Irish Examiner view: Critical need to join dots on what drives climate change

Warnings move closer as the impact on the environment of drinking bottled water is outlined

Firefighters try to extinguish a wildfire near Olympia town, western Greece yesterday. Maybe we can begin to join the dots on what drives climate change, our survival is at stake. Picture: Giannis Spyrounis/ilialive.gr via AP

Whether the findings that the impact of bottled water on natural resources is 3,500 times higher than tap water will slow sales is an open question, even if it should not be. Research led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health also found that the impact of bottled water on ecosystems is 1,400 times higher than tap water. The leading brand of Irish bottled water sold around 30m litres last year.

If those chastening findings are an admonishment of one of the indulgences we allow ourselves, then there are many others, some of which are more dramatic and increasingly impossible to ignore.

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At least 150 houses have been razed by an inferno that surrounded a monastery and a dozen villages on the Greek island of Evia, one of over 100 blazes burning in the country.
In an irony that can hardly be ignored, just as the Tokyo Olympics wind down, firefighters fought a runaway blaze threatening Olympia, birthplace of the Olympic Games. At the same time, a coal-fired power station in south-west Turkey and a nearby town on the Aegean Sea were evacuated as a deadly wildfire reached inside the plant.

We may not be as familiar with these locations as we are with bottled water, but maybe we can begin to join the dots on what drives climate change and take whatever actions needed to slow it — especially as drinking clean tap water is not that high a price to pay for our survival.

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB