Climate Change Adaptation Strategy
By Frances Micklem
at Harmony Hall Think Tank, Kilkenny
1stJuly 2019
To understand everyone’s perspective, vested interest and trade-offs necessary, I identified the roles and priorities for various groups. We are going to plunge a lot of people into uncertain self employment and there will be a lot of fear around money and accommodation and change in diet. People are going to be downshifting from their current blind survival mode, keeping their foot in the door of whatever job or benefits system they’re on and house they’re in to a whole new concerted action, with an unknown outcome. People are going to have to feel and more importantly besupported in taking the risk and making the changes, in order to meet the demands of a longer term view, including imminent climate change and the lifespan of their children.
There may have to be a basic living wage/benefit made available so that people can stay at home or local if transport is no longer regular for a commute and teach and learn how to grow food and take care of animals and other people and practical jobs in the house and community. I know there is a move to stop the use of oil central heating but there also has to be a stop to petrol, diesel, agri chemicals and detergent use and a big change in businesses, resource and land use and diet. Technology and machinery are going to have to be repurposed.
Luckily, in Kilkenny, there are a great many progressive and informed people, as we know from Future Proof Kilkenny, who were ahead of their time, three large organic growers including Highbank Orchards, the forefront ethics of the Cartoon Saloon to the massive resistance movements to protect Kilkenny’s heritage and river and improve the lot of animals in pounds, in laboratories and in the wild. A founder of the Community Garden Network is based on the Kilkenny Carlow border too.
Announcing the end of fur farming in Ireland last week, Minister Creed said, ‘there has been a shift in societal expectations’. This is exactly the motivation that will justify the council making ‘u turn’ decisions like revoking licenses and permissions on potentially destructive projects. It is also a motivating force, hopefully sufficient to get consumers to make new decisions too. With sufficient education and participation, the county’s changes will have to be considered by government and Europe. Everyone is agreed though, the pressure that works is from the bottom up, rather than the top down. So let’s make it work for County Kilkenny and the people living here and not wait for someone to pass a bill, burdening people with carbon taxes – or whatever the things are that people fear. We can do better than that. We can benefit the people and make this county the most healthy, thriving and pleasant place to live, in interdependence rather than dependence on big companies that do not have the environment in mind.
To be successful and engage the belief and participation of the population, the council will have to openly state that they plan to put ecology and sustainability at the beginning of every decision making process and at its end.
The Council
The Redirection of Money
To Set An Example
To Mediate Between Various Sectors
The Individual
To buy into the emergency climate action plan.
To educate and be educated
Incentives
Pressure
Collective expression of change wanted
To see justice and fairness, big not small paying the price.
To allay fears
Corporations
Profits
Audits
Change
Eviction –the bigger chains will have to go as one county probably won’t be able to effect what they do as a world wide organization.
Staff – to allay fears of redundancy
Self Employed/Small Businesses
Incentives
Acknowledgment of crucial local skill base
Supported change
Tax breaks
To allay fears
Farmers
Savings to be made
Compensation
Pressure – compulsory changes agreed
Education
Support in revisioning business model
Guaranteed local sales even if poor initial harvests
Repurposing land/machinery/stocks
New role for animals.
Heralded as stewards of the land: therefore holding the most important role of being able to plant trees, crops, foods, biodiversity, improve water quality, produce fuel rather than culprits of chemical spraying and responsible for carbon emissions.
To allay fears
100 Actionable Measures
Council
1) For actions to happen they have to be in line with the law. There is a law outlined called Ecocide and it is accepted in some countries already, where companies can be prosecuted for wilfully destroying or polluting areas. We can use some phrases of that law to take some polluters to task, if not to court.
2) Like a firm but friendly bouncer managing a door, revoke licenses and planning applications; audit and give destructive industries instructions and a fixed time to leave or change their practices, in line with climate action objectives.
3) Referendum on climate action and ask what people are prepared to do. This can happen AFTER a detox period, where chemicals and certain foods are banned and people have an idea of what life will be like without them and have been educated on the necessity for these changes and trust that the incentives and supports promised (by the authorities) have been followed through on.
4) Plastic. Ban one use plastics – things like pasta and coffee producers will be forced to make biodegradable packaging. Check that we only sell the sorts of plastics that we can recycle locally.
