Ards and North Down Declare Climate Emergency

On 27th February 2019, an eerily summery winter evening, Ards and North Down Borough Council passed Northern Ireland’s first Climate Emergency motion. Led by Green Party councillors Rachel Woods and Barry McKee, the motion was agreed without changes in a full meeting of the Council chamber.

This comes not a moment too soon for a region which is set to face major challenges over the next 10-20 years as temperatures, and sea-levels, rise. Parts of the Ards peninsula, along with much of the inner parts of Belfast, are likely to be underwater in our lifetimes. And perhaps a lot sooner than we expect.

A ground-breaking IPCC report in October 2018, amalgamating all the recent scientific research, found that on our current path, global temperatures will rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040. It gave societies 12 years to take immediate and drastic action to keep temperatures under this level.

But immediate and drastic action is not being taken. Global carbon emissions are rising not falling.

As such, subsequent and cascading climate developments now indicate that the pace of change may be much faster than this, with a rise of 1.5-2 degrees being fairly inevitable – perhaps as soon 2030 – and a rise of up to 4 degrees Celsius more likely by the end of the century.

Even at 2 degrees, life as we know it will be forever changed. These infographics from the New York Times give a flavour of what’s on the way. Or take a whirl around the science at 350.org. If you’re in rude mental health today and would like a more fleshed out version, check out David Wallace Wells‘ work, for example “Time to Panic”. Or Ron Meador on “near-term social collapse due to climate chaos.”

If that seems too abstract, you can enter your postcode in this map to see if you’ll be swimming to work in the near future (the image above is the projection for +2 degrees).

Ards and North Down Borough Council is part of a wave of dozens of councils across the UK, and many more globally, which have recently declared climate emergency.

According to the Climate Emergency Declaration website, as of February 27th, 38 UK councils have made a declaration. Ards and North Down makes 39. The pace of change is fast, with 10 declarations in the past week alone, and more motions on the way.

These declarations are significant because they commit Councils to action. The CACE website points to the nuts and bolts of this. But in short –

“Emergency mode or mobilisation is when councils allocate all discretionary funds available to the council to the task of community education, advocacy for action by higher levels governments, mitigation or resilience building and could include funding or undertaking the planning and research needed to implement full state and national emergency mobilisations.”

This is the Ards and North Down Council motion, which gives a pretty good idea of what concrete steps will follow:

That this Council notes the recent IPCC report on the impacts of climate breakdown; agrees that drastic and far-reaching measures must be taken across society to try and mitigate the risks and declares a ‘Climate Emergency’. It requests an urgent report to assess the impact of the activities of Ards and North Down Borough Council on greenhouse gas emissions, exploring what mitigation measures can be put in place and establishes a working group to bring the issues of climate breakdown to the fore in the council structures and actions, local communities and businesses, as well as formulating a climate adaptation plan.

This could well entail taking practical steps to protect air quality, water purity, to address pollution, protect local habitats, increase biodiversity by re-wilding spaces, streamline borough energy use, maybe even consider local renewable energy co-ops, and to generally make future-focussed planning decisions based on realistic climate projections.

Ards and North Down are not alone. Derry City and Strabane District Council have been leading the way on practical climate action for some time. They will host the first ever Green Infrastructure and Climate Change Conference in Northern Ireland this spring (tickets here). With a focus on developing green infrastructure, increasing green spaces, encouraging resilience to climate breakdown – for the sake of people’s health and the local economy.

In Belfast City Council, the Alliance’s Emmet McDonough-Brown’s successful motion at the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee in February 2019 committed to reducing Belfast’s carbon footprint and making climate a priority. People Before Profit reinforced this with a climate emergency statement, which passed through Belfast City council on 5th March 2019.

This is even more important in the context of Northern Ireland, where, as Friends of the Earth highlight “we have the least protected environment in the UK and Ireland. [We have] no independent Environmental Protection Agency. No National Parks. No law to cut climate-changing emissions.” And where “the planning system leans heavily towards new development.”

Of course, local Councils have limited power to tackle climate breakdown, which is a global problem and demands a national, as well as international, response.

This is exactly the route being taken in the Republic of Ireland. Daithí McKay highlights the most important pieces of Dáil legislation as Bríd Smith’s Climate Emergency Bill, which would commit Ireland to leaving fossil fuels in the ground; Sinn Féin’s Microgeneration Support Scheme Bill, which would enable local communities – households, farmers, co-ops – to produce their own energy and sell it back to the grid; and the Green Party’s Waste Reduction Bill. All are moving slowly and painfully forward with much prevarication from the Irish government. Although upcoming EU fines, for failing to meet climate targets, may force the government into action.

