Letters

Climate crisis and alienating farmers

There needs to be less rhetoric and more honesty

Mon Aug 21 2023 - 00:10

Sir, – I was very disappointed to read Fintan O’Toole’s recent article where he accused Irish farmers of being in denial about climate change, but also quite patronisingly claimed that it’s not their fault – they are being misled (“Farmers’ denial of climate reality has been shaped by the parties they support”, Opinion & Analysis, August 8th).

His piece was in response to some recent articles on the subject, including an article I wrote for the Mail on Sunday.

My article had three core points. First, I highlighted that the green lobby have adopted Trump’s fake news defence with anyone that challenges their view with science; Fintan O’Toole’s response being a perfect case in point. Second, I highlighted that emissions from cows are part of the fast carbon cycle, the same as emission from trees, wetlands and rice production and should be treated differently than emission from fossil fuels. He dismissively mentioned this point without any explanation as to why he disagrees with it.

My third point was that the green lobby are fixated on farmers not because of the emissions associated with farming but because they need their land to sequester carbon if we are to achieve net zero.

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Currently landowners are the only ones who can sequester carbon and if landowners are expected to transition from livestock farming to carbon farming, they need to get an income for that. If they are expected to remove the CO2 for all the other sectors, they should be rewarded in the same way the polluters should be penalised.

It’s not good enough that they get paid to transition and then have no income after that.

To support his view that farmers were denialist, Fintan O’Toole referenced recent protest relating to the flooding of the Shannon callows. In that article, Francis Nally, from Save Our Shannon Organisation (SOSO) was highlighting that the recent flooding was manmade. I think it is clear that climate change has caused the wettest July on record, which is a contributing factor to the resulting flooding. But it must also be recognised that there is a man-made weir in Parteen that is holding the water back and if that was managed differently the impact of the high rainfall could have been avoided.

What is more damning in his article was the use of research form 2014 as proof of farmers’ attitudes today.

The entire world’s attitude to climate change has changed in that time, given that the eight warmest years have all happened since then. Fintan O’Toole’s own attitude has changed in that time too. Back in 2014 he described protests in Cork against the bank debt as having “a genuine nobility in its refusal to be bullied, blackmailed or mocked. It embodies what Ireland most desperately needs: collective self-respect.” Now he describes my group (The Beef Plan Movement) as militant for protesting for a fair price for our produce.

It should be noted that there are now multiple descriptors for people or companies who claim to be more environmentally friendly than they actually are. Greencrowding, greenlighting, greenshifiting, greenhushing are new subdivisions of greenwashing and yet there is not a single phrase to identify examples of the opposite. This highlights how divisive and one-sided the whole climate debate has become.

As I stated in my article there needs to be less rhetoric and more honesty around what is scientific and what is not; we need to carefully strike the balance between looking after the planet and providing for all the people who live on it.

What is needed now is consensus and a respected journalist like Fintan O’Toole should be prepared to present all viewpoints so that consensus can be reached, rather than alienating the very people who will have the biggest impact on what can be achieved. – Yours, etc,

EMMANUEL O’DEA,

The Beef Plan Movement,

Galway.