A threatening climate - We can’t say we weren’t warned

Those prescient advocates who 30 or even 20 years ago warned about how climate change would alter our lives profoundly could not be derided today as they were then. The evidence has become irrefutable, all too regular. Our belated response is reactive rather than proactive and the evidence has also assumed an air of threat that we ignore at our peril.

Those pioneers were shamefully derided as “tree huggers” by B movie cowpoke-turned American president Ronald Reagan. Another of his dismissals: “Once you’ve seen one redwood you’ve seen them all” pointed to an ignorant insensitivity that would not be tolerated today. That, tragically, does not mean that the issues driving accelerating climate change are given the priority they demand in Ireland, the western world, the Brick economies, or the developing world.

Recent days and weeks have seen the country battered by storms, persistent and heavy rains, snow in some instances, devastating winds — yesterday’s 96km/h windspeeds at Cork Airport hardly seem remarkable any more — and repeated flooding in areas vulnerable to tidal surges. The impact is no longer the issue, it is their regularity and the rate at which they are becoming the norm that causes great concern.