Climate change is a major problem. It’s huge. It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever faced as a species and is going to cause unimaginable damage to far too many other species apart from us. It’s something that we have a chance to fight back again though, which I really think you should do immediately. You can see my post from Monday here and act on climate change by getting in touch with key government officials.
But.
There is another problem. One that tends to be somewhat overlooked, but also feeds into and from climate change.
Peak Oil.
Is this a bigger problem then climate change? For me, I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. On the one hand, climate change virtually every species on earth. Peak oil, on the other hand, has a direct effect only on humans.
I’ll ignore that for the moment.
As I mentioned in my post on Monday, there was a speaker from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas Ireland (ASPO), Richard O’Rourke at the Union of Students of Ireland’s green training day last Saturday. He was talking to us about peak oil and had some very interesting points.
Oil is running out. Of the 70 oil-producing nations in the world, 60 are producing as much oil as they are ever likely to produce. They are at the plateau of their production levels. The International Energy Agency is predicting that oil production will have peaked by 2020. The world consumes 30 billion barrels of oil a year. Ireland imports 66 millions barrels of oil a year. Ireland’s biggest use of oil is on transport.
Now, not to state the obvious but once oil is gone, it’s totally gone. The worst part of all this is that oil has a very high energy density. It is incredibly difficult to replace, because it is so high-energy.
Richard said that it is predicted that two things will happen in or around 2011/2012. The first is that Ireland’s economy will properly begin to grow again. In line with this and the recovering economies of the rest of the world, the second thing to happen will be a rapid spike in the price of oil. This, he said, is forecast to plunge Ireland into a second recession. He called this a ‘double dip’.
Oh dear. Well, once again there are plenty of things we can (and have to) do. We need massive investment in the electricity infrastructure in the West of Ireland, as this is where we’re going to be conducting most of our wind and wave electricity. We need to immediately, as a country, stop being so dependent on oil and change what we’re using oil on. Use up all the oil now and there’ll be none left to use in emergency generators when blackouts leave hospitals in darkness and when we really need it.
Again, this is only going to work if passionate people get involved. Tell your friends about peak oil. People don’t like discussing this ’cause they deem it ‘negative’ and ‘depressing’. To them, I say “Tough shit”. This is not the time for people to moan about something being unpleasant, or difficult to handle.
If this does not happen now then by the time we start to make the necessary changes it will be far too expensive. Think about it this way:
In order to harness wind energy, we need to build a wind turbine. In order to build a wind turbine, we need oil for the construction and transportation process (among many other things, but we’ll keep things simple). Today, oil is at a relatively low price. In 10 years, with minimal investment in alternative technologies and no reductions in consumption, oil will be extortionately expensive. The result is, then, that building a wind turbine now will be significantly cheaper in 10 months than in 10 years
Act now:
E-mail your local TD, as well as John Gormley (Minister for the Environment and Local Government), Eamon Ryan (Minister for Energy, Communications and Natural Resources) Brian Cowen (An Taoiseach) and Brian Lenihan (Minister for Finance) to express your concern over the potential economic and social effects of peak oil
Plan to cut down your oil usage
Start cutting down your oil usage!
Richard pointed us to a number of resources throughout his talk. Here are the ones I noted:
worldvaluesurvey.org (for the graph showing no correlation between reported happiness and being in a highly material society)
Among the other faults with democracy as a political system is the concept that I call “He who complains most effectively gets what he wants”. This is a shame, because what tends to happen is that we complain about what we don’t like but then don’t congratulate people for doing things we like. So, credit where credit is due, this is a positive post.
Dublin City Council have made some amazing progress on the issue of transport in the city. I must submit a word of congratulations on both the Bus Gate at College Green and the Dublin Bikes scheme, which has had an incredible uptake. It’s absolutely fantastic seeing so many cyclists around the city (cycling is up 64% in the last four years). Dublin is slowly but surely becoming a better, safer and more pleasant place to cycle. I’ve no doubt that this bike scheme now needs to be replicated around the country (Cork, Limerick and Galway in particular) and expanded within Dublin.
