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Mann enough
His ‘hockey stick graph’ became the defining symbol of man-made climate change – and made him a special target of the fossil-fuel lobby. John Gibbons interviews Michael Mann
Environment
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Trump Dunes
The bombastic billionaire and his wad arrive in vulnerable Doonbeg. By Éibhir Mulqueen
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By Tony Lowes ‘Governments treat the information in their possession as a resource, to be doled out in amounts as they see fit, either copious flows or mean little trickles. I noted that ultimately, it is the Government that controls the tap – Emily O’Reilly, Information Commissioner 2003-13’ In a serious blow to Freedom of Information in Ireland, the newly appointed Information Commissioner and Ombudsman Peter Tyndall has withdrawn his predecessor’s appeal against a High Court judgment that the constitutional right to cabinet confidentiality can not be superseded by rights under EU. Under EU law, no emission to the environment can be exempted from the access to information legislation for any reason – not “commercial sensitivity” or “internal communications” or even “cabinet confidentially”. Requests for information often fall to many such exemptions. But if the information concerns “emissions to the environment”, that information must be released. Nevertheless in 2008 when Emily O’Reilly overturned the government’s decision not to release a cabinet minute relating to greenhouse gas emissions the Government took her to the High Court, which ruled in June 2010 that the Constitution trumped EU law. O’Reilly appealed to the Supreme Court, where the decision – described by one expert as “questionable in EU law” – could be debated at the highest level and if necessary referred to the European Court of Justice for its views. Scheduled to be heard this year, this prospect has been dashed by the new Commissioner’s withdrawal. Strangely but “strongly” of the view that the appeal would not succeed, the Commissioner admitted that he was aware the case raised issues “which went beyond the single question of access to the single document sought”. He was, however “cognisant of the severe financial constraints within which this office is obliged to operate”. His office also admits that the current Government is increasingly unhappy with its separate agencies fighting in public. It is to be hoped that more fibre is on display on April 7, when the Supreme Court is due to hear the Government’s appeal against O’Reilly’s ruling that NAMA is a public authority subject to Access to Information legislation, in a case brought by Gavin Sheridan. As Welsh Ombudsman, Peter Tyndall, a Trinity graduate and ex head of the Welsh Arts Council, spoke widely and wrote a number of articles emphasising the importance of extending the Ombudsman’s remit to public-service delivery by private-sector organisations “since the distinction in delivery…becomes increasingly blurred”. Public outcry may have led to the inclusion of Irish Water but the FoI Act continues to exclude 37 public bodies – from the largest landowners, Coillte and Bord na Mona – through An Post, Tourism Ireland, the Food Safety Promotion Board, the bus companies, the airport, harbour and port authorities, and the National Lottery. Even so, with a large number of bodies now coming under FoI under the new legislation, the delays that were characterised as “unacceptable” in the last Annual Report are now threatening to bring the whole system to a standstill. Only 18% of the cases dealt with under FoI were decided within the legal timeframe in 2012. No matter how right you are, justice delayed can be justice denied. There was some anger in the Information Commissioner’s office when the first Aarhus Convention National Implementation Report was released last month by Phil Hogan’s Department of the Environment. It breezily dismissed any concerns of chronic under-funding by saying that the Information Commissioner was entitled to seek any necessary funds from the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. The Ombudsman had made repeated such requests – and 5 new staff have been appointed to address the new legislation – but while the case closure rate is going up, the number of cases is rising faster. Nor has the Aarhus convention proved to be the white knight that many had hoped. Designed by NGOs under the auspices of the United Nations – led by Irishman Jeremy Waites – the convention promised better access to information, participation, and justice. UCC’s Dr Aine Ryall drew attention to a submission to Hogan’s Aarhus Report made by the Department of Justice: “In cases where the court does not deliver a considered, written judgment the decision of the court is recorded in a court order which is available only to the parties to the case”. She pointed out that many court decisions are in fact delivered ex tempore and that this was usually true when it came to the awarding of costs – a crucial element of the Aarhus convention. “It follows from this unambiguous statement”, Ryall wrote, “that ex tempore court decisions, where there is no written judgment, are not publicly accessible. This state of affairs is a clear breach of the express requirement in Article 9(4) that court decisions in Aarhus cases must be publicly accessible”. The Convention promised access to justice at a cost that is “not prohibitive” but we are denied the right to see how this has been addressed by the courts. Emily O’Reilly did much to advance Ireland’s tortuous journey towards transparency. Will her successor have the bottle to do the same? Tony Lowes is a Director of Friends of the Irish Environment
