Category Archives: Irish Focus
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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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
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Rationing our way to a rational aviation policy
To see the enthusiasm with which politicians have been co-opted to help Dublin Airport Authority to overturn the planning permissions that govern its operation in order to facilitate ever more flying is indicative of just how much of a vote-getter … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Pollution, Sustainability
Tagged aviation, DAA, Irish Examiner, Ryanair
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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
The Late Late no-show on climate emergency
Back in more innocent times, i.e. before the whole soap opera over how much Ryan Tubridy was getting paid, and by whom blew up into one of the biggest “stories” of the year, there was the small matter of who … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged David Bellamy, Late Late Show, Pat Kenny, RTE, Ryan Tubridy
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A defining moment for humanity
A number of people active in the area of climate science and activism were asked by the Irish Times in April to contribute a fairly short vignette on where we saw the current situation. My contribution, titled “Few options available to … Continue reading
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
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged cats, IUCN, Red List
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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 … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Anja Murray, Business Post
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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
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged aviation, Biofuels, Eamon Ryan, T&E
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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
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
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus
Tagged Irish Examiner, PJ Carroll, Texaco, Tobacco, Valero
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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
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged An Taisce, BirdWatch Ireland, Irish Wildlife Trust
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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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