We had Councillor Andrew Montague (of Labour) in to talk with us on Saturday (for USI’s green training) and he spoke on transport in Dublin. He also let us know that Drury St Car Park has cycling parking spaces that are sheltered, secure, close to the car park supervisor’s station and, best of all, free! It’s all of a 3 minute walk from Grafton St, so it’s perfect for shopping. See a map here.
What else are they working on? For me, the most interesting are real time bus information (finally!) and expansion of our bike lane network, including along the canals.
Andrew said on Saturday that he had received 33 complaints and only a handful of e-mails in support of the bus gate! The bus gate has been a fantastic change in traffic in Dublin. Join the Facebook group and e-mail your local councillors. Do you know how often they get e-mails that simply say “well done”? I reckon it’s not very often. They are working for us and it’s only by giving them positive as well as negative feedback that this political system works. So, take 5 minutes to go to this page, find your local councillors and send them off a simple e-mail. It doesn’t have to be too complex. You could say:
The bus gate has made your morning bus commute quicker
The bus gate has increased the footfall (amount of people visiting the street) of College Green by 6%.
The bus gate has decreased maximum peak journey time from Parnell Square to Nassau St from 40 minutes to just under 10 minutes.
You could also say:
The Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGV) limitations has made cycling in Dublin safer
The Dublin Bikes Scheme has made getting around Dublin easier
I’ve already done this. It took me about 5 minutes to e-mail all my local councillors. So go on! Give it a lash!
I’ve been out of the environmental loop for a while. It’s probably been a little over a year. It was a poor choice to forget about this part of my life.
Yesterday I was at the Union of Students of Ireland’s (USI) ‘green training’. We had John Gormley, TD, Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment and Local Government in to talk to us, among other speakers. It was interesting listening to him, specifically about the meeting in Copenhagen next month. This world summit of the UN will be discussing climate change and will aim to agree legally-binding carbon emission reduction targets. I say aim, because on of the major problems it will face will be an unwillingness of countries (specificly what are known as World North countries, ie: more developed nations) to agree to definitive targets.
Due to the length of this process (it takes months to get agreements), the fact that there is a time-lag in the effects of increased carbon levels on our climate (approximately 20 years, if I remember correctly) and the ‘feedback systems’ that our climate has (essentially, once we increase our global average temperature by a certain amount, then no matter how much we reduce our emissions, the temperature will continue to rise) this meeting in Copenhagen is seen as the world’s last chance to avoid the most serious effects of climate change.
Next year 500,000 will die in the world as a direct result of climate change. Conservative predictions based on a best-case scenario estimate a loss of 20% of the species in Ireland. By 2011, the number of environmental refugees worldwide is estimated to rise to 50 million and up to 1 billion by 2050.
While being slightly over-the-top, this video explain all this quite well (I can’t seem to embed Vimeo videos): Wake Up, Freak Out.
Give it a watch, then come back (the video will open in a new window).
Now, welcome back.
First of all:
Don’t Panic.
We still have time. What we need is for our voices to be heard. We need action to be taken immediately.
You’ll find below an e-mail I sent to Brian Lenihan (TD, Minister for Finance) and Brian Cowen (TD, An Taoiseach). I also sent it to the Irish Times and the Irish Independent. I urge you to do something similar. John Gormley, as Minister for the Environment, can do very little if he does not have the support from the cabinet. The most effective way to influence politicians is to remind them how they got their job (we voted them in) and I’m pretty sure it’s about time for climate change to be top of their agenda. I hate to say this, but climate change is more important than any other issue in Ireland.
So, here’s the letter. Paraphrase if you wish, then e-mail it to brian.lenihan@oireachtas.ie, brian.cowen@oireachtas.ie and john.gormley@oireachtas.ie
A brief letter about Copenhagen
Dear an Taoiseach, Minister Lenihan and Minister Gormley
I write to you today to on the issue of climate change, probably the most important issue the world has ever faced.
As a young Irish person, a European and a citizen of this world I’m clearly very much in favour of getting as strong a deal in Copenhagen as possible. This e-mail, then, is a note of support for getting Ireland, the EU and the world to agree to the necessary changes. By necessary changes, I primarily mean the reduction in carbon emissions that will keep us within the “safe” change in global average temperature. This should not be limited by a economical circumstance; there’s no point preserving the economy if we don’t preserve the environment first.
