
UNCONSTITUTIONAL CLIMATE
UNCONSTITUTIONAL CLIMATE
November 2, 2017
WHEN ALL else fails, take them to court. Yet again, it falls to the poorly supported, barely solvent environmental NGO sector to try to... Read more »
IRELAND LEADS FROM REAR
October 19, 2017
When cost to Ireland of Storm Ophelia’s fury is calculated, will that figure feature in future cost/benefit analyses as the Government considers whether to... Read more »
CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLY STRIKES AGAIN
October 5, 2017
WHEN politicians want an issue to go away, a favourite ploy is to bury it alive in a talking shop. If that was the... Read more »
MONSANTO’S FIGHT FOR ‘ROUNDUP’
September 21, 2017
IF YOUR business is managing reputations, it pays to have well-heeled clients. A case in point is Hume Brophy, whose modest HQ in a... Read more »
Fracking : The Irish Way
August 24, 2017
Seán Kelly For Irish problems there are Irish solutions. Women travel abroad for abortions. Neutral Ireland refuels US warplanes at Shannon Airport. And now... Read more »
ROSS TO ELECTRIFY TRANSPORT?
August 10, 2017
Shane Ross IS THERE any part of the environmental agenda that Ireland doesn’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming into, to achieve even... Read more »
VARADKAR IS NO MACRON
July 27, 2017
Emmanuel Macron A “fundamental societal transformation”. With these words, on the first page of his Government’s (very) long-awaited National Mitigation Plan (NMP) on climate... Read more »
TRUMP’S IRISH ALLIES
July 13, 2017
DESPITE the efforts of the Trump regime, the international consensus on stepping up action to tackle climate change remains largely intact. In some areas,... Read more »
CLIMATE FRIENDLY LEO VARADKAR?
June 29, 2017
WITHIN hours of receiving his seal of office from Michael D Higgins, our new Taoiseach took the very deliberate step of publicly distancing himself... Read more »
DUP’S GLOBAL CHILLING
June 15, 2017
NORTHERN Irish politics doesn’t produce many laughs. One of the better ones involved the Democratic Unionist Party’s Sammy Wilson, when interviewed in Belfast by... Read more »
VICTIMISED CLIMATE DENIERS
June 2, 2017
FROM the moment Claire Byrne uttered her sulky opening question – “Climate change: should anyone dare to debate the fundamentals?” – it was clear... Read more »
BATES’S BALI-HOO
May 17, 2017
BACK IN 2007, an international group of respected mainstream scientists co-signed what was known as the Bali Climate Declaration. It warned that global carbon... Read more »
SEAWEED SECRECY
May 3, 2017
THE ADVERTISING gurus who market Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way will soon be able to supplement the romantic imagery of rugged coastline, dolphins and pony-riding... Read more »
IFA LOSES RAG
April 19, 2017
ARE THE wheels starting to come off Ireland’s most formidable lobbying machine? The IFA’s attack on Fianna Fáil last month for failing to roll... Read more »
ECO WARRIORS OF DESTINY
April 5, 2017
IS FIANNA FÁIL in danger of becoming the party of the environment? The wonders of new politics have allowed grassroots campaigners to arm-twist Micheál... Read more »
DENIS NAUGHTEN ABANDONS CLIMATE ACTION
March 23, 2017
IS DENIS Naughten now Ireland’s Minister for Not Telling People What To Do? The recently published draft National Mitigation Plan (NMP) is a 91-page... Read more »
NAUGHTEN’S FUTILE ‘AMBASSADORS’
March 9, 2017
DENIS NAUGHTEN is appointing “climate action ambassadors” in every county as part of a new “national dialogue on climate change” he launched in Dublin’s... Read more »
NOT-SO-WISE FOOD PLAN
February 23, 2017
CLIMATE DENIER Scott Pruitt was confirmed this month to head the US Environment Protection Agency. When working as Oklahoma’s attorney general, he took more... Read more »
FRACKING: TO BAN OR NOT TO BAN?
February 9, 2017
THE Times of India described the Dáil’s progress of the bill as “historic”, while Russia Today recorded “an important moment in the history of... Read more »
DONALD TRUMP’S CLIMATE CREED
January 25, 2017
THE Trump presidency has become reality and with it eight years of American leadership on global efforts to curb the ever-worsening impacts of climate... Read more »
PERVERSE EU POLICY
January 12, 2017
ON CHRISTMAS Day police in Sydney pulled off the largest cocaine bust in Australian history, seizing 500kg of the drug from a boat and... Read more »
TCD GOES WITH THE FLOW
December 14, 2016
WHEN a student society at Trinity College declared last month it was “standing in solidarity” with Native American protestors blocking an oil pipeline in... Read more »
POST TRUMP CLIMATE
December 1, 2016
THE VICTORY of Donald Trump in the US election is bad news on many fronts with the Republican Party scrambling to make America great... Read more »
FRACKING: WHAT’S IN A NAME?
November 3, 2016
ANTI-FRACKING campaigners are not quite sure whether it’s too soon to celebrate – Clare Daly warned those gathered at the Dáil last week not... Read more »
NAUGHTEN’S CHALLENGE
October 20, 2016
THE IRISH public could be forgiven for concluding that the term climate action has something to do with funding RTÉ. After all, since the... Read more »
JOHN FITZGERALD DISAPPOINTS
October 5, 2016
THE great and good of Ireland’s environment world were treated to a bewildering double act last month that laid bare the gaping chasm between,... Read more »
IRELAND EXPORTS FRACKING OPS
September 21, 2016
IRELAND HAS been mostly quiet on the fracking front, but last month Goldhawk’s attention was caught by reports of an Irish company having to... Read more »
KENNY TRUMPS CLIMATE ACCORD
September 7, 2016
DONALD TRUMP is probably not the first name that springs to mind when major international breakthroughs in tackling climate change are being discussed. The... Read more »
CHILLY ENVIRONMENT AT BAI
August 24, 2016
THE Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) hasn’t been making too many friends in environmental circles lately. This month it delivered a double-whammy of decisions... Read more »
BREXIT IS BAD FOR THE PLANET
July 28, 2016
“A MORE flexible approach to environmental protection” – this Orwellian promise from UK farming minister George Eustice ominously sums up the likely direction of... Read more »
MONSANTO GETS ROUNDUP EXTENSION
July 15, 2016
AS a ‘good week to bury bad news’, the one following the Brexit vote was hard to beat. As it happened, the timing was... Read more »
DUBLIN AIRPORT CLIMATE PICKLE
July 2, 2016
FALLOUT from the Brexit vote may prove something of a gift for the Dublin Airport Authority’s (DAA) ambitious plan to have a second runway... Read more »
BORD NA MÓNA’S ‘GREENWASH’
June 17, 2016
“Almost 1,500 jobs” could be lost if Bord na Móna is prevented from harvesting peat for its Edenderry power plant in Co Offaly. This... Read more »
FRACKING BY ANOTHER NAME
June 1, 2016
“LIKE having a pissing section in a swimming pool,” is how Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan TD described the notion of allowing fracking on only one... Read more »
NAUGHTEN’S SPLIT PERSONALITY
May 18, 2016
HAVING heard Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary calling for cyclists to be shot and Danny Healy-Rae insisting that climate change is God-made, environmentalists could have been... Read more »
BRENDAN GLEESON’S PIPELINE TO RTÉ
May 5, 2016
WITH gas flowing through Shell’s contentious refinery in northwest Mayo since December 30 last, one of the legacies left by the demonisation of those... Read more »