Sir, – In the letter from a long list of religious figures about Ireland’s obligations regarding climate change (December 7th), the new environmental religion intersects the traditional Christian one. There are some obvious gaps in the signatories’ logic.
First, they seem to approach the issue from the false premise that climate change can be stopped by changing human behaviour. A moment’s reflection on history and geology will confirm that the Earth’s climate has constantly been changing over time, in major and minor cycles, and the only certainty in our future is the next ice age. We can no more stop climate change than King Canute could stop the tide coming in. Climate change will continue irrespective of the existence of humans.
Second, the human behaviour addressed by the signatories is that of Ireland in isolation. Ireland’s area represents about 0.00016 of the Earth’s surface and we are about 0.0005 of the Earth’s population. There is absolutely no practical point in Ireland taking costly large-scale “decisive action” as urged by the signatories, unless most of our fellow passengers on this planet take similar action. We are sharing our constantly-circulating atmosphere with the other 7 billion.
We might be better engaged in adaptation measures to deal with the inevitable. – Yours, etc,
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PETER GORMAN,
Mount Merrion,
Co Dublin.