5) Demand that supermarkets eliminate plastic packaging. Return to the pick and mix shelving and paper bags.
6) Public tender, administered by Repak perhaps or your waste management department, for innovative projects to recycle plastics, with a low toxicity process.
7) Public tender for innovative projects to improve drinking water and protect waterways. For example, affordable water testing kits to check pesticide/hormone/bacteria/fluoride/chlorine levels. Kits to de-salinize water and make it drinkable. Simple filters etc.
8) Public tender for innovative projects to produce a simple grey water system to divert roof water to flush toilets, water gardens and wash clothes.
9) Water Footprint and Quality Audit and accountability: Leave nothing to the longstanding organizations: Facilitate total transparency and review what is in mains water and water scheme water, by requiring reports on animal waste run-off, pesticide and fertilizer run-off, industry spillage, acid rain and other pollutants, fluoride and chlorine.
10) Discuss, locally and nationally, the possibility of exporting water: Managing it nationally because rainfall is our best resource…rather than gas, oil (15% of the world’s total water withdrawal is in the sourcing of fossil fuels and fracking), beef (over 15,000 litres per kg ) dairy (over 1000 litres water per litre milk )inc. whey, casein, calves for veal (Cows responsible for a third of all Ireland’s carbon emissions) and pigs (6000 litres per kg). No other country in Europe has enough fresh water. Ten years ago, they were laying pipes in Spain where rivers were, to carry the water to cities. The surrounding banks and valleys are now barren rather than lush. See the parallel with the piping of water from the Shannon to Dublin. Each roof can capture enough water to sustain a household and tanks can easily store it.
11) Sponsor inventories of what chemicals are on our fruit and vegetables. There is a grant (entries just closed on 28thJune) by The Community Foundation For Ireland for biodiversity studies to be carried out by ecologists – testing soil, air, water etc. None of the grant was to be paid to staff members, you had to organize events to engage the community and only ‘non profit’ organizations were eligible. Therefore there was nothing to be gained, apart from an ecology report, if you entered. Even then the report to the foundation had to include measures to change and a commitment to increase biodiversity, which would be another cost to come down on the organizations head. All in all, there was no reward or even support involved and so I suspect that few organizations will have entered, just for the chance to contribute to the national biodiversity plan. They had a lot of money put aside for the fund. I wonder if some would be made available to a late entry by you at the council to carry out an ecological study of the county’s industries. Water and other waste from factories, nearby streams and rivers to the pharmaceutical companies, other manufacturers, power stations and masts in the county. Most processes release dioxins and suspected correlations with high cancer rates could be investigated and pressure applied to reduce emissions or cease production and clean up after themselves. Potentially, fines could then be redirected to smaller, ethical suppliers.
12) Sponsor inventories on what antibiotics are in meat – so many calves taken too young and sustained on antibiotics as they didn’t even get the colostrum to build their immune systems before being taken from the cows.
13) Ask the people via the referendum if they are comfortable with live export.
14) Cows bred to produce 70 litres a day rather than 10 litres a day suffer during power cuts and droughts as they can get no relief.
15) Eliminate the contradictions: First, if you want biodiversity, you want the national emblem of the hare and not the licenses granted to trap it all year round for autumn coursing. It is protected and yet hunting is allowed still. Stop all spraying and hedge and verge cutting.
16) Balance the kick-back by subtly offering people who seek to book their coursing tickets, say, a €1 bet on the national lottery or something/anything less barbaric .
17) Public health. Pharmacies. There is nothing in Boots and most chemists that have a leaping rabbit symbol on it. Therefore there is nothing that has not been tested on animals. That is not what people in Ireland want any more. In addition, they do not want products made with beeswax and honey either. Most people understand now that the pollinators are close to extinction and that if they go, our crops and food go too.
18) Address the fear. Welcome efforts and suggestions. State that you support renewable energy and facilitate the start up of low impact, local, low budget projects.
19) Environmentally-led tax breaks. Eg, if you convert your car, house and business to run on plant-based fuel, it is completely recognized in your accounts and taken off tax payable.
20) Food security tax breaks. If you produce food or teach how to produce food, be it horticulturally or meal preparation or nutritionally, or processing or catering support, in introducing a new way of eating.
