Sir, - In the deluge of analysis, predictions and prognostications published in this newspaper (and others) over the New Year I searched in vain for one mention of climate change as something we are not only going to hear about, but which we will have to tackle, not just this year, or this decade, but for the whole of this century.
Sean MacConnell, at least, made a tentative connection between the flooding in the west and climate change (The Irish Times, January 8th). This is to be welcomed, not merely for reasons of publicity, but because it highlights the sort of problem that we, even in our temperate climate, will be facing for the next 50 years or so. All the world's climate models are showing that extreme weather events will, unfortunately, become no longer extreme, but normal.
This summer, the climate change treaty will be eight years old. In those eight years almost nothing has been achieved. Emissions almost all over the world (and particularly in Ireland) have not only not been reduced, they have not even been stabilised. In fact, the rate of increase has not even been stabilised, in other words, emissions have actually grown faster than before the treaty was signed. This way disaster lies, and we will run into it as extreme weather.
Kathy Sheridan (The Irish Times, January 17th) reports that the flooded-out residents beside the Shannon imagine "an exasperated Taoiseach" not knowing who to call up for an answer to the flooding problem. The sorry truth is that the Taoiseach should call up himself, and all the other leaders of the industrialised countries of the world, and agree to reform fossil-fuel economics before it makes fossils out of us all.
This is not just a smart-sounding sound-bite, it is in fact, as my research leads me to believe, the only way we will get out of the ambush we have laid for ourselves. It will require rapid and substantial adjustment to the way we lead our lives and the way we do economics. It will not be impossible to make these adjustments in time, but it will be very, very difficult. The sooner we start, the less painful it will be.
The Taoiseach and the Minister for the Environment will shortly launch the government's Greenhouse Gas Abatement Strategy, and we will all have the chance to see how much of a grasp they have of the real reason for extreme weather events such as the Shannon flooding, and the right way to commit money towards a solution.
The information about the effects we will all face from climate change is available. More than enough information is available about ways to do something about it. The problem lies in the inability of those who are most responsible for causing it to act against it. The unfortunate and unpalatable truth is that the vast majority of readers of The Irish Times, and (equally unfortunately for them) many Shannonside residents, are those very people. Average greenhouse gas emissions per capita in Ireland are five times what the models tell us the climate can take. All of us, however, are mere hostages to an economic paradigm which is set by our leaders, whether in politics, business, or the media.
My hope for the millennium? That we learn to adjust our economic thinking faster than the climate forces us to. - Yours, etc.,
Patrick Finnegan, Brookfield Place, Blackrock, Co Dublin.