Category Archives: Irish Focus
Still singing the same sad old song
Denial is a powerful thing. Climate change deniers these days are, like the polar bears, an endangered species, as wave after wave of science fact gradually washes away the last stubborn traces of our excuses for inaction. Of course, there … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sceptics, Sustainability
Tagged climate change, Gibbons, Lomborg, Myers, Neligan, sceptics
8 Comments
A big step backwards for Europe
And so the electorate has spoken. It’s a resounding ‘huh?’, with misunderstanding and misinformation carrying the day by a 9% spread. The clearest message to emerge even at this early stage is that Lisbon has split along class lines, with … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus
Tagged Bali, Copenhagen, Kyoto, Libertas, Lisbon, referendum
9 Comments
Weaning ourselves off the fetish of growth
A cynic, according to Oscar Wilde, is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. He could have easily been talking about economists. It’s hard to open a newspaper or turn on the radio these … Continue reading
If you care about climate, Lisbon matters
What is it about us Irish and referenda? One minute the national discourse is rattling along as usual, and the next, there are swarms of (previously unheard of) groups popping up out of the woodwork to warn us of the … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus
Tagged Chavez, climate change, Coir, EU, Gormley, Iraq, Libertas, Lisbon, Treaty, Venezuala, Youth Defense
5 Comments
On a wing and a prayer
Airlines are forever telling us that aviation is just a teeny weeny contributor to greenhouse gases, nothing to be bothered about really. The figure of 2% of total emissions being attributable to flying is frequently quoted in defence of our … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Aer Lingus, aviation, carbon, CO2, emissions, pollution, travel
3 Comments
Minor drama over Major Emergencies
A number of years ago, a Fianna Fail junior minister, Joe Jacob got himself into a right tangle in an interview with RTE’s Marian Finucane. The subject was Ireland’s preparedness in the event of an incident at Sellafield. The minister … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged emergency, iodine, Joe Jacob, Marian Finucane, Sellafield
2 Comments
The sweet smell of excess
‘Fused with idealism, heritage moulded to modernity, classicism reinterpreted through originality…inspired by a search for balance and harmony in a chaotic and contradictory world’ The above verbiage is taken verbatim from the current Aer Lingus Sky Shopping magazine. It’s describing … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged climate change, David Beckham, Kate Moss, marketing, perfume, Sustainability
4 Comments
ESB finally sees the light
Ireland, it appears, is at last starting to get serious about tackling our huge energy requirements, and the dagger that our massive dependence on imports of oil and gas in particular holds to our collective throat. We are reckoned in … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Nuclear, Sustainability
Tagged climate change, CO2, Coal, Eamon Ryan, ESB, Ireland, Moneypoint, Peak Oil
3 Comments
Watch out, Gaia’s about…
At 88, James Lovelock is for many people the Grandfather of the modern ecology movement. He today is admired and despised by people in the general ‘green’ movement in about equal measure. Apart from a highly successful career as a … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged climate change, Gaia, global warming, James Lovelock, overpopulation
2 Comments
Forty shades of brown?
Climate change is set to change the very face of Ireland in the coming decades. This is the conclusion of a study published to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day. The study is called ‘Changing Shades Of Green – The environmental … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
9 Comments
Ssssh, don’t mention the ‘E’ word
There’s an episode of the 1970s comedy, Fawlty Towers, in which German visitors come to stay in the hotel. Basil Fawlty goes to great lengths to avoid any references to World War 2 (it was then barely 30 years after … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Basil Fawlty, climate change, collapse, extinction, Sustainability
2 Comments
Feast or famine
Food, or more precisely the lack of food, is deeply ingrained in the Irish psyche. Small wonder, having been victims of the worst western European famine of the last 250 years. In today’s world of plenty, where the local Tesco … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Biofuels, famine, farming, food shortage, hunger, Irish, wheat
4 Comments
There Will Be Oil!
The prolific American author Upton Sinclair died 40 years ago, but his novel Oil, published in 1927, has recently had a second coming, being the book upon which the Oscar-winning film There Will Be Blood is based. Another of Sinclair’s … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Al Gore, climate, CO2, Coal, CSS, Lenny Bernstein, Oil, Upton Sinclair
3 Comments
