Ireland risks New Orleans-style disaster

IRELAND could be facing a New Orleans-style disaster by ignoring trends in climate change and population shifts.

The National Spatial Strategy, which identifies areas for urban expansion, took no account of the effects of climate change and must be updated, an expert warned.

Dr John Sweeney, lecturer in geography at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, told a conference that sea levels were expected to rise by at least 40cm by the year 2080, yet this appeared to have little impact on planning for housing, transport and other essential services.

“The National Spatial Strategy does not really incorporate any climate change. Hopefully in the future, decisions about where we put people would be climate change proofed,” he said.

Dr Sweeney told the conference, organised by the Department of the Environment and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that the climate was changing more rapidly than at any time in the last few millennia. Some of the most dramatic changes were a doubling of the number of hot days (18 degrees centigrade) since the 1950s and the halving of the number of days when temperatures fell below freezing over the same period. A typical winter in the South-West now experiences half the frost it did 20 years ago while the north of the country, which typically experiences the harshest winters, is expected to have winters comparable to Cork and Kerry by 2050.

Dr Sweeney also predicted wetter winters along the north and west of the country, with increased flooding, while at the same time the east of the country could expect to see drier winters.

“We are putting people into the east where we have less water and taking them from the west where we have 10 times the water available,” he warned.

He said the biggest problem with climate change was society’s underestimation of how vulnerable they were to it. “Vulnerability to the hazard can change much faster than the actual hazard. When a hazard strikes, the weaknesses in society show through. That has been very clearly demonstrated [in New Orleans] over the last few days.”

Dr Sweeney was critical of the National Climate Change Strategy, many of the original features of which had been abandoned or neglected. These included the introduction of a carbon tax, the conversion of the Moneypoint power station, a 10% reduction in the national herd and the principle of sustainable planning.