Climate Change

A Deposit Return Scheme is coming and we should not fear it.

Soapbox on February 7, 2024, 11:28 am

| Readers 2016

Dr Ian Humphreys is the Chief Executive of Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful An ambitious new initiative has come into force in the Republic of Ireland on February 1st that should be welcomed by all who work to change behaviours that can improve our environment for the better. The Deposit Return Scheme will see a 15 cent levy added to every aluminium can and plastic bottle sold in the Republic of Ireland. Customers can keep their empty cans and bottles for …

Flaming July – the evidence is clear that climate change is happening…

Paul Gosling on July 31, 2023, 11:01 am

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Only the most devoted conspiracy theorist could deny climate change given the devastating events of recent weeks. Spring was marked by deadly fires in Canada, terrible floods in Northern Italy and even an unfamiliar heatwave in Northern Ireland. Now things have got even more deadly, with awful new fire outbreaks in Greece, Italy Algeria and Tunisia. And a severe worsening of ice melting in the Antarctic. Meanwhile, the drought and loss of agricultural land in the Horn of Africa is …

Net Zero – Northern Ireland’s Secret Weapon

Soapbox on June 16, 2023, 11:51 am

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David Morrow is a public policy graduate from Belfast who used to work at Stormont. He is writing in a personal capacity. So you’ve passed legally binding climate legislation – what next? It’s probably a bit early in the life cycle of national climate targets for government ministers to be producing self-help books – in most cases, this decade is the first time that we’re actually going to see politicians being responsible for meeting targets that they’ve set. In the …

An optimistic story about climate change…

Andy Pollak on January 4, 2023, 10:55 am

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In the first week of January 2023 it is not easy to be optimistic. There is no obvious end to the cruel, grinding Russian war against Ukraine. Economic recession looms for the West. Climate change targets are being missed all over the place. Closer to home, the Protocol deadlock continues and hope of any real reconciliation in Northern Ireland has all but disappeared. So for my first blog of the New Year I am going to write about a novel …

Revisiting Nuclear Power : Part 1 : how it works

Brendan Heading on July 24, 2022, 9:17 pm

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It can have escaped few of us that the effects of the war in Ukraine and the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside the ongoing issue of climate change, have led to renewed interest in the possibilities offered by nuclear power and how it can help to solve the problems governments around the world are facing. This is leading to a re-evaluation of the case for nuclear, and, hopefully, objective consideration of its strengths and weaknesses. I believe that it …

The North finally has a Climate Act – now what?

Soapbox on March 23, 2022, 1:40 pm

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Sean Fearon is a post-growth political economy researcher The passing of a Climate Act in the North comes in a month during which even the most pessimistic members of the climate science community were profoundly shaken by developments at our planet’s northern and southern poles. Temperatures in Antarctica peaked at a staggering 40 degrees above normal levels this week, in a jolting reminder of the climate and ecological crises looming over us. It’s clear then that recent, albeit modest, advances …

Slugger Podcast talks about the State of the State

David McCann on December 7, 2021, 3:21 pm

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Powered by RedCircle In this episode of the Slugger podcast we speak with Ed Roddis, Head of Public Sector Research and Marie Doyle, Director at Deloitte about the latest State of the State Report. We chatted about attitudes toward the health service, the protocol and confidence in the Executive. The State of the State Report for 2021 has been released by Deloitte. The report examines and attempts to put in context attitudes and opinions of the public, policy-makers and business …

We need to be doing a lot more to insulate homes…

Brian O'Neill on September 29, 2021, 2:48 pm

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While personally, I have no desire to superglue myself to the Westlink, I generally agree with the activists of Insulate Britain. Home heating is one of my obsessions. I have given a scary amount of mental energy to it over the years. The core principle of insulate first makes sense. It is better to ensure homes are properly insulated before you think about the heating. A well-insulated home can dramatically lower energy bills as well as being more comfortable for …

The case for a Climate Change Bill.

Soapbox on March 25, 2021, 9:20 am

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Ian Humphreys is the Chief Executive of Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful Climate change is a global challenge, that demands a global response. When we are faced with such a huge problem, that is vast in its complexity and contains many different required responses, it can, for a small population like Northern Ireland, feel like the cost of inaction is relatively small. However, in this piece I want to outline why we cannot wait to act and why having a local …

The coronavirus remote working boom has made many modern offices obsolete and the impact on the economy will be profound

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 23, 2020, 5:40 pm

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The announcement this week by Facebook that they would begin to allow most employees to work remotely was among many this week from technology companies announcing similar moves towards remote working. The coronavirus outbreak has seen a massive increase in the number of people working from home. In 2019, only 5% of the UK workforce worked exclusively from home. In April 2020, 39% of workers worked only at home, and whilst this has fallen to 33% over the last couple …

Ahead of the Stormont budget, should the Executive be rethinking its priorities?