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’In a democracy the voters have a right to make stupid and irresponsible decisions, the right to vote for gombeens and bribetakers who will ignore development plans and rezone every blade of grass in the country’ ‘The Greens ,while in power, initiated the enquiries; Fine Gael and Labour put a halt to them – for the most spurious of reasons. And they got away with it’ On the day that the Mahon tribunal found that Frank Dunlop had made corrupt payments to certain politicians Twitter was in a frenzy – with the news that Pat Kenny was departing RTE for Newstalk. Maybe the general public were suffering from a serious bout of Tribunal fatigue, or maybe the showbiz/human interest element of the Kenny story was irresistible, but could there be a deeper, more uncomfortable truth in evidence here? Is it possible that the Irish are just not that pushed about corruption? Are they really that bothered about the poor planning that has blighted this country for decades? Could they really give a toss about the over zonings that fuelled the property bubble? It’s not popular to say so, but my twenty years as a public representative tell me that the above topics are not ones which exercise the public mind when it comes to elections. You need look no further than the last local elections when some of those councillors who received corrupt payments were re-elected. And no doubt at next year’s local elections the electorate will once again reward corrupt politicians while ignoring many of the candidates who have never taken a bribe. So, it’s down to the voters, the people, and for whatever historical reasons we have a tolerance – even a sneaking regard – for the rogue in our society. Some may see this as an endearing quality – we understand human frailty and don’t get too hung up on the letter of the law. At the heart of this is a more uncomfortable truth. We’re really not that pushed about corruption. We don’t see bribery or white collar crime in the same league as the common or garden thief. Frank Dunlop is a witty, entertaining, intelligent guy, who just happens to be corrupt and a perjurer. You see, those who crusade on the planning/corruption issue are not the norm in this country. People like Michael Smith, Colm MacEochaidh, Elaine Byrne or Trevor Sargent are exceptions – ‘odd bods and misfits’ who are quickly marginalised and neutralised. It was Trevor Sargent who first brought the problem to public attention when he stood up in the Council Chamber waving a developer’s cheque and asking if anyone else in the Council had received one. The omerta code had been broken and the reaction was swift. Trevor was surrounded by councillors and physically attacked. Councillor Don Lydon , who was subsequently found to have accepted bribes, got Trevor in a very expert headlock. Those who witnessed the events of that night say that Dr Lydon, who was a psychologist by profession, really missed his real calling in life and should have been a cage fighter. Don had Trevor in very professional headlock, depriving my colleague of oxygen and demanding the return of the cheques. As Trevor’s face turned blue. I recently sat beside Don at a dinner for past members of the Oireachtas. We had quite a pleasant and civil conversation, and he asked me to pass on his warmest regards to Trevor. He was very fond of Trevor, he said. I couldn’t help but wonder afterwards what he would have done to Trevor that night had he actually disliked him. Don, like the others in the corruption trial, now finds himself in an unusual situation. A Tribunal of Enquiry has found that he took bribes, whereas in the courts he has essentially been acquitted on the same charges. I’m sure on a human level the past few years have been an ordeal for him, but contrast his treatment with that of Gerard Convie, the Donegal planner. Mr Convie was the whistleblower in Donegal County Council, who alerted the Department of Environment to serious planning irregularities in the region. Not only had Mr Convie been dismissed, but when the new Fine Gael and Labour government took over they very quickly dropped the independent inquiries which I had initiated as Minister for the Environment. Mr Convie took the matter to the courts where his good name was vindicated, and the new government was forced to reinstate the planning enquiries. Again, keen observers of these matters will note that a clear pattern of public and media indifference emerges. The news that the independent planning enquiries were to be dropped in the first place was greeted with barely a whimper in the newspapers and broadcast media. Try to imagine – if you can – the howls of outrage and indignation of certain columnists if Fianna Fail had pulled such a stunt. But it gets worse. Incredibly, the day after the Convie case an editorial appeared in the Irish Independent, complimenting the government on their announcement of the independent planning enquiries, completely ignoring the fact that this government had dropped the enquiries in the first place! If there was any finger of blame, it was pointed, unjustifiably, at the Department for the Environment. It’s true that government departments try, generally, to avoid unnecessary hassle or extra work and expense, but the decision to stop the independent enquiries was a political one, pure and simple. The Greens ,while in power, initiated the enquiries; Fine Gael and Labour put a halt to them – for the most spurious of reasons. And they got away with it. Given the distinct lack of enthusiasm already displayed by the new government for these planning enquiries, don’t get your hopes up. I expect nothing more than a perfunctory ticking of boxes. No heads will roll; no ground-breaking changes will be made to our planning laws. One of the changes being demanded by An Taisce –and a key recommendation of
