Roisin Markham

Articles of note in the last two weeks show where Ireland is in terms of climate reality and opinion. We have a gap of real action, you know that right?
It is significant to see more media attention on climate reality issues. But we need immediate action at global, EU, National, county, city, town, village and household. As Greta says we need to be treating the climate crisis like we have been treating COVID. It is a crisis.

If you are n’t following me on Twitter you might have missed articles shared. Offering them here as a note for myself but a round up for some of you that might have missed them.

The Guardian and Irish Times both ran articles in the last week of July on a study that addressed Ireland as one of 5 island countries that is positioned as a potential lifeboat. A suitable island nation where humanity could continue in the ongoing collapse of earths systems. The conditions being a local reliance on food systems, manufacturing and energy production.

The global study addresses the human, sociopolitical complexity impact on a earth global-scale and effects such as climate change. It refers to lifeboats – identifying a shortlist of nations that may be centers of resilience and have carrying capacity for humanity.

A shortlist of nations (New Zealand, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland) were identified and qualitatively analysed in detail to ascertain their potential to form ‘nodes of persisting complexity’ (New Zealand is identified as having the greatest potential). The analysis outputs are applied to identify insights for enhancing resilience to ‘de-complexification’.

King, N.; Jones, A. An Analysis of the Potential for the Formation of ‘Nodes of Persisting Complexity’. Sustainability 2021, 13, 8161. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13158161

Addressing four “major categories of threats to the ongoing viability of the high-intensity civilisation that has emerged from the ‘Great Acceleration’.”
These are

1. Encountering of Limits
2. Diminishment of Returns
3. Ecological Destruction
4. Risk Multipliers

“efforts to seek solutions to fundamental problems that are inherently simpler may provide many nations with an enhanced resilience against the failure of complexity and other major risks”

This can be summarised as “…future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.”

The report makes for grim reading. In terms of risk Ireland needs to address government policy on pushing for growth export at the cost of our nations own resilience across food, manufacturing and energy.

On a lighter more publicly digestible note the Irish Times published an opinion piece from Ali Sheridan Where are the climate allies? Do we yet understand it requires all of us to respond together on climate action? She is a well known experienced sustainability consultant in Ireland and has a podcast called Climate Allies. I particularly enjoyed the episode with Solitaire Townsend. I was already a fan of Solitaire’s work in particular her Forbes article in 2020 We Urgently Need ‘Scope X’ Business Leadership For Climate.

The Journal carried a piece Head of Defence Forces says climate change is single biggest threat to Ireland on the 30/07

“He said that Ireland has a “false sense of security” and the State needs to position itself to deal with the gathering problems caused by climate change.”

Journalist Niall O’Connor interviewing Vice Admiral Mark Mellett https://jrnl.ie/5507407

Dr Shana Cohen‘s call for bold political action in the Irish Times also caught my attention Time to stop seeing climate action through the lens of economics. It very much ties into the IDEN, the Irish Doughnut Economic Network advocacy and activism.

Several media articles have appeared in the last week on the warming of the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) and its impact on Ireland’s temperate climate. The Guardian ran an article 5 months ago on the Atlantic Ocean circulation being at its weakest. Yesterday the Irish Times picked up the Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse the AMOC is one of the planet’s main potential tipping points.

Levke Caesar, at Maynooth University in Ireland, who was not involved in the research, said: “The study method cannot give us an exact timing of a possible collapse, but the analysis presents evidence that the AMOC has already lost stability, which I take as a warning that we might be closer to an AMOC tipping than we think.”

Irish Times

RTE the state national broadcaster is finally catching up and addressing its role in climate crisis coverage. They have a dedicated page to Climate Change. 85% of the broadcasters revenue is generated from TV license fees for RTÉ to carry out its public service broadcasting commitments. They need to do better more urgently.

What else have you noticed in the media on climate action and the climate crisis – drop me a note in the comments!

Oh and as a climate action tip – Food Waste is huge and impacting both out wallets and our C02 impact. I’ve downloaded an app called Olio to share free food, I’m going to test it out and see what its like. Maybe try it out too and let me know what you think of it!