Ella McSweeney: The powers that be would do well to pay more attention to climate scientists
Ella McSweeney: The powers that be should have paid more attention to climate scientists. They’d do well to do so nowLonger winters mean farmers will have to budget for more animal feed, housing and slurry storage from now on. Photograph: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie
In his many contributions to the media over the past few decades, Maynooth scientist John Sweeney has never struck me as the kind of person who would say: “I told you so.” So, I’ll say it for him instead: John told us so. You’d imagine everyone in the agri-food industry, particularly those in power, would have scrambled to ensure that farmers knew exactly what scientists were predicting. Instead, when the Government-endorsed, industry-led expansion plan, Food Harvest 2020, was published in 2010 – funded with millions of public money – it did not address the most critical farming factor: the scientific modelling which predicted that agriculture would soon face very different weather patterns than before.
In 2018, the extreme snow in spring – which the State agriculture agency Teagasc claimed was “unique” – was followed by a prolonged drought during the hottest summer period on record in over two decades. Farm income dropped, and the stress of trying to keep animals alive in the cold, and well-watered in the heat, brought some farmers to breaking point. But 2018 was no outlier; later that year, Sweeney warned that the weather would likely become even more extreme in the years ahead.
The powers that be should have paid more attention to climate scientists then. They’d do well to do so now.Kamala Harris is a descendant of an Irish slave owner in JamaicaMan arrested on suspicion of murder after body of woman found in burning building in Co Cork
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