21) Food sovereignty tax breaks. If you produce meals from locally sourced ingredients.
22) Self sufficiency tax breaks. Low water use, Independence from the esb grid, grey water installation, shared transport scheme.
23) Correct second contradiction: food giants serve exclusively pesticide-ridden products, often with not one organic or ethically produced item in half an acre of shelves and they get tax breaks as food providers.
Now they are jumping on the interest in a vegan lifestyle and Coca Cola produce an almond milk now and Magnum a vegan magnum, subway a vegan sandwich and Bakewell a vegan sausage roll. These are mass produced and processed and certainly not organic, we mustn’t let the big companies monopolize this shift of priorities. This is versus
Organic producers who are required to label and get certification for every practice and stretch of land they use. They want to use un-dyed paper bags but must use copious plastic to identify their farm as the source. The latter should not be taxed at all but allowed to keep any euro profit they make as it is such hard work farming organically. Give incentives like 3 weeks holiday money (like the 180 income support) and co ordinate a bank of farm helpers so organic producers can get away.
24) Address geo-engineering. There is plenty of photographic evidence of chem’ trailing over county Kilkenny and other counties. First look up the ingredients of chemicals intentionally sprayed by planes, in a supposed attempt to block sunlight. Look at records of the toxicity to air, soil and local residents too. Find out and stop it.
25) Address rural transport. One simple solution would be to open school buses to the public. As soon as a youth leaves school there is no way for them to get into the village/town/city for work. Many retired people could spend one day a week, doing their bank, post office and shopping etc and be sure of a lift home. Yes, there might need to be a garda-vetted supervisor on the bus because today’s world is what it is but any parent, local worker or teacher would do. These buses are and bigger buses could be going down every road, morning and evening and that’s what’s needed. Ring a link is doing a bit but is not enough.
26) Transport. Electric car grants are only open to corporations and not even to medium sized businesses. Make them affordable.
27) Photo voltaic solar panel grants do not cover costs, providers just added the grant amount. Make them affordable. This could be with simple tax incentive. Eg if a company has provided 300 homes with renewable energy, each within the figure of the individual grant paid then they don’t pay tax on that income. Try and cut through the idea of fleecing everyone at every turn.
28) The whole of Parliament Street is empty. Owners were offered 40,000 euro LOAN to get them up to new fire safety standards. This was work that would cost them at least 75,000 to do. Any rent for the rest of time would be paid by HAP tenants straight to the council, paying back that loan. Therefore the last tenant had to move out 18 months ago and now they are all derelict apart from maybe one lady, home owner above the hairdresser’s, next to what was Hughes auctioneers.
29) Make all actions have a pay off for the people. The council planning department could agree and renovate all the upstairs apartments and fit them with renewable energy source and provide central housing for lots of tenants. Don’t make landlords pay for the work that will cost these older people (most home owners in the city are quite senior now) a whole new mortgage equivalent. You could insist that the rent they charge, after the work is completed, be capped at 450 euro a month, so working couples or even HAP recipients can benefit from the new accommodation created.
30) Iron out inner contradictions within the use of public money. Like the HAP begging landlords to keep tenants while tenants are being threatened with court if they do not evict tenants until work their department considers necessary is done.
31) Offer small incentives for house owners and tenants who maintain a pollinator-friendly garden or produce food. Even something small like 35 euro on July to those who have evidence of looking after their garden/land for air quality and biodiversity.
32) Tender for high level innovations like a safe, plastic recycling plant and products. Aim high, it can be administered by Repak but a plant and products and process to which we can direct all existing plastic on land, in circulation and in the Irish Sea: like building blocks or whatever creative inventors come up with.
33) Ban the production of plastic. Refuse planning permission for further PET plants (plastic bottling and packaging production). Make Ireland the first to decide that we will create no more and import no more plastic.
34) Monetize and encourage think tanks. For example, if you use any of these ideas, pay me a token sum for this report. Shift the policy from thinking of all ethical, useful, caring and community-focussed work and problem solving as being voluntary and make it a sustainable employment. Start think tanks on every topic. Every discussion hub and even conversation produces a solution or raises a problem. In one day alone, the problem of public transport (as experienced first hand at the cancellation of the crucial bus linking Kilkenny City to the IT Carlow) was given a solution by the founder of Community Gardens Ireland. Even neighbours who get on well don’t succeed in sharing transport and many communities don’t know each other any more but we should and could open school buses to the public. When innovations and workable or even brilliant ideas are recorded and shared with the council, recognize their contribution to the emergency strategy.
