Category Archives: Habitat/Species

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 , , , , , | 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 , , , | Leave a comment

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

Posted in Agriculture, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Politics, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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

Posted in Agriculture, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

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

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

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone

They say that, given half a chance, most people would instinctively love and cherish nature. If that’s the case, then something must have gone seriously awry in Ireland in recent decades, given our collective neglect of our natural heritage, along … Continue reading

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

Natural-born killers wreak ecological havoc

According to the French Novelist, Victor Hugo, “God has made the cat to give man the pleasure of caressing the tiger.” It’s an apt description of these scaled-down apex predators. The fearsome toll they take on wildlife may come as a … Continue reading

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

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

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

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

Cutting down on global deforestation

For as long as I can remember, we’ve been hearing about deforestation, usually expressed as an area of old-growth forest the size of x number of soccer pitches being lost per minute/hour. Globally, more than two billion hectares of forest … Continue reading

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

Giving nature the legal right to exist

Mankind’s relationship with the rest of nature has been overwhelmingly predatory for centuries, with the natural world used as both a quarry from which to extract ‘resources’ and as a dump into which to eject our mountains of waste. The … Continue reading

Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

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 , , | 1 Comment

Feeding the planet without destroying the Earth

My review of ‘Regenesis’ by George Monbiot appeared in The Irish Times in mid-June. The author has, since its publication, been on the receiving end of what looks like a co-ordinated campaign to smear and discredit both him and and … Continue reading

Posted in Agriculture, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Sustainability | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Big trouble as world’s tiny empires crumble

As recently as 30, even 20 years ago, when at night across Ireland, by the time you reached your destination, the front of your car would be caked in hundreds, even thousands, of dead insects. Commonly known as ‘bug splat’ … Continue reading

Posted in Biodiversity, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Pollution | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The library of our living planet is burning down

Shortly before the COP26 climate conference began, another global conference, this one on biodiversity, known as COP15, took place in Kunming, China. My piece around the global biodiversity crunch ran in the Business Post in late October. THE NATURAL WORLD is … Continue reading

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