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on March 6, 2020, 9:45 pm

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With the first budget of the newly reconstituted Northern Ireland Executive expected shortly, there will be an opportunity to consider whether public resources are being directed appropriately to deal with Northern Ireland’s priorities for the decade to come. The table above shows UK public spending per person in each UK region for various expenditure categories for the 2018-19 fiscal year, in both monetary terms and expressed as a percentage of the UK average. For example, health spending in Northern Ireland …

Climate breakdown: The time to act is now…

Queen’s Policy Engagement on November 6, 2019, 3:19 pm

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Images of intense storms, heavy flooding and devastating droughts increasingly feature in mainstream and social media. Extreme weather events are indicative of large-scale, long-term shifts in our planet’s average temperatures and weather patterns associated with climate change. We humans affect the earth’s temperature and climate by adding vast amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal), cutting down rainforests and farming livestock. In 2019, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2, the most …

What Northern Ireland needs to do to decarbonize its economy

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on September 28, 2019, 8:08 pm

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Following from the speech given by environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg at the UN General Assembly in New York this week, there has been a significant amount of discussion about the failure to respond to the world’s unfolding climate crisis. Northern Ireland contributes to greenhouse gas emission to a much greater extent than its small size would suggest. The charts at the top of the page show Northern Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2017, compared with the target of …

‘We have a political process instead of a peace process’

Paul Gosling on May 20, 2019, 7:00 am

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Northern Ireland has “had a political process at the cost of a peace process”, believes Clare Bailey MLA, the leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland. She is highly critical of the limited progress since the Good Friday Agreement 21 years ago and the lack of real social integration. She was speaking in the latest Forward Together podcast. Clare questions who has benefited since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. “Certainly within the working class and the most …

Ards and North Down Declare Climate Emergency

Claire Mitchell on February 28, 2019, 8:02 pm

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Yesterday, on 27th February 2019, an eerily summery winter evening, Ards and North Down Borough Council passed Northern Ireland’s first Climate Emergency motion. Led by Green Party councillors Rachel Woods and Barry McKee, the motion was agreed without changes in a full meeting of the Council chamber. This comes not a moment too soon for a region which is set to face major challenges over the next 10-20 years as temperatures, and sea-levels, rise. Parts of the Ards peninsula, along …

Future Ireland: Where Can The North Thrive?

Claire Mitchell on September 4, 2018, 12:01 pm

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For some masochistic reason, I feel umbilically connected to the soil and the soul of this island. Especially this messed up northern corner of it. But there is no point in drawing borders in the soil, and driving flags into it, when it only has 60 more years of harvests left to give. It occurred to me recently that the best case scenario for Northern Ireland, as things stand, is to have a mediocre Brexit, for Stormont to limp back, for orange …

Cloughjordan Ecovillage – Another World is Possible for Belfast

Peter Doran on August 7, 2017, 7:59 pm

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Lessons for Belfast Urban Regeneration at Féile an Phobail 2017 By Peadar Kirby & Peter Doran While Ireland was living through the most severe economic collapse of its history since independence, a group of pioneering people were sowing the seeds of a new society through founding the ecovillage of Cloughjordan in County Tipperary. Seeking to model sustainable living for the 21st century, the ecovillagers conceived their project during the boom years of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger in the late 1990s and …

Fossil Free QUB stage a sit in to raise the issue of Fossil Fuel divestment

David McCann on December 12, 2015, 10:37 am

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SIT INS: This caught my eye last night, but over the past few weeks a group called Fossil Free QUB have staged a number of protests about the issue of the university investing in Fossil Fuels. However, last night the group have occupied the Administration Building on the campus and have vowed now to leave until the university acts on this issue.

Climate Change and what Northern Ireland is doing about it.

David McCann on November 30, 2015, 3:48 pm

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CLIMATE CHANGE: The Assembly is debating a motion on Climate Change tonight, so how has Northern Ireland been doing on this issue? The Department of the Environment has compiled some statistics of our performance from 1990-2013 (note these figures are never totally exact).