35) Introduce cooking and nutrition to schools, based on what we will have. Foods grown in Ireland: Plant based protein sources (Nut, pulses, peas, oats, berries) and non-dairy milks like organic oat milk, easily made here.
36) Present a vision everyone wants to buy into. Publicly counter the prejudice against health foods, vegans, vegetarians and organic growers. They will be the main bank of knowledge to effect social change as they have already had to work out how to live carefully and recognize their impact. Be the example of joined-up thinking and engage all groups with different motivations and priorities. For example, giving up meat and/or animal proteins. Like Leo Vradkar, who did it to reduce his carbon footprint: I went vegan 20 years ago, through a sense of equality with animals: Friends and family have made the change and reversed aggressive cancers: Others must, to lower their cholesterol or avoid reactions to a dairy intolerance: Awareness of 3rdworld countries (Grain is produced that would feed 13 billion people but 1 billion remain starving as more than half is grown and watered and then fed to meat-eating societies, around the world): Those in insecure housing where there are no cooking facilities: The wave of concern about farm intensification, slaughter house practices and welfare breaches: The horse meat scandal and food safety noncompliance.
Connect the changes we need to make to all these: The environment, water use, waste, pollution, biodiversity, personal and family health, animal suffering and poverty and housing alleviation.
They can produce a synergy in motivation rather than conflicts of interest.
37) Phasing out does not work. For example, a top down ruling that farms must give caged hens 50cm squ.d more room were made 15 years ago and only 7 member countries achieved it, in that time. We can stop all the destructive, resource-heavy and polluting practices with immediate effect and then fairly share the stocks we have, over the next 10 christmasses or however it can be divided or is decided. Intensive farming (some cows producing 70 litres a day rather than 10 and suffering painfully in powercuts), (some hens producing 1 egg a day rather than one a month), slaughter houses only semi stunning (carbon-heavy gassing of) thousands of animals before killing them for food are cycles we can stop but they won’t stop themselves. If an industry is intrinsically dependent on exploiting animals it cannot be expected to develop practices that do not exploit the environment. The climate emergency strategy and resulting laws are going to have to define what is allowed and no longer allowed in the county.
In addition to stopping breeding, untreated waste from farmed animals could be redirected to Biogas energy generators. Farmers wouldn’t have to feed so much as they’re not fattening animals up, just maintenance feeds so that could be organic hay from set aside and not the chemically grown and gmo grains they’ve been depending on. Many farmers I have worked with are still paying off their feed bills from two winters ago and last winter. It is an industry that is unsupportable and one day, I suspect, will be understood as a false economy on many levels.
38) Close all science testing and pharmaceutical facilities. They use 10 times as much energy per square metre as an ordinary office block, they use a chemicals at every stage of sanitation, production, testing and as ingredients. Air pollution includes poisons like dioxins and mercury that stay airborne for years. Water and waste pollution is heavily toxic and a danger to human health, both staff and public, let alone damage to biodiversity. Some estimates say that one quarter of all harmful emissions and pollution in agriculture come from the pet food industry. So feeding the animals used in testing and other industries, more common in Kilkenny, like puppy farming, can be addressed.
39) Things not to do. Don’t turn to the big companies for solutions. Don’t accept the first renewable energy company that suggests something. The upright windmills they’re putting around are considered old technology. They are intolerable to live beside, disrupting the physiology of people, animals and wildlife and the digging of foundations deep enough to hold them. They are also ineffective in comparison to the horizontal dish technology. The key is to empower and inspire the people, with a subsidized switch to a small wind/water/solar/biogas (fuelled by household compost or manure) generator which are normal billing until the money is recouped, will provide households and estates with free electricity and off grid.
