Category Archives: Irish Focus

Postings with a specific Irish angle

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

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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

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What economists get wrong about climate

Whether or not you believe that the dangerously foolish advice issued by climate economists will in fact kill billions of people this century, there is little doubt that we have been poorly served and grievously misled on the true costs … Continue reading

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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 records … Continue reading

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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

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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

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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

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Ramping up the war on science for private gain

The Irish agri lobby’s ongoing war on reality went up a couple of gears during the summer, when it turned its political guns on the Environmental Protection Agency for having the temerity to gather and assess water quality data and … Continue reading

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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 , , , , , | 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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