It has been a busy few weeks for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and unfortunately, it hasn’t been good news for the state of Ireland’s nature. Almost half of our rivers and lakes are now polluted and almost a fifth of them in ‘bad’ or ‘poor’ condition, according to the […]
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About 300,000 people made the annual pilgrimage this year to the Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska, Co. Laois. Contrary to what the social media trolls would have you believe, I was met with strong, friendly handshakes and passionate voices for the protection of nature and the ecological transformation of modern farming. […]
Described in chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions of non-linear systems, in which a small change can result in large differences at a later time and even in a different place. Explaining this, the mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz used the metaphorical example of a tornado being influenced by […]
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 […]
This month West Cork Branch Committee Member Jez Simms shares his experiences of a pelagic boat trip on August 13, organised by the Branch. Pelagic means living or occurring in the open sea. It was a glorious Sunday morning when members of Birdwatch Ireland set out on the Branch’s annual […]
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 […]