Irish Examiner view: Warnings intensify but inaction endures

The thaw of frozen seawater floating on the ocean surface may mean the Arctic could become ice-free by 2040

Coastal Arctic sea ice may be thinning up to twice as fast as was previously thought.

Though hardly a day passes now without one report or another from one agency or another warning of imminent environmental armageddon unless we quickly change our ways yesterday was particularly busy on that front. 

The journal Cryosphere reported that coastal Arctic sea ice may be thinning up to twice as fast as was previously thought. The thaw of the frozen seawater floating on the ocean surface may mean that the Arctic could become ice-free by 2040, with potentially devastating consequences  - consequences that must be considered in any plans to build in any tidal estuary.
Adding to yesterday's gaiety, the UN  warned that the world’s soils, which provide 95% of our food, are “under great pressure”. Soils are also the largest active store of carbon, after the oceans, and therefore crucial in fighting the climate crisis.

If the threat of those calamities has not ruined your appetite then the suggestion from scientists behind a new independent taskforce that the root cause of pandemics – the destruction of nature – is being ignored may or at least should. Razing forests and hunting of wildlife is increasingly bringing animals and the microbes they harbour into contact with people or livestock. About 70% of new infectious diseases have come from animals, including Covid-19, Sars, bird flu, Ebola and HIV.

And yet, so much of our energy and ambition focuses on projects and ambitions that ignore these unfortunate, accelerating realities.