Jane Powerson keeping it local
One of the most common-sense ways of making the smallest possible negative impact on this planet is to keep things local. Obviously, if we can find our goods and services closer to home, we consume less energy going to get them. If we can walk or cycle, rather than making a trip by car or even public transport, we're reducing fossil-fuel use, as well as lessening traffic and cutting down on wear and tear on road and rail. With peak oil just around the corner, and carbon dioxide emissions already causing climate change, it's high time to make local focal.
Doing or getting things in our own locality also saves our time, which usually results in a saving of the earth's resources. When we are pressed for time, we consume more items and rely more on convenience food, in the quest to buy back a few precious minutes for ourselves. Ready-made meals or fast foods come with a larger carbon footprint than the dinners we make at home, from locally-sourced or - better still - homegrown food. But, of course, there's no time to grow your own if you're sitting in traffic, or haring around for hours every day.
So it is kinder to both man and planet to do more things more locally. Yet, in general, economic growth favours fewer and often bigger enterprises over smaller, neighbourhood outfits: supermarkets replace corner shops, large hospitals supplant small ones in town centres, village post offices close their doors as communities are deemed too small to make financial sense.
Financial sense, though, isn't necessarily common sense; and nor does it subscribe to the common good. You can't put a price on the benefit that accrues to a person who is able to carry out his or her business locally: shopping in the corner shop, chatting over the gate, receiving medical treatment at the end of the road. The kind of security and wellbeing that comes from being part of a healthy community can't be bought.
Community is especially relevant this weekend, the second annual "Know Your Neighbour Weekend", a Macra na Feirme initiative supported by the ESB (www.knowyourneighbour.ie). All over Ireland, neighbours will be meeting at barbecues, coffee mornings and street parties - or just saying hello over the garden wall. In my own neighbourhood of Dún Laoghaire in Co Dublin, several thousand of us will be gathering with our families, friends, and neighbours in the People's Park at 2pm. We're rallying in support of our local hospital, St Michael's - not only does it need a serious upgrade, but it is also in the sights of a developer. Local community protecting and cherishing local assets: it's good for us, and it's good for the planet.