With multiple wars (most notably in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and Myanmar), political instability (most notably in France, Germany, South Korea and the United States) and the ongoing cost of living crisis it is perhaps forgivable that the inexorable progress of the climate crisis from bad to worse is lost amidst all the other news and the more pressing concerns. But that of course is the problem, the slow pace of the crisis when viewed from the perspective of an average person means that it always tends to be deprioritised when all the other issues mentioned are clamouring for attention despite the reality it is probably the biggest problem our world faces.
But while we may be unwilling to engage with the climate crisis, the crisis itself has little regard for Human priorities and ploughs on regardless, wreaking havoc across the planet. Year on year, its impacts are becoming increasingly apparent in our daily lives with ‘once in a century’ events becoming depressingly common. And Ireland, north and south, is not immune. As the BBC reports
“New analysis of long-term weather data shows that in the last decade Northern Ireland has lost eight days of wintry weather because of man-made climate change.
The research, published by the US based non-profit Climate Central, looked at the number of days in December, January and February when the minimum temperature remained above freezing…
The moderating influence of the Atlantic and the Irish Sea means that Northern Ireland is the most temperate part of the UK, and therefore the least affected by large fluctuations in temperature.
Yet even in Northern Ireland there were, on average, eight fewer days each winter when the temperature dropped below zero.
For Northern Ireland, climate change – due primarily to burning oil, coal, and methane gas – means warmer, wetter winters.
Whilst that might reduce the need for domestic heating, it can cause significant issues for wildlife and our biggest industry agriculture.”
Whilst the consecutive big freezes of 2009/2010 may have cured many of us of any lingering romanticism for snowfall, the changing nature of our winters is surely apparent to us all at this point. It seems likely that the enormous cost and effort of dealing with climate change at its source (which is always increasing) means that action will be put off for as long as possible (deferring the inevitable pain to future generations) and instead money will be spent on mitigating the impact rather than reducing it. We are already paying the price of our inaction as Storms Bert and Darragh recently demonstrated, and such storms are a part of what is our new normal. A new normal where once in a century freak weather events become routine and White Christmases are once in a century freak weather events.
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