Those who do not need scientific evidence to prove a point can readily find signs of global climate change in the wet and windy season which we in Ireland generously refer to as summer. The southwest endured torrential rainfall with a month's rain falling in hours, leaving burst river banks and flooded homes in its wake. The corncrake was washed out of its grassy haunts along the Shannon callows, wiping out an entire generation of hatchlings of this rare bird. Electrical storms plunged 10,000 homes into darkness. The final blow for many TV viewers came yesterday after a 24-hour postponement of the Rose of Tralee contest when gale force winds threatened to knock down the canvas-roofed venue for the event.
Farther afield there is more indication that something strange is happening with the world's weather with drought bringing shrivelled cornfields and famine to North Korea. Winnie, the most powerful typhoon in decades, has left at least 43 dead in China and Taiwan. Now we hear that an El Nino is brewing up in the Pacific, delivering a massive change in the ebb and flow of the ocean which will alter weather patterns around the world for months to come.
But as any climatologist will confirm, none of these events is unprecedented, none is outside the bounds of what might be considered "normal". The South China Sea waits for its typhoons every year and an earlier Dome in Tralee was knocked down during a powerful late summer storm in 1983. Scientists and weather experts need more evidence and more time before they will say with conviction that climate change brought about through human activity, is really here.
The powerful western economies, which make a significant contribution to the exhaust fumes and greenhouse gases which we expect will induce global warming, have been posturing since the Rio Earth Summit five years ago, vaunting their environmental credentials while adopting very few measures that could help halt or reverse the damage. Much is made of promises to reduce output of a key greenhouse gas - carbon dioxide - but too little effort is made in other simple, money-saving areas such as energy conservation or public transport. These "No Regrets Measures" as they are called could have a major impact on gas emissions. Successive Irish governments, meanwhile, talk green but do little to contribute. Tenders are out for the £100 million EuroPeat 1 peat-fired power station; good for jobs but a veritable carbon dioxide factory once in production. The previous government committed Ireland to holding carbon dioxide output by 2010 to just 10 per cent above 1990 levels. But our burgeoning economy has already pushed us up against the 10 per cent ceiling more than a decade ahead of schedule. We can expect little help in these efforts from Third World economies. Fuel conservation is a meaningless concept for too many millions around the world whose heating and cooking are provided by gathering sticks. It is up to the OECD economies to take the lead and deliver real change, an opportunity open to them at the third Conference of the Partners to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, scheduled for Kyoto this December. There the "Precautionary Principle" must become the policy for tomorrow, the assumption that flash floods, typhoons and droughts are indeed proof that climate change is under way. Adopting this principle will leave us with no option but to respond with more coherent, comprehensive policies that strike a balance between development and environmental vandalism.