Not acting now means environmental, social, political and economical devastation with 40 years (at most). I hope to still be around at this point in time and certainly don’t want it to be my legacy. I’d rather not have to explain to my children and grandchildren why we live in a world that, instead of facing up to its responsibilities, made the foolish and selfish decision to close our eyes and minds to the problem.
Every developed nation in the world needs a massive reduction in carbon emissions. Ireland needs to start reducing its emissions immediately. We need to drop to 5% of our current emissions. This is not going to be an easy task, but the consequences of not taking such an action are devastating, from both an economical and environmental point of view. Acting now means we still have the potential to take advantage of the massive opportunities in the green economy. Not acting means not being able to afford such luxuries in the future.
Climate change is more important than NAMA, Lisbon, the pothole down the road, my education, public health services, low tax rates, or any other issue I care about or can think of.
This process is too important to wait for a direct mandate. This needs to be acted on immediately, with foresight, strength and determination. When negotiations are underway in Copenhagen, we need to be sure that our future interests are being served, not those of short-term governments, corporations and individuals.
Yours, in hope,
Conor Pendergrast
All this, of course, ignores the looming elephant in the room of peak oil. There was also a speaker from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas Ireland (ASPO), Richard O’Rourke. That was a terrifying talk (to be honest), but did end on a word of hope. It’s going to take me a day or two to come to grips with that topic and articulate it in to a post, so bear with me on that and come back tomorrow and Wednesday or Thursday.
I’m far too tired for anything close to what I need to write about today, so this is going to be a very brief post. While I’m often quite cynical about USI (the Union of Students of Ireland), today Kim, the environmental officer, ran a day-long workshop that, while not being massively attended, hit the right notes for me. It re-awoke me to the climate chaos that we are facing; the challenges of peak oil; the mass extinction of species; the environmental refugees and above all; our responsibilities as individual members of Irish society to change our behaviour. I’ll need to get in to far more detail about this, but I don’t know if I can continue to kid myself that peak oil and climate change are issues that are being dealt with by enough people. I get the very worrying idea that I have to do something about this.
So, difficult day (lots of hard truths to swallow) but incredible overall. Finished it off at a burlesque show, taking photos. Fantastic fun. Just loading the photos on to my laptop now, so I am very much hoping that at least 10 of the 518 photos I snapped come out well.
More about the environmental stuff and how it’s not someone else’s job on Monday. Please, come back for it. It is that important.
I was at the L&H’s god debate last night, where the motion put was “That this house believes it is rational to believe in god” (well, according to some of the speakers anyway). I got home to find an e-mail in my inbox (well, several, but one of particular interest). Evidently Herself had found a Boards.ie thread about Jesus, the man himself. So, without further delay, I give you a list of characters who appears before Christianity and the common characteristics –
Gautama Buddha: born of the virgin Maya around 600 BC
Dionysus: Greek god, born of a virgin in a stable, turned water into wine.
Quirrnus: An early Roman saviour, born of a virgin
Attis: born of a virgin Nama in Phrygia around 200 BC
Indra: born of a virgin in Tibet around 700 BC
Adonis: Babylonian god, born of the virgin Ishtar
Krishna: Hindu deity, born of a virgin Devaki in around 1200 BC
Zoroaster: born of a virgin 1500-1200 BC
Mithra: born of a virgin in a stable on the 25th of December around 600 BC. His resurrection was celebrated at Easter.
Y’know, if I were writing a story about a guy I knew and wanted to make him seem like a kick-ass super-deity, I reckon I’d steal loads of these characteristics too.
So, just like we’ve seen a stack of vampire movies aimed at teenagers since Twilight came out, we also see a copycat effect of all those “deities” that preceded the character of Jesus. Dude, what a cheat! I mean, if you’re going to copy stuff from your predecessors, at least a) Don’t get caught and b) Make it something deadly that you steal! I mean, he could’ve chosen to shoot fireballs out of his ears or throw lightening bolts… but a virgin birth? Ok, turning water into wine is a fantastic party trick, but not very good at getting you out of stick situations.