What is also significant, is increasing public understanding and concern about climate breakdown. It’s hard to avoid. There have been winter gorse fires this week in the Dublin mountains. Even Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood in Sussex was ravaged by fires this month. The fact that we’ve wiped out 60% of the world’s animal populations since 1970 and reports about collapsing insect populations, globally and across Ireland, are making their way into public consciousness. Ordinary people are talking about why there are no dead insects splattered on their windscreens anymore.

There’s a gnawing sense that paper straws and keep-cups aren’t going to cut it. That we’re on the cusp of something exponential.

This is reflected on the ground with school kids across Ireland and the UK joining their European counterparts, striking for climate justice, the civil disobedience of Extinction Rebellion, increasing calls for a Green New Deal. 

Even more locally, we see residents of the Sperrins opposing industrial mineral mining; community protests which have stalled a planned industrial pig factory in Ballyclare; Newry, Mourne and Down District Council and others passing a motion opposing the dumping of UK nuclear waste in the Mournes (a similar motion was opposed by the DUP and fell in Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council this week, but that’s another story); Green Party activists in Belfast measuring air pollution as it emerges that our air quality is almost as bad as London.

Across these islands and beyond there is a growing awareness that something has snapped, and that standing still is not an option.

On the same day as the motion was passed, MPs in the House of Commons debated climate breakdown for the first time in 2 years. This is better than nothing. But it was a quick and thinly attended debate, with no accompanying teeth. It is clear that Westminster is in no hurry to recognise the state of Climate Emergency that Caroline Lucas is calling for. Or indeed to do anything about it.

Local Councils are too small to solve global problems. We have top level calls to action from the UN and EU, and ground level calls to action from citizens. But, on these islands, we have a gaping space in between, where national action should be.

Given the heel dragging from both UK and Irish governments, perhaps Councils are one of the most effective political levers we currently have to begin the immediate practical work of climate action and regeneration.

Adapted from an article originally published on Slugger O’Toole on 28th February 2019.

The Dog Show

Everything has felt so heavy recently. Between the UN’s report on accelerated climate breakdown, their report on how the UK is actively choosing poverty, and ongoing Brexit insanity, it’s all quite overwhelming.

So here is something with jokes. It’s a story, told live at Tenx9, about the time I tried to pimp out my dog for money. It involves my partner and I disgracing ourselves at a dog show at the Avoniel Leisure centre…

It contains one of my favourite lines I’ve ever written:

“We had entered the Big Lebowski as a contestant in the Rose of Tralee.”

Which might give you an idea of how things went down.

http://www.tenx9.com/podcast/038-regret/2018/6/8

Future Ireland: Alternative conversations about unity and the union

Over at Slugger, David McCann and I are running a series of articles on the topic ‘Future Ireland: Alternative conversations about unity and the union’. The gist of the project is here.

We’re trying to think about the possible constitutional futures of this place in a more imaginative way. It’s about creative problem solving, honest reflection and data-driven knowledge creation.

Many of us will take positions on unity or the union, but the overall body of work is wide open. We want to know how the future looks and feels as a mother, a farmer, a migrant, a loyalist, an atheist, a small business owner, a Dublin renter, a born-again Christian, an Irish speaker, someone with a disability, a GP, a worker…

The aim is to engage in a different way with a difficult topic. The only criteria is that articles have to look to the future.

If you see this before 15th November 2018, there’s a writing competition.

Ideas and pitches still welcome after this date. Just email me at claire@sluggerotoole.com or David at deputy@sluggerotoole.com.

If you want to follow the conversation on Slugger, go here.

Future Ireland: Where Can The North Thrive?

Originally posted on Slugger O’Toole, 4th September 2018.

……….

Future Ireland: Where Can The North Thrive?

For some masochistic reason, I feel umbilically connected to the soil and the soul of this island.

Especially this messed up northern corner of it.

But there is no point in drawing borders in the soil, and driving flags into it, when it only has 60 more years of harvests left to give.

It occurred to me recently that the best case scenario for Northern Ireland, as things stand, is to have a mediocre Brexit, for Stormont to limp back, for orange and green politics to trundle along – outraged, binary, stuck. To ditch the petition of concern, squeak through equal marriage, and get some kind of limited abortion rights. To keep passing on cuts with a two year delay.

Surely we can do better than this?

My kids will be in their 60s when the soil packs in, unless something changes. They’ll have lived lives very different to mine. Digital, virtual lives. Entwined with artificial intelligence. They may not go to university like I did – who could afford it? Their work may be even more precarious than mine, if there is much work left for humans to do. Many of their friends will be refugees, or refugees will live behind a wall. Because that is what our current geo-politics and climate tipping-point suggest. 

I see my job as training my kids up to navigate this brave new world, to help the heart of it beat, or at least not to be the assholes. 

Literally the only question we should be asking in Northern Ireland right now, is how can we face this uncertain future best? How can future people live well here?

I am taking our overlapping identities and relationships here as given. We, as people, are so much less divided than our politics would have you think. Most of us actually like each other. We want to know each other better, and want pretty similar things for our kids’ futures.

