We should all heave a great sight of relief that the ESB and Bord na Mona are not - at least by their own account, and I for one am inclined to believe them - responsible for the flooding of the Shannon.
I had intended to remain silent on a related subject, lest disavowal might actually trigger speculation or even outright accusation, but with our own semi-States stoutly leading the way, let me here confess: I was not, despite great Christmas excess, responsible for the for the giant winds which swept France recently. Nor was I implicated in any way in El Nino.
As for my responsibility for the Ice Age, either in its implementation or its departure: innocent, m'lud. And as for my role in the extinction of the dinosaurs? Step me vittels, sirrah: you jest.
French farmers
Yet such is the belief in human power, in the awesome majesty of the ESB and in the irresistible might of Bord na Mona, that many farmers apparently believe that with a mere power station sluice-gate or two, or a few heaped briquettes, one can transform a placid Shannon stream into Lough Longford. French farmers, I know, are a cantankerous enough bunch, but they are not blaming their government for the catastrophe visited on their landscape by the thermonuclear storms just after Christmas - perhaps because they have just a little more wit?
Even nice, sensible Trevor Sargent TD seems to have been bitten by the omnipotent-government bug. "How high do the flood-tides have to rise before the Government takes global warming seriously?" Good question. And when it takes global warming seriously - as believe me, I do, with chunks of the Connemara coastline regularly hurtling by my Kildare home - what is it going to do? Issue edicts? Impose some of its famous speed-limits on the wind? Employ special wind-clamping wardens?
Trevor Sargent with equal profit might have addressed the question of the Government's policies towards Saturn and the latter's shameful neglect of its outermost satellites. It is most immoral. Something must be done. The Government must act now; as it must on the vexed question of Pluto.
And what about the Dalai Lama? When is the Government going to insist that he return to his rightful place as the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people? Should we not be readying the Rangers for a decisive intervention? Should not David Andrews's valet be ironing his Decisive Suit and polishing his Grave, Statesmanlike Look? And then there is the South Pole. It is melting. What does the Government intend to do about it? And has it scolded the Brazilians sufficiently about their neglect of the rain forests? And have we had words with the Canadians about their disregard for Manitoba? Stern words, that is? Probably not. So many things, and so much to do.
Trees blown down
In the meantime, we - you, I, Trevor Sargent and the IFA - might wonder what our Government can actually do about this thing, Ireland. Might it not look to real and tangible ways of defending this little island which, despite the deeply-held beliefs of Trevor Sargent and the IFA, in all reality has very little power over wind and wave and weather? This is surprising news to many; yet it is the case.
Fact: nearly 220 million - Two Hundred And Twenty Million - trees were blown down in France in the great post-Christmas storm. Fact: for the past three mid-winters, without fail, we have had gale-to-hurricane force winds sweeping across Ireland. Fact: the vast majority of trees we have lost - many thousands of them - were infested with ivy. Fact: this is not a coincidence. Ivy acts as a sail on mid-winter deciduous trees which have not the root-stock or the structural strength to withstand the extra stresses so created.
Ivy is a killer, the worst of enemies to trees. It was not so long ago that ragwort and thistle were legally notifiable agricultural plagues; but never ivy, perhaps because trees were big-house, Protestant, colonialist, British, and anything which clung to and weakened them was to be welcomed. Ivy became a metaphor for how the colonised weak could in time reduce and subdue the great oak of imperialism.
Tree-hating was at its height during Sinn Fein agricultural isolationism. That idiocy subsided; yet disregard for trees remained, and remains. Just look all over the Irish countryside in mid-winter: trees blossoming with ivy; bad enough in the days of placid damp and listless cold, but in the era of high midwinter winds: simple madness.
A simple equation. Trees + ivy + gales = a level playing field.
Global warming
Next winter very probably, this winter very possibly, soon very certainly, the great winds will return to Ireland. We might declaim and preach about what the Government should do about global warming in Venezuela and Siberia, to somewhat limited effect. The Government can, however, protect our trees by rigorously enforcing measures against landowners whose trees are ivy-infested. But it will probably do nothing. Why? Simple. Because the largest owner of ivy-infested, poorly husbanded woodland in Ireland is its own Coillte.
And when the great winds blow again, as they will, what will happen to what is already the least treed landscape in Europe?