An aeroplane on its way from London to Singapore is cruising over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar when it violently lurches upwards and then immediately plummets downwards for half a second, falling 54 metres, then up again for four seconds, down, up, down, like a nightmarish airborne rollercoaster.
The incident lasts five seconds, but the impact is terrible. Passengers are projected into the air. Some are seen somersaulting through the cabin, slamming against the overhead bins, in a few cases with such sickening force their heads knock a dent in them. One man dies, dozens are injured. Later, it is explained that in incidents of extreme turbulence anything not secured – this includes passengers – will continue moving in the original direction while the plane takes a different course.
Clear air turbulence is the immediate explanation; the underlying cause is, of course, climate change. The signs, big and small, are everywhere: a drumbeat of dire warnings, terrifying headlines and, more often now, evidence we can see with our own eyes.
This week’s batch of alarming news includes reports from Delhi, where the temperature has risen above 50 degrees Celsius and hospitals have begun opening heat stroke wards. And reports from Antarctica, where the disconcertingly named “Doomsday Glacier” – twice the size of Ireland – is melting “faster than anticipated”. And from Japan, where a prolonged “earthquake storm” is attributed, probably, to climate change.
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Then there are the signs we can see for ourselves. There are fewer bees. Ireland’s jellyfish population is exploding: there was a 400 per cent increase in the number of jellyfish spotted in UK and Irish waters in September 2023 on the previous year. The cause is thought to be last year’s marine heatwave, one of the most severe on earth. Bird species are dying off. Director Kathleen Harris’s beautiful documentary about ornithologist Seán Ronayne, which started life as a story for The Irish Times (and which screened on RTÉ 1 last week), follows him as he tries recording the call of every bird species in Ireland.
A report this week revealed that Ireland is set to reduce emissions only by 29 per cent by 2030 – and, depressingly, that is the best-case scenario – instead of the 51 per cent we are legally bound to achieve
It is a film about the astonishing beauty of the natural world, but also a quietly devastating record of the things we are losing. Ronayne is a monger of wonder not doom, but the facts are unavoidable: 63 per cent of birds in Ireland are at risk of extinction, either red or amber listed. When he finally manages to capture the sound of the last pair of ring ouzels in the country, he describes their call as “a haunting song of melancholy of the uplands ... the sound of extinction”.
His doggedness – he has two permanent microphones running for three years and often stays up listening to and analysing recordings until 1am or 2am – is in stark contrast to the astounding complacency we see almost everywhere else about the destruction of the natural world.
There is always something that needs to happen before action can be taken: a vested interest to be considered, a planning law that can’t be got around, a consultation that must take place, legislation to be passed, just transitions to be agreed, assets to be protected. Yes, people have a right to their livelihood, their property, their cheap flights, their untrammelled consumerism, their ability to drive their SUV into the city and park right outside the office, but none of it will mean anything if we don’t slow the destruction of the planet down.
As Paul Krugman pointed out in the New York Times recently, “climatology has been one of history’s great analytical triumphs. Climate scientists correctly predicted, decades in advance, an unprecedented rise in global temperatures. They even appear to have gotten the magnitude more or less right.”
The irony is that when the Paris Agreement was signed, we were warned about the catastrophic impacts on those living in the hardest-hit parts of the world if we didn’t act. We didn’t think that meant us
A report this week revealed that Ireland is set to reduce emissions only by 29 per cent by 2030 – and, depressingly, that is the best-case scenario – instead of the 51 per cent we are legally bound to achieve. Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan said he was “pulling his hair out” with the level of consultations needed before clean transport initiatives can proceed, almost as though he is just a powerless onlooker like the rest of us.
While we equivocate or tear our hair out or deny and ignore the whole thing, the world goes on warming. Every month brings a new temperature record. The global average temperature over the past 12 months is a record-breaking 1.6 degrees above the 1850 to 1900 average. You might remember that just nine years ago, countries pledged to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. We won’t officially have broken the 1.5 degrees limit until the long-term average exceeds it, but you don’t have to be a climate scientist to grasp that hitting 1.6 degrees is not good. But one day we’ll look back and be nostalgic for it, because this is as good as it will ever be again: Ryan said this week that we’re “we’re heading towards a 2.5 degree world”.
The irony is that when the Paris Agreement was signed, we were warned about the catastrophic impacts on those living in the hardest-hit parts of the world if we didn’t act. We didn’t think that meant us: but it’s true, Europe is warming at twice the rate of anywhere else. Ryan spelt it out in stark terms: if the circulation of the water off the Atlantic changes, Ireland could have winter temperatures of minus 15, and summers that don’t go above 10 degrees.
In the scheme of the global disruption already being caused by climate change, one plane’s dramatic stumble in the sky is less than nothing, barely worth mentioning. And yet that story caught our attention because it seemed almost apocalyptic; a metaphor for our insistence on carrying on with our lives as they are, and our refusal to be jolted out of our stubborn – ultimately fatal – complacency.