Ireland and Climate Change: Erin goes brown if global warming continues

Boston Herald 

Erin goes brown if global warming continues

By Edward J. Markey  |   Monday, March 17, 2008  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Op-Ed

In Easter 1916, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote of the moment that sparked the Irish Revolution: “All is changed, changed utterly.” In a time of relative peace in Ireland, a new foe has arisen that threatens the “moorlands and the meadows and their Forty Shades of Green.” This new enemy is global warming.

The Irish American Climate Project released a new study this week, just before the happiest day of the Irish calendar, St. Patrick’s Day. It paints a disturbing picture for the future of Ireland in a world beset by global warming. Temperatures are already rising and the risk is that over time, the Emerald Isle’s greens will turn to brown. Ireland’s fabled soft rains will become strong downpours in the North and West, leading to erosion.

Bog bursts - when great slabs of peat careen down a slope like a California mudslide - will be more common. The potato, a staple food that has its place in another time of Irish crisis, could again be a threatened crop. Ireland’s waterways - renowned for salmon and trout - will be depleted and suffer along with the tourism industry which depends upon them.

The report’s authors include the best climate scientists in Ireland. Their scientific work, however, is infused by the unique quality of expression possessed by Irish poets, musicians, filmmakers, anglers, farmers and others to describe how global warming can affect the culture of Ireland. Who else but the Irish would utilize poets and musicians to animate and underscore a report on climate change?

Yet, with their participation, this scientific report becomes something more; something closer to home. This isn’t about polar bears or penguins or places most Americans feel are alien landscapes. This report describes effects on quintessentially Irish places from whence over 45 million Americans claim ancestral roots.

As an Irish-American with strong ties to the country of my ancestors, I find these revelations troubling. And as the chairman of the House committee dedicated to studying global warming and its solutions, I have seen how these stories fit into a larger pattern of changes around the globe.

My great-grandfather emigrated from County Monaghan in 1858, going to work in the mills of New England. He was on the front lines of the Industrial Revolution, an economic boom that propelled the world into the modern era. And while the results of that era have enriched humanity, the seeds of that revolution have also produced much of the pollution that now threatens our climate.

What is needed now is a new revolution, combining the global inspiration of the American Revolution, the economic spirit of the Industrial Revolution, and the moral imperative that we must protect our planet and her citizens. We must launch a Green Revolution, and it must start now.

The tides of history that have buffeted Ireland’s shores for eons and sent her people in ships across the world can now bring home clean energy by harnessing the power of tidal shifts. In America we must harness the wind and sun to use the forces of nature to change the way we power our economy, not use power that will force nature to change. We must continue to fight in Washington to send a global warming bill to the president this year.

Ireland is not alone. The long arms of global warming have enveloped every nation around the globe.

On this St. Patrick’s Day, we should celebrate the greenest day of the year by joining as one Green Generation, a generation dedicated to protecting the one planet, one sky and one climate we all share. If we do not, the planet and all of us living on it will live the full breadth of Yeats’ words, and change, change utterly.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1080823

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