Category Archives: Agriculture
Taking tea with the President
AN undoubted highlight for me, not just of the last week but of the year, was a Courtesy Call on September 18th to Áras an Uachtaráin to present President Michael D. Higgins with a copy of ‘The Lie of the Land’. … Continue reading
Worst possible time to be led by the worst possible people
I haven’t written for the Business Post in a couple of years, so returned in late June with the below piece, which they headlined: ‘We must stop celebrating climate destroyers as captains of industry’. Among the topics covered was Trump’s … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Extreme weather, Global Warming, Politics
Tagged Allianz, aviation, Donald Trump, heatwave, insurance, NOAA, Texas
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Forty shades of misinformation around solar energy
What better time to write about the wonders of solar energy than during the ultra-sunny month of May 2025? Some 6.5% of total electricity production in Ireland that month was from solar, amounting to 173,000 MWh. This a new record, … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Energy, Global Warming, Renewables
Tagged Darragh O’Brien, James O'Connor, Micheal Martin, Solar energy
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Do as I say, just not as I do
While it’s easy to finger-wag and point to the failures of others on achieving climate targets, how does Ireland stack up in terms of delivering on its own legally-binging commitments? In short, not very well, as I explained in this … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Global Warming, Politics, Sustainability
Tagged Charlie McConalogue, COP28, Dubai, Eamon Ryan, EPA, Global Meat Alliance, Livestock, Mary Robinson, Sinn Fein
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Taking the man in charge down a peg or two
The Cop28 conference got off to an eventful start in Dubai, with our own former president grabbing international headlines in her forthright exchanges with the new president of Cop, as I reported in the Irish Examiner in early December. IT … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Irish Focus
Tagged Charlie McConalogue, COP28, Dubai, Leo Varadkar, Mary Robinson, Sultan Al Jaber, UAE
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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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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
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
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
Dialling up the global thermostat another notch in 2022
It sounds almost a cliché to say that last year was a year of weather extremes. After all, which year out of the last 20 hasn’t been? After all, according to the WMO, the past eight years have been the … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Economics, Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Just Stop Oil
Tagged Business Post, CCAC, COP27, EPA, heatwave, Sinn Fein, World Weather Attribution
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Biosphere buckling under weight of human pressures
Rapid population growth has seen another billion humans added to world population in just the 11 years since 2011. In tandem with dramatic economic growth and accelerating climate change, these are placing unbearable pressures on the biosphere, foreshadowing a near … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged contraception, nitrogen, overpopulation
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Silent killers of the biosphere revealed
I ran this article in the Irish Examiner in early October to mark and honour the 60th anniversary of the publication of ‘Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson, the book that was arguably the foundation event for the modern environmental movement. Vilified … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Biodiversity, Global Warming, Irish Focus
Tagged Dave Goulson, DDT, imidacloprid, pesticides, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
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