Climate change is the real issue

In reference to the recent debacle in Cyprus, the intention to take money from people’s savings to pay for the financial crisis is a precedent that few would have envisaged.

A concern is that this policy was devised and agreed by a gathering of decision makers. It sets a worrying precedent for future fixing of what is a man-made problem.

Here at home we are consumed with the need for a financial fix. The reason being, we are all affected by our own foreign debt commitment which is directly impinging on “our” day to day living expenses.

There is another much greater, developing problem evolving — our ability to feed ourselves. Our collective inability to recognise the enormity of the pending problem as we persist with the fiscal focus, is to our detriment. The recent renegotiation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is, in agri terms, all about money, and understandably so. What is lacking is the recognition as to how difficult it is becoming to produce food for ourselves. For a clean, green food-producing island we fail to recognise the elephant in the room — climate change.

Global commodity food prices have dramatically increased due primarily to droughts in the US, Ukraine and Russia. On this island, we are experiencing the much more immediate effects of climate change. This time last year, potatoes were €90-€100 per tonne; today that cost is €500-€600 per tonne. Less than 50% of the winter crops have been planted, acres of last year’s arable crops remain in the fields, potatoes remain in the ground, etc. All of this is due to the inaccessibility to the land with the required machinery because of the weather.

We need to park the spin of our national discourse and have a real national conversation about how we are going to “sustain” ourselves. Stop the blame game and recognise our responsibilities to the generations coming after us, and begin to figure out a real, sustainable future.

Gerry Crilly

Dunleer

Co Louth