Madam, - In his Heart Beat column of July 1st, Maurice Neligan characterises my response to his comments on global warming (June 21st) as an attempt to restrict his freedom of speech. Any reasonable person reading my letter will see this is not the case. On the contrary, I expressed the wish that he would return to the subject and treat it in a more responsible and informed way.
Instead, Mr Neligan has taken his knife once again to what he believes to be the soft underbelly of climate change. In focusing on cows' "anti-social emissions", he aims to ridicule the concerns of those who recognise climate change to be the single most important challenge facing society.
The scientist and philosopher Jacob Bronowski observed that "man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature." If Mr Neligan truly believes climate change to be a laughable myth, why does he offer your readers no scientific evidence to support this view?
Perhaps science is not his ally in this instance. The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation has reported that livestock is responsible for 18 per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions, including 9 per cent of all CO2, 37 per cent of methane and 65 per cent of nitrous oxide.
The warming potential of methane and nitrous oxide is 23 and 296 times that of carbon dioxide respectively. To compound matters, livestock is the fastest growing sector of global agriculture and numbers are projected to double within 50 years.
As a self-professed car-lover, Mr Neligan may take heart that livestock emissions exceed all of the world's transport emissions. The Rowett Institute in Aberdeen has calculated that a single cow causes the same damage to the environment each year as a family car that travels 12,000 miles.
As noted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, poor and vulnerable communities - those with the least responsibility for the problem and the fewest resources with which to respond - will be affected first and worst.
In the face of facts which exist even when ignored, I suggest that Mr Neligan's agenda has less to do with science and more to do with politics, philosophy and the protection of privilege. - Yours, etc,
FERGAL COSTELLO,
Ashton Park,
Monkstown,
Co Dublin.