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February 2020

Climate Workshop

We attended the Citizen Climate Leader Training organised by Meath Climate Academy at their workshop, Saturday 25th January, in Buvinda House for a full day of presentations. Distinguished expert speakers presented detailed information on climate facts, biodiversity, sustainability, climate justice, climate and food/health, tips on communicating the climate message, and most importantly what is required to survive this Crisis.

We thoroughly recommend attending a workshop, or the forthcoming Climate Action Roadshows.

We'll help with future articles on individual aspects that offer solutions to help change our way of life to better your finances and be less harmful to the environment.

6 key observations and learnings from our Workshop.

"Change before you're forced to change."

Communication and Truth

Take Out #1

This is an EMERGENCY

The increasing Carbon Emissions into our atmosphere is causing weather changes which are not beneficial to life on planet earth, they could also be irreversible.

Why is no one PANICKING ?

We all should be !!!

If you're home was on fire you'd make every effort to do something, even if it that was simply to get out of the house. If you knew in advance that it was going to catch fire you'd make a plan of action to avoid it and save as many possessions as possible. The Climate Issue is not as easy to resolve since it's at some point in the future and there's no escape route for you or your possessions.

Greta Thunberg at Davos 2020

Greta Thunberg has been highly successful in expressing the simple facts that no one is panicking, no one is acting fast enough, and no one is protecting the future.

The issues which need significant change impact on everything. They are overwhelming in number and the scale is world wide. Governments are procrastinating to the point that inertia is setting in. Businesses and taxpayers will only change if there's an impact on their bottom line. The monetary cost of these required changes is significant. Ireland is set to receive multi BILLION euro penalty fines for not reaching agreed targets so perhaps we would be better to spend this money now rather than lose it later.

Take Out #2

Don't be in Denial.

Hot summers and snowy winters might not sound too bad for Ireland but the droughts, hurricane force winds, periods of torrential heavy rains together with electrical storms will ravage our environment ruining farming, food production, wildlife and our homes. Human self extinginsion is quite possible.

These awful predictions could happen within our own lifetime. It is highly likely to happen within within the lifetime of our grandchildren.

There is presently no scientific 'magical solution' or technology to avoid making dramatic Carbon Reductions AND we really do mean dramatic, unpleasant, inconvenient and life changing measures to avert disaster.

Scientists rarely use emotional language and when they do it's because the data confirms the facts and that the predictions will have a world wide and personal impact on everyone.

Take Out #3

Change Our Habits

Where do we begin?

Agriculture, Transport, Housing, Trade, Manufacture, Food production, Waste, Energy, Education........ absolutely every single thing that we have taken for granted needs significant changes since they all have a huge Carbon Footprint.

We can do some things ourselves but businesses create more damage.

Amongst many things Governments World Wide need to:

Convince us to stop using coal, turf, wood and gas to power our central heating?
Pursued us to reduce the number of electrical energy using devices we have become accustomed to ?

Click HERE to reveal more

Pursued us to leave the car at home or not to have one at all?
Convince businesses of the benefits of home working, drop in business centres or flexible shifts.
Make a U turn on Airport expansion and even to stop flying completely?
Convince us to waste less foods, eat less meat and buy only seasonal local fruit and vegetables?
Convince farmers to have much smaller herds and plant large areas of appropriate trees and encourage biodiversity?
Convince us to buy generally far less of everything and instead to repair and reuse?

The list unfortunately is endless which means it will all cost significantly and change our entire economy. Businesses, workers and the Taxman rely heavily on the activities requiring dramatic changes.

There is such an overwhelming number of "Hows?" that inertia leads to inaction and denial of the problems facing our future.

Take Out #4

Your Vote Matters

The 2020 General Election in Ireland will decide whether we elect a Government which is able to take effective timely Climate Change Actions to avert a potentially irreversible ecological disaster. This may mean making some hard hitting decisions to save the planet above the economy since we can't buy or borrow our way out of this Crisis.

Double standards and short term views prevail within politics and everyone's lifestyle. To see that many Politicians do not set a good example of environmental sustainability we need only to look at our street littered with single use plastic election posters, our letter boxes containing non recycled paper leaflets. The fact that we fill our household waste bin suggests we consume and waste too much.

So far Governments and Political Parties don't appear to be communicating effectively or cooperating with each other. The General Election 2020 manifestos are still traditional in their format with Health, Home, Work, Tax etc but each should be about how Climate Change will impact on us if we don't change our focus from an Ego based environment to an Ecological Survival one.