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Partridge leaves the building. Pat Kenny doesn’t like facing up to climate change by John Gibbons The classic comedy series I’m Alan Partridge where a former national chat show host is reduced to working the graveyard shift on a local radio station is chock-full of toe-curlingly awful moments. In one infamous episode, Partridge has insulted the local farming community, and the following day a farmers’ leader is in-studio demanding that he apologise on-air. Already in a hole, the only way out for the redoubtable Partridge is to start digging. Soon, he is accusing farmers of incest, not to mention feeding beefburgers to swans. Then there’s the secret sheds where farmers keep “twenty foot high chickens, because of all the chemicals you’ve put into them, and these chickens are scared because they don’t know why they’re so big…” In early December 2009 I accepted an invite from Pat Kenny to ‘debate’ whether or not climate change is real with an Australian mining industry geologist and paid climate denier called Ian Plimer. So far, all pretty innocent. There is, however, a back story. Two weeks earlier, my Irish Times column ran a story under the headline ‘Kenny stirs up bogus climate change debate’. In that piece, I lampooned Kenny’s constant promotion of debunked denialist canards. “Kenny opened up a 20-minute piece that mashed together anecdotes, interviews and half-facts, topped off with a generous dollop of the presenter’s own editorial slant”. I concluded the piece by throwing a variant of the old TV licence slogan at him: “We’ve heard all the excuses, Pat, and none of them work”. Yes, it was a tad bitchy. Having listened to one attack on climate science after another, all hosted by Kenny, I had submitted him a list of questions to try to smoke out his views on the basic science of climate change. Before 9 am the following morning, Kenny phoned. He clearly didn’t like the questions, and was audibly annoyed at having to lower himself to deal with me. Our conversation did not go well. Kenny accused me of not being a professional like him, of taking sides, of being a ‘green apostle’ and a ‘zealot’, etc. etc. He made a series of vague threats against me during the course of this call (of the ‘do you know who you’re messing with, son, you’ll never work in this town again…’ variety) while insisting that the call was “off the record” and that I could not journalistically use anything he said. As the discussion continued, I gradually drew him away from the name-calling and towards the science itself. To my astonishment, he was genuinely clueless on the specifics. The call lasted just under an hour, and, while torrid at times, it ended almost cordially – and five minutes later, he was live on air, doing his morning show like the seasoned pro that he is. My exchange with Kenny left me smarting, and keen to make him squirm when the article appeared the following day. Columns are, after all, written by humans, not robots; piss one of them off sufficiently and yes, they may well abuse their position to kick you in the arse. Just like broadcasters, you might say. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Kenny set the trap to lure me into his lair in Montrose, and, like a gobshite, in I went. The first thing I noticed when in studio was a bundle of his hand-written notes. Uh oh, Pat had his homework done this time. I’m told it was 30 of the most bruising minutes aired by RTE in quite some time. The Sunday Tribune gave it a half page, with radio reviewer John Foley summarising thus: “It certainly was great radio. Did it enlighten the listener on the climate change debate? Not a whit. Just as Plimer hoped, you suspect”. Still, Kenny – who some years before had successfully batted a complaint to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of bias about a Late Late Show he’d done with denier Philip Stott – did again have the last laugh. Within weeks of this interview, my Irish Times column was, after two years, abruptly cancelled. The question remains: why would such a smart, well-read individual be so utterly dogmatic on environmental and climate change issues? I can only speculate that the answer lies in cognitive dissonance. If this stuff were true, then the era of millionaire lifestyles and endless jet-setting is over. Kenny’s life, in other words. That’s a tough pill for any of us to swallow, especially for the wealthy and fortunate. Denial offers an easy way out. Kenny’s recent decision to bail on a 41-year career in pursuit of a nosebag of cash from Radio Norwich copperfastened the impression of a career defined by a love affair with money, with journalism a distant second. John Gibbons is on Twitter @think_or_swim August 2013, Village Magazine
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Little Emperors Few, except environmentalists, will miss China’s one-child policy Ken Phelan ‘In September 2013, Liu was taken to the Peopleʼs Hospital of Fangzi District, where she was administered a drug to abort her unborn foetus. She was six months pregnant’ ‘The Little Emperors are Chinaʼs future, single-minded and resolute, and may not be quite as malleable as their parents’. In its 34-year history, Chinaʼs one-child policy has inflicted untold misery and suffering on its population. Despite state censorship and a culture of almost servile obedience and compliance, countless reports have leaked to the press of harrowing personal tragedies and gross human rights abuses. Late-term and forced abortions have been commonplace, as has child trafficking and female infanticide; womenʼs menstrual cycles are kept under surveillance by the state and aborted foetuses can