40) Stop the ‘gas lighting’, where authorities suggest that we should pay for water to appreciate it and pollution is from people not managing their rubbish properly, while allowing Nestle to operate and allowing Shell, Dell, Coca Cola etc and increasingly large farming operations to pollute the water and allow companies to drill, quarry and frack and contaminate all the aquifers and ground water. Engage each consumer on the benefits of changes, the connection between nature and our survival and the necessity to protect the environment. That protection should take the form of demonstrating for government and industry changes and household changes, not one or the other. Impress on all parties that it is not one individual’s fault, it is a common situation that we all now find ourselves in and with collaboration, accountability and consistency people can make an equally positive impact. Acknowledge previous contradictions, like permission granted to sonic blast the whole ocean off the west coast to map it for fossil fuels but only allow visits to the Skelligs 3 months of the year to protect it as national heritage. And the contradiction in allowing Factory trawlers to illegally fish thousands of tonnes over their quota and then policing the shores to penalize local people who catch more than their quota. Or culling otters for causing a shortage of fish. In the King Scallop Festival of Valentia, they needed to import Donegal scallops. These contradictions are not obviously decisions made by the Kilkenny council but they will show that local politicians are able to understand the concept of inconsistency and the need for consistency as they move forward with this new strategy.
41) Engage the young and the old by respecting their superior knowledge. I have worked with hundreds of school groups in the last 3 months and every Junior and Senior Cert student and indeed all secondary school age pupils study ecology and know how to do a field study that surveys the plant and animal/insect species that are present in various habitats. Children could be asked to do a basic report of their own garden habitats and identify 3 shrubs or wild flowers or trees or vegetables that would grow there, considering light and shade, soil acidity and what is there already.
The older generation know that pesticides are simply the rebranding of the chemicals used in the gas chambers by the Nazis, as pest control for farmers. People since the 1960s and before have been trying to save biodiversity and the environment. ‘Just put away the DDP now. Give me spots on my apples but leave me the birds and the bees. Please!’ Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi recorded in 1970. Change people’s perception of good food. Organic fruit and vegetables are matt in colour, with no sheen of preserving chemical coating, they may have a few brown spots or have fended off a pest after one or two nibbles of a leaf but they have full nutrition, have not been synthetically ripened in a warehouse rather than from their tree. The antioxidants of fruit skins as they ripen are known to have incredible curative effects but now the majority are picked long before they’re ripe to travel and prolong their shelf life.
42) Take out the clause in the tender process of organizations needing to have two equal-sized financial contracts already. It stops innovation, ethical practice, sustainable and unprecendented ideas being implemented. Only what has gone before can get in. Assign contracts on environmental merit and then support the projects with the necessary funds, financial advisors and administration.
43) The Outdoor Education and Adventure Centre governing body charges a membership fee based on income, rather than after costs. This means a not for profit organization, like the Discovery Park with a mission statement to provide local employment and deliver Ecology education and Geological, Historic tours cannot be a part of this umbrella organization. It is the same for Failte and other governing bodies, they have prohibitive fees and costs for association. Tourist accommodation, activities and education centres that provided zero impact eco services, could be given free membership, promotion and related supports. Currently, the most conscientious organizations are missing out on insurance concessions and accreditations.
44) HSE. Apart from serving food that is in line with the World Health Organization’s recommendations, doctors and equipment should not be sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. Consultants’ offices are adorned with accessories, stationary, tissues and equipment bearing the names of specific nerve painkillers and other products. If they are really prepared to be a part of the return to health for the individual and the work place and wider environment, they should make their medicines available to those that need it and use natural products, of which there are many that are anti-bacterial, anti fungal and anti viral. This will curb the chemical waste from sanitation.
45) Sponsor a researched article each week in The Farmers Journal on re-purposing, breakdown and sale of machinery, revisioning animal use. Organic growing trouble shooting. Resources and supports for processing and a list of resources, funding and supports available for the transition.
46) Emphasize that there are no competing goals but a synergy possible towards the common goal of protecting the environment for the next generation.
47) Respond to all queries not as bothersome details but with a big picture heroism, recognition and confidence that we can carry it off and Kilkenny lead the way.
Farms
48) Incentivize changes in farming. If farmers go 100% organic, stop using fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, antibiotics and intensive accommodation for animals, they will not only command twice the price for their produce but also will be compensated for crop failures during the six year transition period – after which they get their organic certification.
