The congregation of the Unitarian Church on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, are to be warmly congratulated on the high-profile series of lunchtime talks which they organised in October and November, in preparation for the UN Climate Summit. Supported by the minister, Rev Bridget Spain, and with expert input from former Irish Times journalist Andy Pollak, the series consisted of an excellent line-up of five well-known and high-calibre speakers, who attracted a very good attendance on consecutive Thursdays. Each talk was designed to have its own particular emphasis, according to the speaker’s particular area of expertise, and a fascinating aspect was the strength of feeling, urgency and commitment shown by all the speakers, close to a prophetic voice at times.
Green Party leader, Eamon Ryan, led off on Thursday 15th October. Central to his approach were the words of the Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Bartholemew, who exhorts humankind to replace greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing. Eamon also referred a number of times to the recent encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato Si, praising it as a huge shift in the thinking of the Catholic Church. People’s hearts have to be won over to different ways of thinking with a core message of love for our planet. The solutions being currently proposed are not commensurate with the scale of the threat – a fundamental shift in political thinking is needed and there are many vested interests trying to prevent this. With reference to Ireland, Eamon questioned farming policy, importation of 80% of the grain we use and over-reliance on the dairy sector. In his view, electricity from renewable sources must be the way forward, and said that Ireland could be ‘fossil-free in a generation’ if there were the political will to implement this. He was also critical of the Dáil which, in the same week as passing the Climate Bill, had announced that the harvesting and burning of peat would not be phased out until the year 2030!
The following week Father Seán McDonagh SCC, one of the world’s leading environmental theologians and an advisor to Pope Francis in the writing of Laudato Si, stressed the lack of significance given to the environment in the writings of the popes who preceded Francis. In his view, Pope Francis is now deeply committed to ecology and climate justice but is still something of a lone voice, as many clergy have no training in these areas and feel unable to give leadership, whilst Laudato Si is a document of evangelisation, a guide to what it means to be a Christian in the 21st century. Father Seán made some interesting historical remarks. He quoted St Columbanus (who died in 615 AD): “If you want to know God, learn about Creation”. Regarding the teaching of St Francis of Assisi on communion with all nature, Seán feels that this teaching died with him, and that following the plague of the Black Death people tended to concentrate on saving their souls and lost some of the old affinity with nature and a common Creation. Of the modern world, he feels that technology has us in thrall. In response to questions, he was critical of multi-national companies who milk the resources of countries in which they operate, and warned of the loss of essential farming skills as small farmers are swamped by big corporations. One audience member pleaded with Father Seán to be a prophetic voice for our time.
The third talk was given by Professor John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth, whose words were illustrated by an array of graphs, diagrammes and photos, which left the audience in no doubt as to the scientific background. A picture of the mighty Victoria Falls, taken in September 2015, showed just a trickle of water, which means a huge reduction in hydro-power from the Kariba Dam. He spoke of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on which he serves. Their statistics show that dry regions are becoming drier and wet regions wetter. This has huge implications for food production going forward. The melting of polar ice is raising sea-levels – this summer it was possible to sail from Ireland to Japan via the Arctic without encountering any sea-ice. Building at the coast in cities like Dublin is foolish, and if Bangladesh floods, the present migration rate to Europe will seem tiny! John Sweeney is not optimistic – to even begin to achieve what is needed, 80% of known fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground, and powerful vested interests are driving climate policy. He thinks that the Paris UN Summit will fall short – for instance, Ireland is pleading for special conditions regarding emission reduction because of our dairy sector!
Frank McDonald, recently retired environment correspondent with the Irish Times, spoke on November 12th. He gave an interesting history of the sequence of Climate Summits, beginning with Berlin in 1985, which was chaired by the then youthful Angela Merkel, and touching also on Kyoto, Bali, Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban. He was generous in his praise for the ongoing work of the IPCC and critical that countries like China, India, Brazil and South Africa were slow to become involved at the highest level. Al Gore led the USA delegation at Kyoto, but George W Bush announced, two months into his presidency, that the USA could not implement the agreement, as being too damaging to the oil industry! One notable voice was that of Margaret Thatcher, a chemist by training, who wrote in 1988 that she was convinced of the threat of climate change. Frank was hopeful that some form of agreement could be reached in Paris, but pessimistic regarding the Irish situation where we are certain to overshoot our emissions targets for 2020, never mind those for 2030 and 2050. He mentioned that few TDs had an engineering or scientific background, that agriculture policy is not geared towards emissions reduction, that we need to grow far more trees, and that the media in general are not conveying the environmental story strongly enough.
On November 19th there was an unexpected bonus as Enda Reilly, a talented songwriter and guitarist, told us about the work he does on the environment and climate change in schools throughout Ireland, and performed some of his own songs which have climate change as their theme. He spoke very highly of the Green Flag scheme in Irish schools, and of the dedicated teachers who implement a number of different programmes and awards.
The final talk was given by Lorna Gold, head of policy and advocacy with Trócaire. She began by asking the congregation how they were feeling about the Paris Summit. Many of the replies were rather pessimistic, but she said that she had come to the view that feelings and emotions were vitally important, that repetitive facts and figures can be dry and discouraging, whilst empathy for others and concern for our planet is a much more powerful catalyst towards effective action. Recent Climate Summits have had much more emotional content as ambassadors from small islands put their case. Short-term national interest amongst the powerful nations encourages the pattern of economic growth and consumption, leading to re-election for the leaders. But there is an ‘elephant in the room’, the myth that material consumption leads to a good quality of life, whilst ignoring the wastefulness of planned obsolescence and a throw-away culture. Lorna felt a great concern regarding the diminution of quality of life for so many on the planet, the extraordinary loss of species and habitat in the animal world, and the adverse effect of climate change in areas already destabilised by conflict. It is noticeable that currently NGOs are called to pump resources into short-term acute crises, instead of being able to work with communities for long-term planning of a more sustainable future.
Gillian Armstrong – 27th November 2015