Category Archives: Media
He hasn’t gone away, you know
Regular visitors to ThinkOrSwim may have been wondering in recent months if I’ve finally gotten sense and packed it in, some 17 years and many hundreds of posts later, as the blog ground to a near halt throughout 2024. For … Continue reading
No good deed goes unpunished as Greens eviscerated
The Greens went into a three-way coalition as the junior partner in 2020 and have, by any reasonable measure, overperformed in terms of bending the national political agenda towards meaningful climate action. Of course, mistakes were made and opportunities missed … Continue reading
Posted in Irish Focus, Media, Politics
Tagged Election 2024, Green Party, Holly Cairns, Roderic O’Gorman
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An ill wind that blows no good
Cast your mind forward two decades and into the 2040s, what might Ireland be like by then? Let’s just hope it’s nothing at all like the hellscape vividly painted in Irish author Daniel Mooney’s new novel, which I reviewed for … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Psychology
Tagged Business Post, Cli fi, Daniel Mooney
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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
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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
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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
Bringing the climate emergency to book
When this blog first when live in late November 2007, the world was a quite different place. That year, global CO2 levels, as recorded at Mauna Loa, had reached an all-time high of 384 parts per million (ppm). Since then, … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged Business Post, George Monbiot, Greta Thunberg, Michael D. Higgins, Michael Mann, Naomi Oreskes, ThinkOrSwim
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Turning climate protest into an art form
An ingenious protest involving soup and a famous painting threw the global spotlight on the climate emergency in a way that a thousand scientific articles, petitions and marches seemed to have failed to do. I was asked by TheJournal.ie for … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Just Stop Oil, Media, Protest
Tagged Andreas Malm, Antonio Guterres, IPCC, Just Stop Oil, Living Planet Report, Scientist Rebellion, Shell
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Media needs to step up on covering the climate emergency
They say that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re likely part of the problem, and that certainly seems to hold for much of the media when it comes to the climate and biodiversity emergency. Whether it’s as a … Continue reading
EU decries attacks on Irish environmental defenders
The well-worn narrative emanating primarily from the Irish agri sector and amplified by a cohort of vocal rural TDs is that, despite being the true custodians of the natural environment, they are being constantly “demonised” by over-zealous environmentalists, animal welfare … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Irish Focus, Media, Sustainability
Tagged An Taisce, Aurel Ciobanu-Dordea, Jackie Cahill, SLAPP suits
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Things are Looking Up as climate crunch hits funny bone
It will come as no surprise to regular ToS readers to learn that the biggest ‘story’ of the 21st century, or perhaps 66 million years of Earth history, is the rapidly unfolding climate emergency and simultaneous global mass extinction event, … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged Baba Brinkman, Business Post, Don't Look Up, Joe Duffy, Netflix
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Confronting consumerism for a safer future
Among the many challenges we face this decade is how to achieve radical decarbonisation in a way that does not entirely alienate the public. This is no mean challenge. After all, we are all bombarded with constant advertising and promotional … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Psychology
Tagged Climate Action Plan, consumerism, COP26, Kantar, RTE
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The most dangerous man in the world?
It’s almost always a mistake to characterise any one person as ‘evil’. There’s good and bad in everyone, as the song says. Well, almost. You could make an exception for one noxious Antipodean nonagenarian who has, over the span of … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media
Tagged ICSF, Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, Nigel Lawson, Richard Lindzen, Rupert Murdoch, Thatcher
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