The Earth’s Corr: How can anyone still doubt the climate crisis in NI after the gifts of 2023

After the year Northern Ireland has just had it’s hard to escape how the climate crisis has come to bite us in the backside.

First we saw a summer-long catastrophe play out on Lough Neagh that saw our biggest water source poisoned with toxic blue-green algae.

If you’ve been reading about the issue or have seen it on the news - you’ll know about the dogs and wildlife that died as a result, the major impacts on jobs as fishers, watersports firms and more had to cut jobs, close up shop and suffered a major dent in their revenues and how people even got sick as a result result.

Then there were the widespread fears about our drinking water - 40% of which comes from the Lough - with families turning to bottled water instead of turning the tap. The issue, while largely the result of decades of pollution gathering in our waterways from farming, sewage and run-off, was helped along by our record-breaking June scorcher and damp squib July.

Thank you fossil fuels.

And then there was the Lough Neagh Partnership report that found Lough Neagh’s water had warmed 1% also because of the climate crisis. But that isn’t the only way the oil, gas, petrol, coal and turf burning harms we all play a part in, reared their ugly head this year.

This winter has brought us a record number of storms - some six in total so far - when the norm is around four throughout the winter season that takes us up to February.

Rains are also getting heavier and staying for longer - July and October - were proof of that.

According to Armagh Observatory, October 2023 was Northern Ireland’s wettest ever month - breaking a record that has stood since 1870. While the Met Office rated it fifth on the all-time list for the wettest Octobers.

I think a lot of people out there still think accumulating greenhouse gases that have caused the Earth to heat up by almost 1.5 degrees since we started burning fossil fuels only bring hot weather. But that’s not the case.

They mess with weather patterns all round - and that includes the more severe and frequent storms we’ve been seeing as well as wetter months that cause flooding.

My heart went out to the people of Downpatrick and Newry when they felt what that’s like in November.

Council workers from Newry, Mourne and Down District Council help clean up flood-stricken Downpatrick, Co Down, where several town centre shops were completely submerged in water. (Image: Liam McBurney/PA Wire)

NI looked on in horror as businesses and homes flooded while those hit waded through town in their wellies trying to save what they could.

With mounting calls for flood funding to help those affected approved there are plans in place to provide up to £100,000 for the businesses that were hit through a £15m fund.

That’s a huge expense to taxpayers and one that should be paid.

But there is a much bigger discussion to be had here around adaptation to protect the people of Northern Ireland from the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

I know even if Stormont got back up and running in the morning and the billions to entice the DUP to the democratic thing, was all spent retrofitting our homes, increasing public transport and cutting fares, installing enough EV chargers to stop people buying petrol and diesel cars, electrifying all our heating systems, investing in sewage infrastructure and reducing agri-foods pollution - we can’t stop the climate crisis now it’s here.

Toxic blue-green algae is destroying wildlife and causing economic turmoil on Lough Neagh (Image: Declan Roughan / Press Eye)

But what has happened this year, surely has to be a lesson to our politicians that if they do nothing to help Northern Ireland make the changes needed to cut our carbon footprint - we’ll be out many billions more if we don’t adapt.

Put simply, it would be the height of stupidity.

We need all those things and more as our long-awaited climate action plan will set out.

Not doing these things now will cost us all far more dearly in the long run, in terms of heartache, further disruption to our lives and in cold hard cash.

Don't be a cash cow for others at the expense of Earth

As I perused the isles of Tesco the other night after nipping in for a small food shop, the amount of left over gifts obviously packaged and marketed for Christmas really struck me. Prices were slashed on many in a bid to clear the shelves ahead of Monday.

But it really got me thinking about the amount of stuff all major retailers gather to sell for just one day of the year and the overconsumption the celebration now feeds.

Time and again I have heard from supermarkets about how they have to give people what they want.

We hear the same thing from all sorts of industries - fossil fuels, tobacco, cars, fashion and more.

But on the flip side of that very same coin - people buy and consume and devour, watch and read what the world gives prominence to. And that right there is the problem.

As agencies and marketeers have been working behind the scenes for years to work out clever hacks to get us to buy stuff. It could be as simple as where items feature on a supermarket shelf, how many ads we’re hit with and how clever or cute they are.

On social media they use algorithms to push certain content down our throats, platforms even bombard us with ads about a certain product if they see a picture in our camera roll of a certain person or thing or hear us talking about them.

And that’s where it gets tricky - they do everything possible to feed us what they want us to want, then act like they are providing for our needs when that’s not how the seller-buyer relationship has worked for decades.

Yet it seems this train of thought has now permeated every part of society.

My main fear, and I’m sure one felt by many, is how we deal with this overconsumption and overemphasis of certain things.

More and more it feels like all these things are a distraction from what’s really important in life and even at Christmas. That’s being together and working together to create a society where people are truly happy and live healthy, long lives.

21/12/2023 Photo By Justin Kernoghan Arriving home for Christmas at George Best Belfast City Airport today.

All the things they want to want and ram down our throats are never going to do that when we’re all living through what’s quite plainly a nightmare right now.

Take the collapse of the peace in certain countries, the climate and biodiversity crises, the rise of the far right, lack of housing, our appalling healthcare systems and growing poverty.

Are shelves filled with needless things, TV shows that distract us for a while, and social media empires that feed us news and videos that for the most part highlight other people’s misery or crimes so we don’t feel so bad about our own lot going to help the world, communities and societies in the long run?

No they’re not and I think it’s high time each and everyone of us started paying attention to the things that really matter - or the world and everyone in it, isn’t going to get better or feel better anytime soon.

I hope you and your families all have a very happy Christmas.

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References

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