So, what I’m saying is, this Jesus guy (or the guys who made up a story about some poor shmuck, who just had a couple of good ideas about being nice to each other, then turned it into an all-controlling tyrannical organisation) really should’ve made some better career moves. Out with the virgin birth, in with the fireballs.
One of my pet peeves is manners. While I’ll be rude occasionally (obviously, everyone is or is perceived as being rude sometimes) it really annoys me when people seem to act in a way that takes no account of the other people in the world. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the library in UCD really (ah the joys of final year) and have seen this more than ever. There are people who take and make phone calls, who don’t mute their laptops, who chat away and who let their phones vibrate away on the table for hours. What annoys me the most, though, is the lack of etiquette that guys display in the toilet. On dear oh dear. I’m sorry, but I have to tell the truth. Guys can be absolutely disgusting. Really. This ranges from the seemingly innocent but ultimately unsanitary leaving-the-toilet-without-washing-his-hands (we all have to touch the door lads!) to the unbelievable but true pissing-all-over-the-seat-then-not-even-cleaning-up-after-himself. It’s disgusting. This is sober behaviour, by the future bankers, lawyers, engineers, scientists, psychologists, teachers, whatevers of the world. Oh dear me.
As reported in yesterday’s Irish Times, a parish priest has denied claims that he spread a “vote no to Lisbon” leaflet (although he doesn’t deny that he wrote and signed it). The leaflet claimed that the EU has:
“embraced the ‘Culture of Death’. Yet again, Europe has become a slaughterhouse. Millions of its own children have been slaughtered”
This is in spite of the fact that only 17 out of 25 members of the European Union have access to safe and legal abortion on request (data accurate to 2007 – pdf). As an aside, far more have access to abortion to save the life of the mother (all except Malta); Ireland’s laws prohibit abortion except in the case of risk of death to the mother. Not, however, in the case of rape, incest, preservation of physical or mental health, fetal impairment or economic or social reasons.
The real gem, however, is the quote at the end of the article, from Cardinal Tarcision Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state.
“If Europe recognised homosexual couples as equal to marriage, for example, it would go against its own history. And it would be right to stand against it. The Church wants to encourage states in this.”
The age-old argument of “we’ve always done it this way, why should we change?” emerges. Never mind that polygamy was also the status quo at one point, the institution that tried to cover up systematic child sex abuse, that instigates the oppression of women’s rights and that caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people in the Crusades also want you to live in a static age; one that never progresses or advances. The Vatican, apparently, feels the need to retain control over who you love, who you have sex with, who you marry, what contraception you use, what you do in the case of that contraception failing, what you do when you’re raped, whether you want to go through the trauma of a still-birth (in the full knowledge that this will occur). I think I would be more appalled if there weren’t people like CountMeOut.ie in this country, providing people with information on leaving the Catholic Church.
Ok, rant over.
On a separate note:
The UCD Secular Humanist Society is holding an event tomorrow evening in the Blue Room of the Student Centre. Michael Nugent, the chair of Atheist Ireland, will be speaking on the topic ‘Blasphemy is a Human Right’. All members are invited (if you’re not a member you can sign up there and then, for a mere €2). The event starts at 6pm. This is sure to be a great talk; I’ve heard Michael on the radio before and he’s got some great ideas. E-mail ucdhumanistsociety@gmail.com for more information, or follow them on Twitter.
… but I’m quite busy at university. I’m going to blog interesting stuff about my research project once it properly gets under way but for now here’s a notice of two events:
GLEN are holding an information session on the Civil Partnership Bill this Wednesday (7th October) in the Westbury Hotel (Grafton St.) at 8pm. As they say:
The aim of these events is to inform people about what is in the Civil Partnership Bill and to discuss what it will mean practically for lesbian and gay couples. Dr Fergus Ryan, Head of DIT’s Law Department, will provide a detailed account of the Civil Partnership Bill.
MarriagEquality are also holding a workshop for adult children (18 years old +) of same-sex couples, to “share their experiences and opinions on growing up with LGBT parents” on November 21st. I’ll be there and if anyone else wants to be, call Dawn on 01 6599 459 or email dawn@marriagequality.ie. For more information see this page.
Stuckinthemilli.eu 