I know it may not always look like this. That it benefits political parties to play identity politics. And that we’re numb to it now. But we actually don’t have time for it.

I’ve always been an armchair Dissenter. A Protestant who feels Irish and who wants Irish unity. But something has shifted. I now feel the need to say it out loud.

It’s not for unity’s sake. Or because I think Irishness is a superior identity. Or Brits out. Because there are many things I like about Britain. And part of me is that Brit.

It’s because this place of Northern Ireland has ceased to make sense to me. We are terminally neglected, happily corrupt and economically sinking. Our divisions have been artificially frozen by our governance. We exile many of our young, our creatives, our queers, our entrepreneurs, our thinkers. And who could blame them for going?

My politics is shaped by a desire for grassroots decision making. And so a lot my hope for Irish unity is about having a smaller unit of democracy. People being bigger fishes in a smaller pond. Inside a state that vaguely gives a damn.

It’s rooted in observing how Ireland has learned to have civic conversations with itself over the last decade. Its openness to changing its mind.

Some of it is environmental – seeing the island of Ireland as an ecological unit in a likely future of food and energy insecurity.

Some of it is Brexity. I want my EHIC card dammit. To be part of something outward looking rather than inward.

There are deep problems and ironies embedded in this kind of argument for unity. The Irish state is as broken as other European states. Like the UK, Ireland is big on corporate tax breaks and riven with deep inequalities. Climate chancers. No-one I know can afford to live in Dublin. Every air punch for an Irish success is followed by a face-palm.

But Ireland is changing. It’s a small open democracy, economically nimble, capable of grown-up civic dialogue and rapid cultural adaptation, as its current disentanglement with Catholicism shows.

There is people power afoot. The Citizens’ Assembly, referendums, the water charges movement, housing activism, divestment from fossil fuels. Successive Irish governments may not like it, but they’re slowly being forced to respond.

There are also positive things happening in the British left, that could change a lot of lives. But if there’s one thing we agree on in Northern Ireland, it’s that we’ll never be a priority for Britain. Brexit – estrangement by a thousand cuts – makes this clearer than ever.

But there is no point in talking about the future of Northern Ireland if we are not having a conversation about why we want unity or the union. If and how things could be better. We need to shape a conversation that places Ireland in the future not just the past. To talk about industrial strategies, ageing populations, renewables, housing co-ops, automation, mental health, food security, privacy and surveillance, universal basic income…

At this crossroads, unity makes sense to me. But ultimately we need to decide what will help future people thrive.

We can talk about who owns the soil all day long, but I’d prefer to know if anything will actually be able to grow in it.

What should I tell my kids about the 12th July?

Published on Slugger O'Toole, 13th July 2018. Talkback followed up with an hour's discussion on 16th July. It was an interesting debate, with plenty of depth.

If I had to write this again, I think I would focus a little more on the Catholic (and indeed Protestant and Other) exodus on 12th week. The fact that I have some Catholic friends who can never bear to be in town at this time of year. And I would push the critique of the Orange Order further.

But this is what got written in the moment, during the slightly dazed, tense, confusion of 11th & 12th nights.

......

What should I tell my kids about the 12th July?

My kids always ask me what the flags are about. They find the black ones scary. But this year they were very impressed by the bunting and fresh Union Jacks in our area.

‘It’s making me feel very British’, said my five year old.

‘Me too, it makes me proud to be British’, added the seven year old.

‘That’s interesting,’ I said, thinking about their Irish passports in the drawer. And the fact that they tried to turn bath water into holy water last night.

‘Do you feel British?’, they asked.

How to make friends and influence people, Northern Ireland style.

‘A little bit’, I replied, ‘I mostly feel Irish. But it’s great that you feel British. And the good thing about living in Northern Ireland is that we get to be two things, Irish and British, whatever you want.’

A few days later, they asked to go to the 12th July parades.

I’d only been to the 12th, outside of work, once before when I was little. I remember my mum ate the face of my granda for taking us, as she was attempting to bypass the Troubles somehow, keep us out of harms way. It was the early 80s. I’d have probably done the same.

But, as a kid? Great craic. I was disappointed that future expeditions had been vetoed. Then slowly, over the years, I forgot it was quite fun. And this gave way to the idea that the 12th was pretty sinister, to be avoided. A sense which I carried around until I worked with loyalists, and saw how much of this was based on stereotypes and fear. And more than a little snobbery. Social class is as much as a division in this place as religion.

So this year, I decided, we’d go. I wanted my kids to absorb something of the ordinary 12th. To see loyalist culture as part of the warp and weft of life here. As texture and colour. Not as something to be avoided. I was pleased to learn via Facebook that we might bump into some friends from their Catholic school, who are in mixed marriages and had family in the bands. The Woodvale Festival, Greater Shankill Alternatives and Greater Shankill ACT were putting on great events. I was feeling the small ‘c’ in community.

