| A not-so-green and pleasant Ireland
By Joe Horgan
THIS is a green and beautiful country. Whatever else that cannot be said
enough. Anyone who has visited Ireland over the years is well aware of that.
I am lucky enough to see it every day and whatever the changes wrought in
this country the beauty still remains.
It is a touching beauty and this is still a country that gets inside you
and lodges itself there.
It is not hard to understand as the evening light seeps across the fields
how leaving this place broke so many hearts.
That is why the environmental disregard that modern Ireland displays can
be so heartbreaking and so frustrating for it is obvious that government
policy instead of having a detrimental effect could have a very beneficial
effect.
Look at how easily and efficiently they altered our environment for the
better simply by the smoking ban and the levy on plastic bags.
They could change things fundamentally if the desire was there. Unfortunately
there is no evidence to suggest there is any such desire present amongst
this Irish Government.
Indeed such is their shallowness and cynicism that green policies are only
now being voiced by Fianna Fail TDs as an election is looming and recent
opinion polls have suggested that the Greens could yet hold the balance
of power.
But whatever the beauty of this land and whatever the slow, timeless image
there is a different truth about Ireland.
There is another side to the boom and whatever the advancements they have
made to be mentioned too.
Ireland now has double the amount of cars on the road it had in 1990.
Maybe that could be seen as progress. Maybe it could be seen as traffic
jams and pollution. Maybe it could be seen as that whatever else has changed
it is still just as hard to get around the country and it is certainly
harder to get around the cities.
Maybe it could be seen in the shape of all those road deaths.
So those tourist postcards with sheep crowding a road in an Irish rush hour
are not the only truth in Ireland now.
If nothing else in the light of the latest climate report by a panel
of international experts and its stark warnings for the future of us all
— Ireland’s economic boom has to be seen as having gone hand-in-hand
with environmental degradation.
Green and pleasant Ireland now has higher greenhouse gas emissions than
Britain.
Indeed in terms of population our rate of damaging pollution is one
of the highest in the world atistics but these are not figures from Greenpeace
or some other pressure group. These are figures from the government itself.
Imagine that.
Dirty old England and all those factories and green old Ireland and all
those fields and yet we are now polluting more, we are damaging the planet
more.
Is that progress?
When we are all seeing climate change as something very real as something
taking place outside our very windows how can that be a good thing?
As the United Nations itself calls for urgent action on global warming how
can this reckless so-called progress, this quick buck fixation at any cost
be anything to be proud of?
When the Green Party leader said this week that Fianna Fail had a culture
of bad planning, corruption and bad standards it was unfortunately not just
political mud-slinging but something we all have to live with the consequences
of.
Of course visitors to Ireland may yet find it hard to believe this image
of the country.
They may see the broad majestic Shannon, the hills of Kerry or Donegal,
the fields of Mayo and still see the beautiful Ireland.
That is all there. And of course we cannot have a country that is a living
museum run for the pleasure of tourists.
Irish people deserve a good standard of living too and comfortable homes
and any other trappings that are on offer.
But it is ironic in a country newly obsessed with money that we are so blissfully
unaware of what all this progress might be costing us.
Especially now when there is no hiding anymore, when the storms we have
had this winter, the warm weather bringing flowers out in December, the
torrential rain and then a drought, the pictures from around the world
when all of this shows us what price we might have to pay.
When the sun went down behind the hills the other evening we all went to
look as it was so beautiful.
We met the farmer on the lane and we agreed that the stretch in the
evenings is definitely there. If it was all so beautiful for so long is
it all suddenly not just because someone has put a price tag on it?
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