The Dáil's declaration of a climate emergency In May 2019 came at the same time as Ireland was deemed to be the second worst performing EU member state in tackling climate change. Ambitious Policy changes were expected but 1 year later in July 2019 the Climate Emergency Bill was effectively killed off to allow for Oil and Gas exploration to continue. To state the obvious this is an extraordinary hypocritical decision. The 'bottom line' of business finance and energy needs still drives them even when it's in the opposite direction to Carbon reduction. Our Government, together with most, are not focussed on the long term goal.

"An EU-wide reduction of 40% by 2030 has already been agreed by Member States. The EU, along with several other Member States, have set out ambitions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% to 95% by 2050, compared with 1990 levels."

Source: seai.ie

Given the decision to halt the Climate Emergency Bill how can we achieve this?

Take Out #5

"Change before you're forced to change."

Roger Goodell

It was suggested, in discussions at the Meath Climate Workshop, that most Governments resemble students debating together whether to revise for a school exam the night before without appreciating that the particular exam in question would be marked entirely on term based coursework. The time for dramatic change is right now, not next year or next decade.

Personal motivations will decide whether you're willing, or pushed, into making a change to benefit the environment at the cost of changing your lifestyle.

Everything that we buy, eat, drink, drive, wear or play with produces Carbon Emissions either in it's manufacture, transportation, use or end life.

A few brief examples:

The plastic shopping bag tax led to us reusing bags more. Ironically the plastic bag inventor would be horrified at how we used them since the invention was to create a reusable bag to stop paper bags being single use.
The U-Turn on Diesel vehicles as less environmentally polluting than petrol has made all the decision makers more cautious on what they promote. The push towards electric vehicles is both better and worse at the same time. They all have a carbon footprint and personal transport is not going to be a long term solution.

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Reusable coffee cups are more common but the retailers still offer single use albeit compostable cups, many of which go to landfill since their not disposed of in the organic bins.
Very few people grow their own fruit, veg or salads in their gardens. We certainly don't grow enough to feed our families for a year and compared to the convenience and shop prices who could blame them. Everything has a transport and packaging cost and price doesn't reflect nutritional values.
We're being advised to eat a more balance diet involving more vegetables and less meat not only for environmental reasons but for our health too. Farmers would benefit by gaining higher value for the lower number of animals and Organic local produce of vegetables and salads could compete better with shop prices for foreign imports.
Toys are often impulse buys but no one considers the disposal cost in landfill for that cuddly teddy bear or plastic toy car.

There really is no end to this list.

Generally we've gotten use to swapping out one bad product to replace it with another which is less offensive to the environment such as reusable shopping bags, coffee cups, straws etc. Unlike generations before we're still terrible at repairing and upcycling but given that cost is usually the motivating factor it is cheaper to throw away items rather than fix them.

Take Out #6

Communication and Truth

We're all 'grown ups' and the truth sometimes hurts.

Do we trust the Government to tell us it's going to be alright and that they know what they are doing?

For every scientist there's a response. Social Media and the internet are littered with 'Fake News' but it can look convincing.

One reason that Greta Thunberg, perhaps the originator of the Student Climate Strikes, got rapid attention was the younger generation's ability to communicate quickly. Our traditional media is more guarded in both 'what' and 'how' it communicates and Climate Change headlines are few and far between. However within 6 months of coming to the limelight there would be very few people who are not aware of Student Climate Action Protests and most importantly why they happen.

This may well end up being a 'grassroots and upwards' cultural shift in attitude and behaviour that will bring about changes where the biggest differences can be made.

Meath County Council

Caroline Corrigan is appointed as Climate Action Officer who, together with her team, initiated the Climate Academy Workshop.

There are roadshow events coming up where the Council are encouraging individuals to become more informed and to start making a difference.

Further Information

Executive Summary Only_v1.pdf (PDF, 4.97 mb)

Meath County Council Climate Action Strategy (PDF, 8.57 mb)

" Over 60 participants took part in the inaugural Meath Climate Academy training event which took place in Buvinda House, Navan on Saturday, January 25th.

The event was aimed at people concerned about the climate crisis and who want to take positive climate action as an individual and within their communities. The training aimed to give people the knowledge and skills to start their own climate conversation. The event didn’t just focus on the science of the climate crisis but covered a range of actions that can be taken to address the climate emergency and also covered the important topic of climate justice. "

Source: YouTube