And then it was 10th of July. And the Bloomfield Walkway bonfire, whose smoke I dutifully inhale every year, was too big and too close to the houses. So it was burned before it could be lowered. And the police vans came. Vans upon vans upon vans. And on the 11th July, the bomb scares started. And the Cluan Place bonfire was too close to the houses and had to be dismantled. By private contractors from outside Northern Ireland wearing balaclavas. And not because they admired the locals’ style.

Then the 11th night. A hijacked bus burning. The airport on shutdown. More bomb scares. Chaos all over Belfast, Newtownards and Bangor. Not to mention Derry, this time at the hands of dissident republicans.

I’ve spent too many summers feeling trapped by the 12th. The one where they stole a JCB, and bulldozed the local shop for its ATM. Which stayed closed for 6 months. The ones where you sleep on your mate’s sofa because you can’t get home. Or crap yourself rolling down the car window for random dudes to decide if you can get past or not, while cars around you burn.

And that’s just the tales of a cosseted middle-class Prod. It’s not like it’s my face on the election posters being burned. Or I’m a Catholic looking up at a banner saying ‘Kill all Taigs’. Or a nationalist hemmed into my house, listening to the heavy, steady drum beating outside my door.

I’ll never be at peace with the sectarian aspects of 12th July. Or the violence it often brings. There is no excuse in 2018 for illegal or dangerous bonfires. For people’s faces and effigies to be burned on them, like some messed up voodoo. No place for threats and intimidation. For criminal activity and inciting hate. For hijacking an Ulsterbus ffs - a scarce enough resource in a semi-rural area. One of the lowlights of the year was a tweet (now deleted) of people at the Sandy Row bonfire singing ‘We hate Catholics’, bizarrely to the tune of Tiffany’s ‘I think we’re alone now’. 

But when you’ve seen so many loyalists, including former paramilitaries, busting themselves to stop all these things, and provide viable alternatives for the kids in their areas, the picture starts to get complicated.

I have a knee-jerk reaction to the Orange Order, as a religiously exclusive organisation, but appreciate the structure and mentoring that the bands can give kids and young adults.

I also know the difference between ordinary loyalists and active paramilitaries.

The news said that half a million people were expected at the 12th. How many people orchestrated the 11th night’s violence and intimidation? 100s? How many more thought it was a good idea? 1000s, 10,000s? I don’t know. But it’s not half a million.

So that’s why, despite the horror of the 11th night, and a strong reflex to stay away, I took my five year old to see the parades on 12th.

He liked them.

And I was glad we went. Because it was kids and old people and friends meeting up. Twirling band members and embroidered banners. People letting off steam. Long before peak drunk. And it reminded me that this is how most people, including loyalists, want to experience the 12th.

Indeed it’s mainly loyalist areas that get wrecked by the shit stirrers. Whose asthmatic kids breathe in smoke from burning tyres. Loyalist teenagers who will get criminal records as a result of it all. One taxi driver told us he left a guy home to an estate on the 11th night after a major brain operation, people jumping on his bonnet and shaking the car.

Like or loathe the politics, loyalists are a largely structurally abandoned bunch. Brunt bearers of our broken legacy of mental health. Test cases for austerity. Thrown SIF money as a panacea, so no-one important has to feel bad about watching loyalist areas slowly drown. Wash our hands, let the lads sort it out. 

This is no excuse for violence. But it is context.

And here I have these tiny people, unaware of the pain of politics in Northern Ireland. In the relative safety of the daytime, they’re loving the flags and the flamboyance. They’re identifying this as a love of Britishness. And I’m up for exploring this with them, even if it’s not my cup of tea. I want us to know our neighbours, of all traditions.

But my kids will soon discover the news, and they’ll see the contradictions for themselves. They’ll see the dark side of the 12th. We drove past five burning cars on 11th. That’s why my seven year old refused to come to the parade. They’ll soon be able to identify that sound overhead as a police helicopter.

They’re blank slates now. But soon they will fill the category ‘Britishness’ up with meaning. The flags won’t just seem festive; they will demand a response.

So I look to the Orange Order, the DUP and UUP, and even the paramilitaries. And I think, what are you going to do about this? Does the leadership we saw this year from John Kyle, Gavin Robinson and Doug Beattie show the way? The silence from most others was deafening. Would it be rude to suggest that having a chaos button is handy? Or that silence works well for not losing votes?

Are your organisations going to lead your people out of chaos and sectarianism? Or turn a blind eye? Or throw twitter petrol on real life fires? What’s the long-term plan?

Because this 11th night bullshit does not represent, or serve, the loyalists I know. It will win no friends and influence no-one. It is simply an act of self-harm, inflicted on an already precarious union.