49) Immediate cessation of spraying. Make it compulsory and employ other farmers as advisors, who have made the change to organic. And enlist ecologists, horticulturalists, crop and tree producers etc to fit new crops to suitable land. Savings of €40,000 have been recorded for farmers who stop using agrichemicals. 21) Fertilizer dries out the ground, leaves its natural fertility bereft with synthetic interventions. Educate the farmers about for example the Californian Gold Belt that that is now nearly a desert with over-worked ground, synthetic fertilizers and gmo crops that have put the local residents in a state of asthmatic fear. And the Monsanto’s Suicide Belt in India where more that 500 farmers have killed themselves. Ruined, having agreed to used Monsanto’s Round Up Ready seeds and finding that the few seeds they could save from these modified seeds also belonged to Monsanto and they must pay again. Irish farmers know themselves how the fertilizers and sprays are stripping and degrading the soil. They will welcome a supported change.
50) Plant trees. For Ireland to meet its reduction in carbon emissions, it must plant 20,000 hectares of trees. We don’t have that many hectares of farmland in the country. We have about 165 hectares of farmland in Kilkenny. Sponsor nut orchards of native hazel, cob and black walnut. Insist that all Coillte planting is of trees with edible fruit, with forest companion planting within, like raspberries and other leafy edible plants that grow well in shade. This will encourage and protect biodiversity and help feed people. Audit and ban their current spraying of forests and woodlands under their management. It is polluting waterways, making foraging toxic and contrary to the survival of biodiversity.
51) Find out what farms and what land are producing which crops. Ask those farmers what they would need to produce without chemicals. Don’t make them compete with products from warmer climates. Total food sovereignty and independence can be prepared for and is then possible.
52) Ask livestock farmers what they would need by way of soil improvement and access to machinery to convert to arable crops. Make County Kilkenny a showcase of successful farming economy, without animals, vet bills, agri chemicals and costly transport, processing and packaging.
53) Invite tenders for the repurposing of machinery and sheds, here or abroad. Like growing mushrooms in sheds. Protected growing spaces are going to be our saving grace as the climate becomes more unpredictable. Renumerate and support a compulsory shift to stop breeding. Take meat and animal products out of the shops and put in the meat processing plants’ freezer warehouses. This will avoid a mad rush to buy everything, where a lot would go to waste. Like when the first shoppers who made it to the supermarkets bought all the bread when there was snow and ice for a week.
54) Look at unleaded petrol and diesel and see if it’s viable. Air pollution from diesel is linked to lung disease and heart attacks and yet 80% of the EPA fleet of vehicles, used to police air pollution, are run on diesel. However unleaded petrol is, it still impacts negatively at the extraction, refinement, transport and consumption phases. Electric cars and hybrids are a start but rely on big manufacturers and making them affordable. I applied for a grant from the SEAI and was told only corporations were eligible, not smaller companies or self employed individuals. Biodiesel works in diesel cars with no modification to the engine needed. Vegetable oil works in petrol cars, with a cheap adaptation kit (£250 sterling when I investigated and a local manufacturer could be diverted to making them at a similar price in euro and local garages trained to fit them. Biofuels are another crop that farmers could be supported in starting. Bioethanol is created by the sugar fermentation process and so that might regenerate Ireland’s sugar beet industry again, making us again more independent of imported refined sugars and their carcinogenic burden.
55) Gear education away from old routes. Currently 500 new Fetac places are taken up in conventional pig farming each year, despite effluent, slurry, none of the 5 freedoms granted and tail biting and other behaviour and a necessary increase in the use of antibiotics to stem disease, getting less and less effective. This is compared to less than 50 studying Horticulture. It is just considered more profitable and so accreditation is needed to support useful businesses and land management.
56) European grants to farmers not to vets and fertilizer suppliers, the exact day that the grants arrive in their accounts.
57) Make all farms into power suppliers via Biogas (animal muck being cheaply and easily converted into heating gas for local areas.
People
58) Educate and excite people about the brown bin. Make it accountable and free.
59) Educate regarding the word ‘Organic’: It means A) Is natural and will biodegrade. Organic also means B) Food grown from seeds and soil without use of or residues from chemicals and no chemicals used in production, cleaning, ripening or preservation to extend shelf life etc. A and B are two very different things. A is good enough for composting but B is what will halt the degradation of the environment.
