HeartBeat:I am not about to head for the hills just yet. In fact, I don't think I'll be leaving my carbon footprint on that trail any time soon.
Was there not a prophesy that at the end of the world, Ireland would sink beneath the waves and everywhere else would be consumed by fire? I think that was promised by St Patrick. It's not much of a choice really - roasting or drowning.
However, the story would fit with the more apocalyptic versions of the ultimate outcome of global warming. They are scary. Even our prescient ruling elves are among those committed to reducing greenhouse gases. So much so that they are jetting all over the world on the feast day of the aforementioned Saint to spread the word. The carbon footprint consequence of this diaspora is, of course, not mentioned. That is for the little folk.
Can you imagine it? Close your eyes and visualise our latter day missionaries, spreading their wings around the world, converting unbelievers to the cause. Saints and the occasional scholar, coming from the land that abolished the plastic bag and the smoke-filled pub; aren't their green credentials impeccable?
In earnest of their intentions they are about to forswear the Government jet and replace it with a hot air balloon. There'll be no shortage of fuel for that, indeed they'll be using the same fuel for ministerial cars and still have enough left to light the country. We won't need low energy light bulbs at all.
It may occur to some cynical folk that this is a pretty seismic conversion on the part of a Government previously not noted for its interest in conservation or alternative energy. Indeed, had the same incentives been available for the supply and development of such sources, as are available to horse breeders and property developers, we might truly be among world leaders in this field.
We have a White Paper on the subject, not before its time I might add. It is long on aspiration and pious hope but offers little in the way of practical attainable outcomes. I fear that like many such papers and expensively commissioned reports that it will prove to be just another white elephant.
Last week I wrote that consensus does not equate with certainty. It is true also of this problem. There are many eminent scientists who do not accept the conclusions being drawn from the undoubted global warming, and plausibly argue that the world has been here before.
Anybody lucky enough to have seen Channel Four's recent deeply researched documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, will have been left with food for thought. I'll stay in the foothills for a while yet. Maybe when the Maldives disappear, it will be time to take a hike!
All of the above, of course, has nothing to do with the impending election and the possibility that the Government might need Green support in its aftermath. They're terrible foolish folk these Greens and, like the rest of us, are reputed to have come down in the last shower.
I read today that the Progressive Democrats have launched a poster campaign claiming major improvements in the health service. As the youngest authority would put it, "Yeah, right." The Tánaiste says "evidence of major improvements in health is mounting up every day. The huge energy that Mary Harney has put into this job is paying increasing dividends."
The Minister for Trolleys is sorting out the nurses, the consultants, the NCHDs, the GPs, the paramedics, even the bugs (MRSA). Isn't she wonderful? I am reminded of George Eliot's hen which "may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion".
I know of no medical or nursing folk who share that delusion. The same newspaper also carried a description of the current situation in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda where conditions and staffing levels across a wide range of disciplines are described as dangerous and unacceptable.
Remember folks that this is where Dr Neary worked. Recommendations by Judge Harding Clark in the aftermath of that debacle have not yet been implemented, yet the Minister for Trolleys has seized on that one case to bring in a Medical Practitioners Bill, designed to establish ministerial control over this ancient and honourable profession.
This is a situation that appertains nowhere else in the world. If passed, it seeks to gag the profession from speaking out about system failures and would allow dictates from the Minister on purely ethical matters - such could come from a deeply conservative or a freely liberal Minister; I need hardly outline some of the permutations possible. Meanwhile, back in Drogheda the discerned defects remain unheeded.
Stories like these from hospitals around the country give the lie to the ministerial boast of improvement. George Bernard Shaw wrote that "Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor, who cannot tell them convincingly, has mistaken his profession."
This does not apply to politicians. Nonetheless, to claim "improvements" when the dogs in the street know the converse to be true reflects little credit and much insensitivity on the part of the person making them.
But things are good for you Tánaiste? The gardaí are in their box, crime is eliminated, and Thornton Hall was good value. You're the man!
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.