Transition Monaghan host informal workshop

A Cuppa for Climate: In June 2023 Transition Monaghan hosted an informal workshop in St Joseph’s Parish Centre, Monaghan Town, where the public were invited to come and chat about Climate and Environmental issues that were on their mind. The event was under the umbrella of Friends of the Earth, Ireland who helped organise similar events throughout Ireland. As well as sharing examples of local best practices and positive steps participants are taking in their own lives to reduce environmental impacts, a number of broader themes came up during discussions.

Contributing Positively: Many participants expressed concern about climate change. To paraphrase Aldo Leopold, who wrote in the early 1900s; “One of the burdens of understanding nature (and our role in it) is that a person can find themselves living alone in a world of wounds. Much of the daily unremarkable damage inflicted on nature is quite invisible to most people. A person with an environmental awareness can either ignore the glaring evidence or they must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” One of the participants was a lady from Pakistan which was devastated in August 2022 by a “monsoon on steroids” (according to UN
Secretary General). Flash flooding, unlike anything experienced before, has continued into 2023.

Science Under Attack: A few attendees also discussed how science itself is under increasing attack from sectors that dislike the message it delivers. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a person to understand something, when their salary depends on not understanding it.” Climate change threatens not only salaries but entire ways of life. So despite the increased regularity of extreme climate events and the tumbling of weather records, many people dismiss climate change as unnecessary alarmism. Commentators either wilfully or through ignorance conflate weather events with climate trends in a way that ignores the trajectory of what is changing. So, for example drought is not unusual as the snippet from a page of the Northern Standard in 1940’s proves, but an increase in the frequency and severity of droughts shows that climate trends are changing over time. Another attendee who comes from a farming family expressed frustration that all farmers were being “tarred with the one brush”: she aired the view that we need more EPA Inspectors to catch the culprits who give all farmers a bad name.

Bla Bla bla and where next: We discussed how most Irish political parties readily accept that we are at dangerous climate tipping points yet pay only lip service to climate policy in their manifestos. Clearly, the Irish voting public have different priorities at present but our choices today will have profound effects for generations.There was frustration that some national and local government initiatives seem to go against best practice but a warm welcome for increased public transport services and grants for energy upgrades for honest. So despite the challenges nearly all participants mentioned making changes to their personal lifestyles, as well as the benefits to being “hands on” though groups such as Tidy Towns or in their own gardens or work lives. Change can seem slow coming, but the cumulative effect of all the small improvements over time will see us adapt and thrive despite the challenges.