60) Educate the public via programmes/broadcasts and videos on where plastic waste ends up, in forests and oceans and the micro plastics in our bodies and how it doesn’t break down.
61) Public health. Vegetables. Potatoes that are not organic are sprayed up to 30 times with pesticides. That is a lot of residue. Make people aware how much chemical residue there is in and on all supermarket food. There is a legal maximum and everything and everyone has shot past it.
62) Encourage people to grow their own food and share the things that work well for them. Food sovereignty consists of buying food from local sources and at least from Ireland. We have a great opportunity as we still have a clement climate and still enough water.
63) Stipulate that people should save their ‘grey water’, redirecting their guttering down pipes to water butts and reserves. Their gutter water could happily flush toilets and water gardens all through the year.
64) Raise the appreciation for what we have. Not by charging carbon emissions or fuel consumption but by educating: Why do we love trees?! Why do we love worms?!
65 ) Educate people: A simple booklet on how pesticides incapacitate four of the digestive enzymes and how they are carcinogenic, with one in every two people in Ireland developing cancer.
66) Contradiction three: Explain how sugar accelerates cancers and how the many problems of conventional treatments are made worse by patients being given sweets to cheer them up after chemotherapy.
67) Promote the simple personal changes alongside a national shift to Irish food. Not simply the Green label though. At the moment, there is no qualitative aspect to buying green. Yes it was grown here but the food is grown using the same poisons.
68) Proper food for hospitals, schools and other residential settings. Organic food, no salt (dehydrating for kidney patients), sugar (addictive, feeds cancer cells and weight gain), meat (takes years for the body to break down and from animals raised in dubious welfare conditions, eggs that lead to an overload of protein, milk or extracted dairy proteins.
Organizations and individuals may say that they can’t afford to buy organic ingredients but if they set the same budget as the previous year, caterers can work within in. It is not an argument that not enough chefs know how to produce a balanced healthy diet to avoid food intolerances; I know, for example 10 kilkenny-based chefs well able to feed a hospital, school, hotel or anywhere that needs a great amount of meals delivered.
69) Teach basic horticulture and herbal medicine for immune support and first aid, to relieve dependence on pharmaceuticals and the HSE. Call for the reversal of the extra 21% tax on natural food supplements in Health Stores.
70) Insist on chemical and phosphate-free detergents and all household products.
71) Waste management. Promote again the principles of reducing and separating household rubbish. Encourage people to take a pride in it. There is already a group called Zero Waste Kilkenny among which there are people who can advise and give talks etc.
72) Connect climate refugees with further demands on our water and resources. Help people spread their awareness to places already devastated by climate change – floods and droughts.
73) Help them connect water and wars – like in Syria and really understand that water is our gold dust resource to be protected at ground water, aquifer, coastal and deep sea level.
74) Teach about the algae in the ocean that provide 40% of our oxygen.
75) Teach about animal agriculture causing 40% of our carbon emissions.
76) Let local media explore the connections with meat and dairy and environmental issues and contradictions with future policies, like to increase the national herd. If people are informed, then Kilkenny’s adaptation plans are more likely to be adopted by them and pressure put on other counties to follow suit.
77) Give a free medical card to all who adopt a vegan organic lifestyle
78) Free road tax to those who convert their cars to bio diesel or vegetable oil or create shared transport solutions.
79) Divert funding to provide converters to car owner. Make it an inviting prospect.
80) Provide solar/wind/water or biogas system to city and village housing estates so they generate their own electricity. Redirect their average ESB payments to the council for 8 years and then the instalments and turbines will have paid for themselves and people will have renewable and free electricity from then on. Make the situation hopeful, doable and beneficial.
81) Instead of fines, carbon taxes and pressure, you decide the framework, provide what’s needed and benefit the quality of life as well.
82) Insist on grey water systems being put on all buildings old and new builds, so that rain water is redirected for flushing toilets, washing up and growing vegetables.
83) Recondition people to trust our immune systems to recover if we don’t expect products and environments to be sterilized.
Corporations, Supermarkets, Companies
84) Shops should provide a well-marked and promoted section: “Local” “Organic” or “Irish” and “Not sprayed” as a provisional way to promote farmer’s transition to organic practice. (They can’t get organic certification until their land is 6 years without chemical use)
85) Audit and internal monitoring of business’ environmental impact.
