads down and … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Irish Focus
Tagged Eamon Ryan, Malcolm Noonan, NPWS, retrofitting, Solar energy
Leave a comment
The hazards of homicidal pragmatism
Whatever you may think of the Catholic Church (I’m certainly not a fan), it’s hard to dispute the fact that the current pope is unlike any of his predecessors. As I explained in the Irish Examiner in October, he has … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Politics, Psychology
Tagged climate denial, Ed Hawkins, Laudato Si, Pope Francis
Leave a comment
What happens when the law no longer protects us?
Imagine you could somehow project yourself 10 or 20 years into the future, and were looking back at the world in the 2020s, in full knowledge of the slow-motion catastrophe that was unfolding. What would you have done differently? I … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Politics, Protest, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged Chris Packham, Emmeline Pankhurst, Extinction Rebellion
Leave a comment
Is insurance the first climate domino to fall?
While most economists and much of the financial system is still living in la la land when it comes to failing to account for the climate emergency, one sector where the impacts are already piling up is the global insurance … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged Central Bank, insurance, Swiss Re, William Nordhaus
Leave a comment
Dispatches from a young eco-activist
I filed this review of ‘It’s Not Just You’, by Tori Tsui for the Business Post in August. While it makes a few interesting points, overall it fails to escape the dense tangle of eco-jargon and will be a struggle … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Protest, Psychology
Tagged Business Post, Greta Thunberg, Tori Tsui
Leave a comment
Your time is precious: spend it wisely
While the big ticket changes to move the dial on the climate crisis are generally beyond the reach of most people, that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do. How we choose to spend our time, including our choices … Continue reading
Lifting the omerta on speaking plainly
Let’s be honest for a moment. We have collectively pussy-footed around the climate and biodiversity emergency for years, decades in fact. Despite the scientific evidence piling ever higher week by week, it has long been taken as read that stating … Continue reading
The climate future? It’s already here
While this article was published in the Business Post in early August, it was already patently clear that 2023 was going to be the hottest year in recorded history, and so it has transpired. I set out the risks as … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged AMOC, Business Post, Gaia, James Hansen, James Lovelock, Stefan Rahmstorf
Leave a comment
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
1 Comment
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
Leave a comment
