The world’s first transatlantic cable, which sent its first telegram 166 years ago, started in Valentia Island off the coast of Co Kerry. Now subsea cables carry 99 per cent of the world’s internet traffic. Today’s cables enable the transmission of light along fibreoptic strands within the cable, enabling an ever-increasing […]
Travel downstream along the Bandon River and a few kilometres east of Enniskeane you will pass under a beautiful freestanding six-arch rubble stone road bridge, built c.1740. It is listed by the ‘National Inventory of Architectural Heritage’ as “An expertly built bridge elegantly spanning the Bandon River. Despite its frequent […]
As I write, I am sitting on a veranda in Ko Yao Noi island in Thailand looking out over Phang Nga Bay watching a pied hornbill cavorting on the wall. I am on holiday. I have many friends who, like me, have taken a flight overseas this year. I […]
Fifty years ago Oxford economist E. F. Schumacher wrote ‘Small Is Beautiful – A Study of Economics As If People Mattered’, challenging the state of excessive consumption in Western society; and challenging economic globalisation, with warnings related to the inevitable human cost. His premise was that economies should revolve around the […]
The country’s climate plans outline a legally binding target of 51 per cent reduction in emissions to be reached by 2030 and reaching Net Zero by 2050 at the latest. Net Zero means cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible, with any remaining emissions re-absorbed from the […]
I recently watched an impassioned plea from Arnold Schwarzenegger: The one-time Mr Universe, film star and Republican Governor of California, was encouraging delegates at the Sixth Annual Austrian World Summit on the Environment, held on June 14, 2022, to support rapid expansion of use of existing technology, such that we […]