It soothes the savage breast

In 1966 Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel released “Silent Night” which they sang to the background of the seven o’clock news. It was a striking combination. If you listen to the track today (it is on their album “Parsley, Sage Rosemary and Thyme”) you will be saddened to see that the substance of the news [...]

Painting the Clouds White

There are plenty of schemes, perhaps I should call them half baked schemes, to cool the planet that is beginning to overheat as a result of what is almost certainly anthropogenic caused climate change. Some have suggested giant reflecting mirrors in space, others seeding the oceans with iron filings and others suggested spraying clouds with [...]

Access to Justice in Environmental Cases

Courts exist to provide justice. They sometimes get confused and make mistakes, but generally in civilised countries the courts to their best to rule fairly in accordance with the law. It is universally recognised that courts are fallible, and so we have one or more courts to which a dissatisfied party can appeal. Sometimes laws [...]

Just when you thought it was safe to out out into the sunshine

One of the world’s successes in so far as environmental measures is concerned, is the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which prevented the use of ozone depleting gases. Since then the ozone hole over the Antarctic has shrunk and if present trends continue the ozone above Antarctic will be “back to normal” by about 2045. Unfortunately the ozone over the Arctic is [...]

Cycling out of climate change

The Netherlands is a flat country. One fifth of the land has been created from what used to be sea. The most remarkable thing that any visitor to the Netherlands notices is the huge numbers of bicycles. I have seen people at every stage of life and from all backgrounds get on a bike, usually [...]

Economic growth and climate change

There has been a deafening silence on the dangers of climate change. We have become obsessed with economic change. Even news of wars, earthquakes and potentially dangerous nuclear disasters, only hold out attention for a short while. The edifice of how we live and what we should reasonable expect is evolving. Every generation until now [...]

Andean Glaciers are melting

Nor every glacier in the world in melting, but most of them are melting. Some are growing but Nature Geoscience reports that in the past thirty years 270 of the largest glaciers in the southern Andes are melting more quickly than they have melted for 350 years. In medieval times the earth experienced a little [...]

Papering over the cracks in banks

The financial crisis rumbles on. Despite the wars and earthquakes and tsunami we find that the sticking plaster, used to patch up the finances of some European banks, has failed and more drastic measures are need. Irish banks need Euros 24 billion (24,000,000,000) give or take a billion. The European Union has bailed out Ireland [...]

Methane from cattle

You might have heard that there is no point in doing anything about reducing emissions from energy because cows emit far more greenhouse gas than people. Like many such statements there is a kernel of truth, but not much more.

Changing our environment through crisis

There have been two new crises in the world that have occurred in the past few weeks. One crisis is the devastation of the nuclear power facility in Fukushima in Japan, which was caused by building the nuclear power plant close to the sea in region where earthquakes happen routinely, without sufficient protection for the [...]