We must all be invested in lowering carbon footprints

FOOD and shelter are basic human rights. Producing them leaves a substantial carbon footprint. However, without them we cannot exist. The best way to drastically reduce this carbon footprint is to remain local: grow local, manufacture local, build local, educate local, shop local, stay local. The only way to promote local is to invest in the local economy and incentivise local production.

The carbon footprint of local production and local consumption is nothing compared to the carbon footprint of globalisation, centralisation, and international trade and travel: imported electricity produced by burning fossil fuels; food produced in large overseas chemically treated monocultures; urban concentration and pollution, air and sea traffic including our holidays abroad.

The consumer, not the producer, controls the carbon footprint. But the policy-makers have it in their hand to steer both, by enabling or disabling local production and consumption. Instead of giving out about greenhouse gases on the farms of rural Ireland, reward biodiversity and penalise monoculture. Make renewable energy cheaper than fossil energy, incentivise cost- and energy-efficient Universal Design for affordable housing. Provide public transport in rural areas instead of forcing people to drive or driving people into more urbanised areas, create and retain jobs and multi-purpose amenities like post offices, schools, banks, health centres, shops, mobile coverage and broadband to reduce car travel.

The producers of our basic human rights, like farmers and builders, can only reduce the carbon footprint if the policy-makers make eco-friendlier production more affordable, and if the consumers, like you and I, change our behaviour and support them.

Corinne Maguire

Skibbereen, Co Cork