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The Michael Healy-Rae climate plan: ‘Save the planet but not at the expense of the farmer’

Radio: Pat Kenny tries to sum up the Kerry TD’s view of the climate crisis in Ireland

Newstalk’s Pat Kenny: Any aliens out there? The line is open. Photograph: Frank Miller

Mick Heaney's face
Mick Heaney
Fri Nov 5 2021 - 05:00

As Cop26 dominates the news, there's not much optimism about the summit's chances of slowing down global warming. Even still, it's alarming to hear the kind of existential despair expressed by Pat Kenny as he interviews one of summit's attendees.

"It's hard sometimes to see the point of it all, we are so insignificant," he sighs on Wednesday's Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, weekdays), sounding less like he's hosting a magazine programme than perusing Sartre's Being and Nothingness.

As it happens, Kenny's outburst isn't triggered by the prospect of catastrophic climate change. Rather, it occurs as he discusses Earth's "place in the cosmos" with Prof Michael Burton of Armagh Observatory, who is at the Glasgow summit.

The Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae warns Pat Kenny about farming incomes being hit by plans to cut methane emissions – in other words, that it's an unfair Cop

Contemplating the possibility of extraterrestrial life, the host suggests we would have heard from aliens by now if they existed. His guest points out that the vast expanse of space means any messages would take thousands of years to arrive. “But there are bigger questions than that,” Burton adds. “Even if life does form and survive, we don’t know how long it exists in a state where it could communicate elsewhere, and that’s one of the challenges we face here.”

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It’s a bleak moment in the conversation – “Are we going to be able to sustain our planet?” the astronomer asks – but Kenny is more struck by Earth’s cosmic irrelevance. Burton isn’t so sure. “Our Earth is just a tiny dot, but it’s also the only place we know we know where life has evolved.” It’s a much-needed nugget of positivity amid the gloomy fatalism surrounding Cop26.

A more down-to-earth air prevails when the Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae warns Kenny about farming incomes being hit by plans to cut methane emissions – in other words, that it’s an unfair Cop. The Kerry deputy adopts a measured tone as he argues that, because farming practices have improved “dramatically” in recent years, there’s no need to reduce Ireland’s cattle herd, a measure he claims the Government is pondering. “They’re using this fancy, stupid word, ‘stabilising’, about the national herd,” he says. “That’s like a person from the HSE talking about ‘reconfiguration’ of the health services. It means cuts.”

It’s a rhetorically effective if not entirely convincing argument that displays the wry folksiness that has made Healy-Rae a fixture in both the Dáil and the media. He even slips into something close to elegiac mood, describing farmers as “custodians of the countryside” and expressing distaste at placing monetary value on farmland. “You’re not selling it, it’s your vehicle for making a living and to pass on that living to the next generation.”

Michael Healy-Rae's highfalutin wistfulness soon gives way to provocative flourishes, as he characterises the Greens as 'a group of people who know nothing about job creation, nothing about work, nothing about how the country keeps rolling'

But this highfalutin wistfulness soon passes, as Healy-Rae’s restraint gives way to more reliably provocative flourishes. He bemoans the Coalition’s environmentally driven policies, claiming that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are being “led by the nose” by the Green Party. Warming to his theme, he characterises the Greens as “a group of people who know nothing about job creation, nothing about work, nothing about how the country keeps rolling”.

It’s entertaining, in an exasperating way, but when Healy-Rae starts fulminating about the fishing industry being sold out, Kenny has had enough. “All right, I think we get your point: you’re in favour of saving the planet but not at the expense of the farmer,” the host says, doing his bit to save us all time before it’s too late.

Notwithstanding his fleeting angst about the transience of existence, Kenny sends out mixed messages about the urgency of global warming. He may play clips of Greta Thunberg chanting “You can shove your climate crisis up your arse” – catchy, if hardly constructive – but he also carries items on methane-reducing slurry-treatment systems that could remove the need to cut the national herd.

Possible this may be, but the conversation also implicitly suggests climate change is something other than a global emergency. Perhaps Kenny should get in touch with his existential side more often.

Over on The Last Word (Today FM, weekdays) Matt Cooper also offers a philosophical take on Cop26, albeit in less angsty terms. Cooper interviews Dr Kian Mintz-Woo, a philosophy lecturer at University College Cork, about climate ethics, particularly surrounding meat consumption. After checking his guest's green bona fides by asking how he travelled to the Glasgow summit (train and ferry – a solid pass), the host hears Mintz-Woo propose we shift our national taste for "ruminates", which is to say beef and lamb, towards pork or poultry, "or, even better, mussels or clams or legumes". Ditching the Sunday roast would not only help the climate, he says, but also improve our diet.

One can understand why the farmers feel unfairly targeted while the national herd of energy-vampire data centres continues to grow unchecked

Trying to find fault with this, Cooper grasps at straws, saying that increased consumption of red meat has helped each generation grow taller. Mintz-Woo concedes this may have been the case 20 years ago, but he handily rebuts Cooper’s rather lame argument.

Cooper also speaks to Peter Hynes, a farmer, who contrasts harmful beef-production methods overseas with more sustainable practices here. The resulting discussion pitches Mintz-Woo’s (refreshingly unpreachy) ethical position against Hynes’s more practical position to interesting effect. Ultimately, it’s hard to reject the moral case for eating less meat, and indeed having less cattle, though whether there’s much political stomach for this is another matter.

Still, one can understand why the farmers feel unfairly targeted while the national herd of energy-vampire data centres continues to grow unchecked. Cooper helms a debate on the issue between the Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore, who wants to limit the increase in centres before they consume a projected 30 per cent of Ireland’s energy in 2030, and the Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell, who pushes the economic case for expansion, while emitting some hot air of his own. “The reason those companies are here is because of our highly educated market,” he says, apparently with a straight face.

Such eye-rolling moments aside, it’s a fact-based and polite discussion, ably helmed by Cooper, but again one senses short-term economic priorities will trump long-term necessities. Talk about a Cop-out.

Moment of the Week: Ready for unity?

Always happy to look at issues from a novel angle, Sean Moncrieff (Newstalk, weekdays) discusses what used to be called "the national question" with the Belfast author Glenn Patterson, who wonders whether the Republic would be prepared for a united Ireland with "800,000 people who identify as British". Unsurprisingly, Patterson has no easy answers; instead, guest and host discuss the economic and cultural shifts that might make such an eventuality possible. Perhaps the most intriguing takeaway is that it's wrong to view any constitutional arrangement as permanent, as Brexit most recently made clear. "There's a generational fallacy that whatever we do is going to fix things for good and all," Patterson says. Whether we like it or not, these conversations aren't going away anytime soon.

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