Leo right to stand up for agriculture

Sir — I noted recent comments by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on climate change in which he defended agriculture. He is the first European premier to openly criticise the accounting method for calculating greenhouse gas (GHGs). He indicated that they are unfairly skewed against agriculture.

The real sources of climate change are burners of fossil fuels, be it coal, oil or gas.

It is an inconvenient truth but food production always produced CO2 and always sequestered it. Industry, aviation, energy and transport are the problem. They produce massive amounts of CO2 but sequester nothing. They then expect to share in the CO2 sequestering capacity of agriculture and forestry. Clothes, cosmetics, cars, Christmas decorations, data centres, TV programmes, radio, movies and so on all have massive carbon footprints.

Varadkar floated the idea of sectoral responsibility. Each sector would be responsible for what it produces and sequesters. Each sector would also be responsible for reducing what it produces, and increasing what it sequesters. Each sector would then have a net CO2 figure.

Irish agriculture sequesters about 75pc of what it produces, so it would then have a net figure of around 9pc of national GHGs (as 36pc is agriculture’s estimated total output). There have been calls to reduce our national herd by 30pc as, in absolute terms, it is our biggest producer of GHGs. Why wouldn’t it? It’s our biggest industry.

Compare this to Germany. Car making is its biggest industry, and biggest emitter. A cut of

30pc would be a huge reduction. Yet nobody is calling for it — and that industry sequesters nothing.

West of Ireland lamb (and beef ) is sustainable, high-quality food. It is eco-friendly as it is produced in a non-intensive way. The land on which sheep graze sequesters far more GHGs than the little gas they produce — and it is the only food that much of this land is suitable for producing. The land, mountains, and bogs have already sequestered and locked in millions of tons of CO2. Keeping sheep ensures it stays there.

If the farmers of the West were to get rid of their livestock, and instead try to produce grain, they would release millions of tons of CO2, destroy the soils and landscape, and impoverish themselves further as, with our weather, a successful harvest would be rare.

A few figures to chew on:

1kg of beef produces an absolute CO2 figure of

19kg (4.75kg net CO2 after sequestering). So a quarter pounder burger produces 2.1kg CO2 absolute (or 0.525kg).

One litre of fresh milk produces 0.733kg (0.185kg net)

And here are some damning figures I gleaned from RTE’s recent cow bashing:

An average one hour TV show produces 13.5tons of CO2.

Phillip Boucher Hayes’s TV programme on climate change produced 4.8 tons of CO2.

An efficient 2018 petrol car in one year’s driving (35,000km) also produces 4.8 tons of CO2.

A return flight to Australia also produces 4.8 tons of CO2.

Now, using the Irish CO2 net figures, we will do the ‘Carbon Footprint Burger Equivalent’.

One hour of TV is equivalent to 25,714 quarter pounders or 73,000 litres of fresh milk.

So PBH’s TV programme is equivalent to 9,143 quarter pounders or 25,945 litres of milk

Anyone wishing to offset a trip to Australia by giving up meat would have to forfeit a delicious Irish quarter pounder every day for 25 years. Better to focus on the big polluters.

John Hourigan,

Murroe, Co Limerick

Age no excuse for climate inaction

Sir — Among my own (sparse) circle of friends, climate change is a regular topic. We’re all over 65 and the general, well-worn and dismissive opinion is: “At our age, we don’t have to worry about it”. Yet if everybody our age the world over, took this attitude, the Earth would be doomed.

We are, allegedly, mature adults and yet lack the foresight to see the mess we’re leaving for those who shall inhabit the world in great disrepair.

Sean McCormack,

Drogheda, Co Meath

World needs huge change from top

Sir — It’s nearly 80 years now since I sat on the roadside on summer evenings and listened to my parents and some of the previous generation talk about the weather and how it’s not the same as it used to be.

I vividly remember the snipe at dusk on those balmy evenings. Sadly, I have not heard that unforgettable noise in 70 years.

There has always been climate change. But by my estimate, the rate of change has more than doubled in 35 years. Industrial pollution and greed are destroying the eco-system.

Our Government is as bad as any. I don’t see why senior politicians need so many large cars, plus a jet, at their disposal.

Why is Prince Charles in the UK the only one publicly to say the world cannot sustain the population explosion at present? The governments of the world should stop paying people to populate it. I don’t see much of a world for our grandchildren unless there is a huge change from the top down.

Name and address with editor

Colm right on why history matters

Sir — The article in the Sunday Independent of November 10 by Colm O’Rourke (‘Some history lessons are far too important ever to be forgotten’) was a reflection on a school visit to Auschwitz/Birkenau where his students saw the horrendous reality of the Holocaust.

O’Rourke considered the effect of eliminating history as a core subject from the school curriculum by asking how contemporary generations would remember the barbarisms of the Holocaust.

His deliberations focused on how vital a formative force is the empirical understanding of historical events on young minds.

This point cannot be overemphasised. If fact is replaced by prejudicial narrative, then we will see reprehensible global agendas like Holocaust denial, localised Islamophobia and resurgent antisemitism. And at a parochial level, the populist anti-Traveller and anti-Nigerian narratives of Senator Lorraine

Clifford-Lee and TD Noel Grealish will become all the easier to sustain.

O’Rourke’s warning on how the dangers of forgetting historical reality empowers individuals intent on denying the Holocaust is the ultimate example. However, we can just as easily apply his apprehension to the contemporary world, where local politicians appear unfettered by the need to objectively reference their sources. This truth is illustrated by the sad scenario playing out on Achill Island and in other places where prejudice is rising.

Surely it is clear that we need to empower young people through the teaching of history, rather than listen to the distortions of patently false assertions by politicians — Dail privilege or not.

Kevin McCarthy,

Killaloe, Clare

Church needs women priests

Sir — Father Tony Flannery, says he’d like to see women say Mass before he dies. I also would like him to see women say Mass while he is on this Earth. And he may very well do so.

Perhaps the shortage of priests is God’s way of telling the Church to get on with it and do the right thing.

Accept that suitable women should be ordained. And that married men should be ordained if they are of good character and have a vocation to the priesthood.

But Pope Francis will have a difficult job trying to wake up the people who do not want change. Some who want the status quo to last for eternity.

Margaret Walshe, Clonsilla Road, Dublin 15