be seen left in dustbins or floating by Chinaʼs riversides. In a country where abortion had originally been outlawed by then leader Mao Zedong, the one-child policy – introduced as a measure to counter spiralling population growth – has resulted in over 336m abortions and 196m sterilisations in a legacy that will forever cast a shadow over China’s troubled history. Following a meeting of top Communist Party leaders in Beijing in November, it was reported by Xinhua, China’s official news agency, that significant changes were to be made to the one-child policy. Under the new rules, couples in which one partner is an only child will now be allowed to have two children; this exception had previously been afforded to couples where both partners were only children. It is believed this rule could be extended to cover all families by 2015. As with most things in China, the reasons for the proposed changes are purely economic: the Peopleʼs Republic, going back to the days of Mao Zedong, views its people as numbers or units, rather than citizens. Over thirty years of the one-child policy has resulted in worrying population trends and disrupted demographics. It is believed that Xi Jinping, who was elected president in March, will pursue reform of the one-child policy as a matter of urgency. Although Chinaʼs population stands at 1.35bn, this is expected to peak at 1.45bn in about 10 years and to decline sharply thereafter. Officially, the fertility rate stands at 1.7 births per couple – below the 2.1 births needed to maintain stable population levels – while other estimates have placed the figure as closer to 1.5. China also has an increasingly ageing population which threatens to put tremendous pressure on the pension system – 8.5 percent is currently over 65, and according to United Nations data it is set to rise to 23.9 percent by 2050. The working-age population also fell for the first time in January 2013 which, if sustained, could threaten economic growth and mean less workers supporting an ever-growing number of retirees. There is also a significant gender gap in the population where females have been aborted in preference to males. The first children of the one-child policy have been left with the so-called “4-2-1 Problem”, where each is left providing for two parents and four grandparents. Statistics show that the ill-conceived policy has resulted in serious demographic problems that are economically unsustainable. As an economist at Citi Research said in October: “China has reached a turning point where the demographic dividend will become a liability”. When the Communist party came to power in 1949, population growth was seen as essential to the workforce and in bolstering the military for an anticipated third world war. At first, Mao Zedong had encouraged large families, and abortions, sterilisations and the use of contraceptives were prohibited. Though these rules were somewhat relaxed in later years, the result was Chinaʼs population growing from approximately 500 million in 1949 to almost a billion under Maoʼs rule. When Deng Xiaoping took over power in 1978 following the cultural revolution and Maoʼs death, he was persuaded by a group led by rocket scientist Song Jian that in order to secure Chinaʼs future economic targets, the population would have to be restricted to 1.2 billion. The intially “temporary” solution they proposed – the one-child policy – remained instead for over 30 years. China-2 Implementation of the one-child policy The one-child policy was introduced nationally in 1979, having previously been trialled in just a few provinces. Under the rules, couples could have only one child, or in rural areas two if the first child was a girl. The State Family Planning Commission (FP) and the Communist Party were entrusted with the task of enforcing the policy, with officials being held personally responsible for population targets. In a process quite unique to the Peopleʼs Republic of China, the one-child policy involves the systematic monitoring of womenʼs menstrual cycles; this is carried out by family-planning officers, party members and local volunteers on all women of childbearing age to determine which pregnancies are ʻlegalʼ. Whether or not a pregnancy is legal is determined by eligibility rules and in some cases by quotas set down for the particular village or workplace. Should a woman fall pregnant with a second child or if the pregnancy is deemed ʻillegalʼ due to quota levels, she is subject to often exorbitant punitive fines which, if unpaid may result in a forced abortion. ʻUnauthorisedʼ children cannot be registered in the state until the so-called “social support fee” has been paid, are not issued documentation, and therefore cannot avail of medical care, schooling or employment. As defined by The State Council in 2002, the social support fee is “a fee paid by citizens giving birth extra-legally to compensate for the governmentʼs public goods spending, (to) adjust the consumption of natural resources and to protect the environment”. Abortions and the one-child policy Forced and late-term abortions have been common in China under the one-child policy: the 1979 abortion law set 28 weeks of gestation as the upper limit for performing legal abortions, but this has often been ignored by unscrupulous and over-zealous officials. In 2000, Jin Yani (20)