86) Incentivize community gardens at industrial estates and companies. Sell it as staff well being and productivity increased by managing plants or a section of land or being resourceful or letting off steam digging, all get included in individual or company level recognition.
87) Recognize that pharmaceutical companies are not participating in their communities at all. They are charging with a massive profit margin on crucial medicines. People are holding charitable fund-raisers to get hold of what they need. With one in two Irish people expected to get cancer, fundraising amongst the community isn’t going to be viable. Pharmaceutical companies have an overt mission statement to have every citizen on an average of 4 prescribed drugs, from cradle to grave. They are pushing a compulsory programme of vaccines, only the original 4 having been proven to be life-saving or safe. Look at the skill set of staff and offer coaching to re-locate them to environmentally-led organizations.
88) Ban and make law to force companies to produce compostable products. Planning permission to include comprehensive waste separation practice and systems, including recycling and compost system
89) Clear outline of Corporate Social Responsibility on company policies, to marry growth and sustainability goals.
90) Eliminate contradictions, no planning permission for growth in herd and dairy producing equipment when we need to reduce emissions. No licenses or registering businesses that require the exploitation of habitat or use of chemicals for cleaning etc. Require projects to meet different requirements meeting a societal need without damage to the environment, rather than demonstrate economic sustainability. We are going to have to learn as we go along how to make these new processes work.
91) Build the third sort of local economy. The current linear economy says that we buy something and when it breaks down we dispose of it and buy a new one. In a circular economy, companies ask us to rent and they will maintain and replace what we need when it breaks down, disposing responsibly of the old. But that isn’t the case, it is just a means to tie consumers into a contract that is only so the company themselves have proof of an on-going income and can borrow money against it and grow their business. It works in other countries because retired people are looked after but here, the only thing they might have and need to have is to own the roof over their heads. We need to extricate ourselves from big companies. Train many more in maintenance and basic competencies, so that we don’t remain a hopeless dependent population, in terms of fuel, food or household equipment. We also cannot stay a disposable society where everything is collectively dumped.
92) Fuel Industry. Oxfam and other charities deal with climate refugees, the millions of displaced people whose own country can no longer support life. Many will be heading for Ireland so it is in our interest to support broader concerns than Ireland’s and Kilkenny’s own. Oxfam supports the call to close all solid fuel power stations. In Castlecomer, Kilkenny, we have the history of all the previous extinctions and of the period before trees and a massive diversity of insects and creatures, colonized the land – all of which was desert beforehand. That was 400 million years ago. Castlecomer also has the history of the solid fuel industry. The coal mining history which was firsthand and in living memory a danger and toxic extraction process and inevitably came to an end, as the coal seams are themselves 320 million years old. People can be educated through this history as to the fact that coal not a renewable energy. Peat and turf too must be publicly understood too. In historical terms, it took 30 metres of peat to compress into 1 metre of coal. It’s very old and finite. Also, people can be taught that it is very valuable where it is in the ground, as a carbon sump. It is Ireland’s version of the Amazon Rainforest.
93) Immediate cessation of chemical use in all industries
94) Do an inventory of what we have in the county and send EPA to test water output of companies, streams and rivers nearby. All industrial societies’ governments know now and have recently re-confirmed their commitment to the climate summit agreement. However big businesses, of which we have many, still only will have a short term view. We have disastrous corporations in Ireland, like Nestle who will own our water if we’re not careful. Monsanto/Bayer and other agrichemical companies have bases in Ireland and fossil fuel, gas and pharmaceutical companies: Dioxins as a side effect and byproduct of these, contaminate, as do other ingredients and substances used.
95) ‘Big Pharma’ and ‘Dairy Giants’ are in bed, in Ireland as tablet-form drugs are cased in casein - a dairy product that is carcinogenic in itself. High cancer rate around and environment destroyed.
96) Vegan food production uses 20% water footprint
97) Even processed convenience foods, on a large scale, use a fraction of resources electricity, water and land, if plant based.
98) Encourage family business/self employed as they have the long view.
99) Guarantee sale of produce
100) Make the changes and facilitate through making space by big business standing aside and or financing it through fines for destructive practices or requirement to sponsor clean ups of water sources.
