Letters to the Editor: Agriculture in Ireland plays only a minor role in global warming
'Ireland’s overall contribution to global warming is a mere 0.11% of the world total, which means that the contribution of agriculture is 0.0407% of the world total, hardly enough to warrant the enforced culling of a single cow.' Picture: iStock
Recently, as a scientist long concerned with global warming, travelling throughout Ireland by foot, bike, car, bus, and train, I discovered a strange phenomenon — the complete absence of the vast herds of cows that we are told are producing vast quantities of methane and carbon dioxide, breaking our international climate agreements as well as having a devastating effect on the planet.
Trips to Mayo, Kerry, and West Cork by car; to Dublin by train; walking and hiking through the Golden Vale — the heart of the mainly culpable dairy industry — climbing Croagh Patrick and Mount Brandon, I was surprised by the almost total absence of belching cattle in the fields as far as the eye could see, even during the grass feeding period.
The vast mountainous areas throughout Ireland, representing nearly half of Ireland’s landmass, are devoid of even a single cow.
It is hard, if not impossible, to reconcile the reality on the ground and in the fields with the accepted rhetoric that agriculture is responsible for 37% of Ireland’s CO2 equivalent emissions.
One wonders if those commentators and academics who are calling for the major culling of the national herd ever take a trip to the countryside.
To put it in context, this dichotomy may be resolved if one considers that — according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the foremost authority on all climate matters — Ireland’s overall contribution to global warming is a mere 0.11% of the world total, which means that the contribution of agriculture is 0.0407% of the world total, hardly enough to warrant the enforced culling of a single cow.
I write not as an expert or politician, but as a human being who is trying his best with a heart both broken and burning.
Broken by the scale of suffering in our world, and burning with a hope that perhaps, still, we might choose compassion, care, justice, and love over complicity.
How have we become so numb? Why are some lives headline news and others forgotten footnotes? Why does the world rally for some tragedies and turn away from others? What kind of people are we becoming if we allow compassion, caring, and even real love to be so selective?
There can be no hierarchy of human worth. No neutrality between siege and survival. No future in a world where atrocity is livestreamed, analysed, and ignored.
We Irish know hunger. We know occupation. We know what it is to be silenced.
That history must shape our response now. We must be a voice for those the world would rather forget. We must demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and so many other parts of our world where conflict exists. Unimpeded humanitarian access in all conflict zones such as in Tigray, Sudan, Somalia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, and so many other countries where conflict exists. An end to arms sales that fuel the bloodshed. And, above all, a politics rooted in compassion and care.
It is not enough to feel bad. We must act. We must write, give, march, vote, pray, protest. We must let our sorrow drive our solidarity.
Let us not be remembered as the generation that watched genocide happen and did nothing. Let us, instead, become the answer to someone else’s prayer.
Lord of mercy, open our ears to the cry of the hungry, the homeless, the abandoned, the poorest of the poor in over 100 countries where conflict and war is taking place, especially in Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia, Ukraine, and even at times on our own streets here in Ireland.
Break our hearts for what breaks yours. Shake us from comfort. Disarm our indifference. Set fire to our compassion and our empathy. Let us never look away. Let us never grow numb. Let our outrage become action, our sorrow become solidarity, our prayers become protest, our faith become flesh. And may we remember: Where there is life, there is hope. And hope begins not in power, but in hearts brave enough to love without limits. Amen.
There is a stronger reaction from political leaders and politicians under pressure from their constituents to the Israeli government’s man-made starvation crisis in Gaza.
France is about to recognise the statehood of Palestine and British prime minister Keir Starmer said Britain will recognise it in September unless Israel calls a ceasefire and allows all food aid into Gaza.
On a Jordanian food drop flight to Gaza last week, British journalist Jeremy Bowen said Israel told them to block side windows.
He was banned by Israel from filming the ruins of Gaza. He said Israel allows “symbolic” food drops now to lessen the international pressure, but it needs road convoys of food allowed in.
Videos by citizen journalists of the dying children in Gaza caused this international response. International media has not been allowed in since the war began.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says there is no starvation in Gaza.
In a recent large protest near 10 Downing St, they hit pots and pans mirroring the image of Palestinians rushing to only four badly run Israel-US Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food aid stations put in place there in May.
The UN, vastly experienced in delivering aid, was banned by Israel from Gaza in March, with Israel saying it employed Hamas members — which the UN denied.
Some within Israel’s government are on record saying they want no food and water in to Gaza to force the population out.
I am not anti-jewish or anti-Israel. Millions of people around the world hope for all aid to be let into Gaza for 2.2m people. The war has gone on too long.
We hope Hamas will return to Israel the remaining 50 or more hostages, 20 or more of whom are believed to be dead. An enormous man-made disaster.
“The European Union is consciously supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians,” according to Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian occupied territories.
She added that the EU had already “disgraced itself” by entering the association agreement with apartheid Israel. (That Israel is practicing apartheid — a crime against humanity — was a determination made last year by the International Court of Justice, the highest court on the planet).
As perhaps never before, social media has helped expose the terms “Western values” and “Western democracy” as no more than hollow slogans used to cover the grossest violations of international law, including illegal occupation, apartheid, and now genocide against defenceless civilians.
In an unprecedented gesture of support of Ms Albanese, close to 1m of the world’s citizens have called online for her to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. A growing number of prominent political figures from around the world have added their voices.
The Haughey-led government in 1987 defied the then EEC, and unilaterally banned all trade with apartheid South Africa.
By enacting the Occupied Territories Bill now, in full and without further delay, an Irish Government would again strike a blow for international law and Irish democracy and, in the process, help bring an end to the most shocking examples of international criminality since the start of the Second World War.
We continue at all levels to find ways not to contribute to common defence, even trying to decide the types of ammunition unsuitable to kill our troops such as cluster munitions.
We must acknowledge that one UN member state required to validate our triple lock is waging war on a European nation. Another is supplying the wherewithal to pound Gaza.
Europe is being forced to prepare for its own defence, and we are on the fringes.
The recent loan pool for defence of €159bn has been taken up to the extent of €127bn by a number of countries including even Cyprus — but not including Ireland.
Only our government of the day should decide on participation in defence when requested by legitimate authorities.
