Sir, – Your correspondent John Leahy (Letters, July 5th) makes an impressively impassioned plea to reverse the recent decision of Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan, refusing permission for further development of the prospective Barryroe oil and gas field.
He goes so far as to describe the potential imminent liquidation of the company behind that development as a “national catastrophe”. These are strong words. However, Mr Leahy has conveniently chosen to ignore the elephant in the oil and gas field – namely the rapidly unfolding global climate emergency, driven largely (though not exclusively) by the continuing addiction of industrial-consumer societies to fossil fuel combustion.
In May 2021, the International Energy Agency, in its report, Net Zero by 2050, stated bluntly that “beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our [Paris Agreement-aligned] pathway”.
That is, global human society already has access to more than enough oil and gas resources to plunge the world into globalised climate catastrophe.
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As the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, so graphically put it just last November: “We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing. Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising, and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”
We may yet fail in this ultimate test of human wisdom (the signs are most ominous), but one thing is certain: arguing for further development of additional fossil fuel extraction is a council of absolute despair. I urge your readers to reject this siren call. – Yours, etc,
PROF BARRY McMULLIN,
Dublin City University.
Sir, – John Leahy questions why Barryroe is continually refused permission to develop its oil and gas field. Until such time as we have a government that does not rely on Green support, it will never happen. – Yours, etc,
DAVID MURNANE,
Dunshaughlin,
Co Meath.