Readers' Blog: We cannot keep waiting to act on environment
The recent revelation from the EPA in relation to ecoli in more than 51 water schemes serving more than 1m people comes as no surprise given the present state of water bodies.
Our ecology has been evolving over 600m years and it has taken less than 200 years to reduce it to its present condition in rivers and lakes. We use our rivers and lakes as conduits for effluent and waste that has caused the present ecological breakdown.
Every time we highlight the problem, there is no serious effort to speak about the cause or indeed how to fix it.
Why?
Because its an inconvenient truth! Water pollution is related to our global warming gas emissions therefore a holistic approach is required.
As a matter of urgency the EPA must be separated from local authority and allowed to do their job, surely just relating local authority monitoring results and sending desk top studies to Brussels is not good enough because things are disimproving.
The International Panel for Climate Control recently issued a 12-year warning about global temperature, which came just two weeks before our budget and the Government/Finance Minister Pascal O’Donohoe couldn’t even introduce a carbon tax or indeed any intervention to begin to address the problem. In the last week, we have heard soundings from our Taoiseach in relation to the problem and the need to react, but it is highly probable that he has a letter on his desk from Brussels in relation to huge fines to Ireland because of inactivity in this area
We must make a start.
