Hi there, this response has been brewing for some time. Here goes.
I'm gonna respond to a few points in a way that will hopefully point in the direction of sanity (even if we all live so far from it that we can't remember what it looks or feels like.)
A happy medium perhaps between emigration and still the ability to live and work here is a very good idea.
Offshore oil and gas platforms tick every box on that one.
Stacky, you seem to have come around to one of the original positions of Shell to Sea which was to move the refining of the gas out to sea. Hence the name. For the current aims follow this link;
http://www.shelltosea.com/content/campaign-aims
For the bit in italics, I would agree, it would require a governmental, cultural, and psychological change for it to work.
We are in a situation that demands a massive cultural shift. Things are falling to bits and have been for quite some time. The current economic collapse only makes it more obvious. Our choice is whether we rise to this challenge or allow things to continue down the path they are on where we let corporations break up the bedrock and contaminate our ground water in the hope that they will keep us in the manner to which we have become accustomed. This is not sane behaviour.
That would mean decisions will not be made by anyone. It is entirely impossible to get full consensus on natural resource exploration.
That may be true. However, we must do better than we are.
Regarding hydraulic fracturing, other types of gas extraction or any industrial development decisions are made by a few powerful individuals with little reference to the needs or desires of anyone else. Few have access to enough information to reach informed opinions on the issues. Fewer still have input into the process by which these decisions are made. To illustrate this re fracking check this link
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...17519346.19867.110905929036805&type=1&theater
People should also consider that one Tony O'Reilly, Chief Exec, with 20% stake, of Providence Resources, owner of the Barryroe field off Cork with prospecting rights near the Corrib well also controls the Irish Independent. Join the dots. He controls the flow of information and the flow of gas/oil. Does this seem like a healthy situation for the rest of us? Do you trust anyone with that much power? I do not.
So aiming to please everyone will please no-one. You need to judge who you're willing to upset.
It seems likely that in the not too distant future we will all find reason to be upset
I think it's pretty unrealistic to expect Ireland to put environmentalism above everything.
It would also be a misperception. Rather than being above everything, the environment contains, surrounds and underlies everything we do. In economic terms the Earth is our base on which everything we create stands and from which all the resources we use to create them come and to which all our waste products return. A failure to grasp this means that our economic activities attack and undermine our economic base, in the case of fracking, quite literally.
By valuing only what we can extract from the system we are destroying the system. What would our world look like if instead of issuing currency based on gold, oil or debt (all extractions from the system) we issued currency based on trees planted or the quality of the water or the diversity of species in our bioregions?
And on to the fish.
Whether we ate fish or not we would still have done better by keeping the rights to the fishing and trading the produce over an extended period than selling it for a once off payment (even if that once off did go on for 30 years or more). Fish is a real tradable resource. Money is worthless with nothing to back it. Ireland sold its capital. How is that good business? Was our situation so bad back then that we had no choice or were we conned, intimidated or bribed into doing it?
On to Food Security, or Food Sovereignty which I prefer.
It's true we are a food producing nation. There are some stories behind your figures.
What is really significant is this:
All of this is achieved with only 5% of the workforce (or about 2.5% of the people in the country) doing the production, for just over 4 million people.
You say that like it is a good thing.
It means that 95% of the workforce have no or little connection with their food supply which is also our physical connection to Nature. This disconnection from nature is why it seems rational to some people to fracture the bedrock, releasing god knows what into the ground water as well as carrying out a host of other activities that do us no real good.
The extensive agriculture that we now practice means that we have to depend on mechanisation, chemical fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides it also makes the use of GMOs inevitable. It means that we have to remove hedgerows to allow for bigger machines which leads to erosion of topsoil and loss of fertility and the need for more chemicals. It means wholesale abuse of animals. It is another cause of water pollution and it means that the quality of the food we eat is getting crapper and crapper and crapper.
In order to build healthy bodies to contain healthy minds that can think and feel properly and make sensible, compassionate decisions that lead away from all this madness it is essential that we get the best food we can to eat and the best water we can to drink. For this to happen many many more people need to be involved with growing their food which means more eyes, ears, noses, skin and nervous systems actively engaged in a beneficial way with the ecosystem which gives us the opportunity to physically experience the damage we have done and the opportunity to physically begin to remedy it. The recent interest in home growing is a step in the right direction but it is a very very small step.
At this point in the discussion someone usually criticises the argument as a return to a peasanthood. This is not the case.
I am suggesting that we grow the f**k up as a species, use the skills and technology we have developed, wisely and compassionately and become conscious participants in planetary evolution instead of behaving like psychotic teenagers wrecking the family home.
For this to happen we need to stand up to the bullies amongst us which means learning to see through their lies first.
To suggest that fracking is safe or desirable is a grotesque lie perpetrated by people so far removed from normal human responses that it is hard to grasp the extent of the damage they are doing.
To reject this lie is the only sane response but to do this will demand letting go of comfort, security and most of what we take for granted in our comfortable, convenient existence.
Who's up for it?