Author Archives: John Gibbons
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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Is insurance the first climate domino to fall?
While most economists and much of the financial system is still living in la la land when it comes to failing to account for the climate emergency, one sector where the impacts are already piling up is the global insurance … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged Central Bank, insurance, Swiss Re, William Nordhaus
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Dispatches from a young eco-activist
I filed this review of ‘It’s Not Just You’, by Tori Tsui for the Business Post in August. While it makes a few interesting points, overall it fails to escape the dense tangle of eco-jargon and will be a struggle … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Protest, Psychology
Tagged Business Post, Greta Thunberg, Tori Tsui
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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
Lifting the omerta on speaking plainly
Let’s be honest for a moment. We have collectively pussy-footed around the climate and biodiversity emergency for years, decades in fact. Despite the scientific evidence piling ever higher week by week, it has long been taken as read that stating … Continue reading
The climate future? It’s already here
While this article was published in the Business Post in early August, it was already patently clear that 2023 was going to be the hottest year in recorded history, and so it has transpired. I set out the risks as … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged AMOC, Business Post, Gaia, James Hansen, James Lovelock, Stefan Rahmstorf
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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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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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To hold on, sometimes you have to simply let go
When facing seemingly impossible odds, we are sometimes capable of rising to the challenge, no matter how unpromising the situation, as I explored in this piece in the Irish Examiner at the end of June. On the other hand, value … Continue reading
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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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
Good ancestors demand a Ministry for The Future
While the title for this piece was borrowed from the Kim Stanley Robinson cli-fi classic novel, I wanted to explore our paradoxical relationship with the future and how we struggle to engage in intergenerational stewardship to take into account the … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Politics, Sustainability
Tagged Business Post, Citizens Assembly, Nature Restoration Law, Paul Hawken, Sweden
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