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Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation Michael Pollan Penguin, New York, 2013 ‘before our ancestors learned to cook they would have had to devote fully half their waking hours to the act of chewing. Cooking gave our species an extra four hours a day’ ‘Pollan seemed to be saying: “just go to a farmers’ market rather than Walmart and it’ll be ok’ Michael Pollan is the darling of mainstream gastronomy. John McKenna in the Irish Times dubs him the “Martin Luther King of Food”. But the question haunting his opus is whether he simply celebrates a form of bourgeois gluttony or is a genuine radical, intent on shifting the dysfunctional relationship between eater and eaten. Martin Luther King did not go as far in his rhetoric as Stockley Carmichael and the Black Panthers but he remained a committed radical. What of Pollan? The contradictions within contemporary food production and consumption have been scrupulously explored by Pollan himself in his seminal work The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006). Foremost is excessive greenhouse-gas emission from livestock production, transportation and refrigeration; and waste. He recognised too accelerating species loss through pervasive monocultures, and horrendous treatment of animals in factory farms. As a consequence of the over-production of empty calories, especially refined sugars, many children in the West confront lower life expectancy than their parents for the first time since the Industrial Revolution: a global obesity pandemic brings the premature onset of chronic illnesses like heart disease, cancer and metabolic syndrome. The deterioration in the nutritional quality of food, linked to the decline of home cooking is the subject-matter of Pollan’s latest book. Research has established a strong correlation between food preparation, or lack of it, and obesity. A 2003 Harvard study attributed much of the increase in obesity in America over recent decades to the ascent of food preparation outside the home: “Mass production has driven down the cost of many foods, not only in terms of purchase price but, perhaps even more importantly, in the amount of time required to obtain them”. Another 1992 study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were likely to enjoy a more healthy diet than well-to-do women who did not. Moreover, a 2012 Public Health nutrition study found a strong correlation between regular cooking and superior health and longevity Until World War II, throughout the West, women prepared meals in most families. But since 1945 time spent on food preparation in America has fallen by 40 per cent. This trend was greeted with approval by second-wave feminists like Betty Friedan who viewed housework as a form of oppression. The shift from home cooking was helped by developments in battle-field rations which were seized upon by the food industry. TV provided the perfect medium for advertising these nutritionally-deficient and relatively tasteless offerings. During the 1950s TV dinners became the mark of a proudly modern household. Pollan is careful to avoid blaming women for this, arguing instead: ‘”men and children need to be in the kitchen too, and not just for reasons of fairness and equity but because they have much to gain by being there”. In Cooked, as in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, we are introduced to Pollan’s domestic life, especially his filial relationship. But the purpose of the associated homely anecdotes is unclear. Are we supposed to distil universal truths from the bonds forged by the twosome barbecuing a pig’s carcass? It is useful to derive general lessons from particular experience – as memorably in The Omnivore’s Dilemma when Pollan demonstrates how 19% of US meals are consumed, by bolting a fast-food ‘meal’ in his car at 60 mph. But in Cooked this technique lapses into uninteresting family yarns. Pollan’s particular skill is to render grizzled cuts of scientific research into accessible reading material for his devotees. Cooked manifests real percipience on the importance of cooking in human evolution. It seems we evolved to cook and find it challenging to live on an exclusively raw-food diet. In one study he cites about the impact of such a regimen, half of the female participants stopped menstruating and most found it difficult to maintain their body weight He says: “Cooking is by now baked into our biology (as it were) something we have no choice but to do if we are to feed our big, energy-guzzling brains. For our species, cooking is not a turn away from nature – it is our nature, by now as obligatory as nest building is for a bird”. Tartare can only be for special occasions. According to Richard Wragham, who he quotes at length, before our ancestors learned to cook they would have had to devote fully half their waking hours to the act of chewing. Cooking gave our species an extra four hours a day. Pollan grapples with the hot potato of meat-consumption. The Omnivore’s Dilemma provided a thorough critique of current farming practices, especially the ubiquity of corn in the food chain. He resolved it by endorsing a model of mixed farming which purportedly involved a co-evolution between man, cattle and grass. In so doing Pollan offered omnivores virtual carte blanche. Unfortunately, he failed to address the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions or the extent to which meat consumption is damaging to our health as shown by the recent Oxford Vegetarian Study. Pollan seemed to be saying: “just go to a farmers’ market rather than Walmart and it’ll be ok”. However, the expense of nourishing seven billion, or even 300 million Americans on such a diet was essentially ignored. Cooked is also leery about carnivorousness Although the first half of the book is devoted to barbecuing and stewing meat, a gnawing guilt remains: “Specialisation makes it easy to forget about … the hog that lived and died so I can enjoy my bacon”. Adding: “however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity”.. He refers to a visit he paid to a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) as “a
