Heart Beat Maurice Neligan Grey-eyed Athena stirred them a following wind Soughing from the northwest on the wine dark sea
It is not my intention to bore you all with details of my trip. There were, however, aspects of it that were of general interest. Last week I had written of heading down the Argentinean coast towards Cape Horn with its forbidding reputation. Next port was to be Punto Arenas in Chile, then Ushuaia in Argentina again. We were to cruise the Magellan Strait and the Beagle Channel and pass through the avenue of the glaciers.
Albatross and penguin became daily companions and heading steadily south, ice began to appear in the water. It remained mercifully calm.
As of now I am all penguined and glaciered out. I am not going so far as to say that if you've seen one, you've seen them all, but there were undeniable similarities. Nevertheless, up close to a blue white glacier "calving" icebergs with a shattering roar into the calm cold waters was a truly unforgettable experience. As also was flying over Antarctica and the WeddellSea with an expert pilot from LAN Chile.
This provided me with an unsettling moment when, gazing out the window, I noticed a large penguin looking placidly back from a rock ledge about 100ft from the wing tip - I hadn't signed up for a survival movie. But the pilot knew what he was about and the few muttered prayers did no harm.
Enough penguins, the point I was about to make concerned glaciers. It is official, I have seen it with my own eyes, the glaciers are retreating, ie melting. This was most obvious to us untutored mariners watching the icebergs detach from the massive San Valentin glacier in Laguna San Rafael in Chile. This has retreated over a half-mile in the past 20 years and the relative positions were clearly marked on the rocks of the fjord.
With the slight caveat that this has all happened before - the ice ages and mini ice ages and the retreat of the ice - it is nevertheless a sobering phenomenon, this whole question of global warming and its possible consequences.
Aside from weeping for the whole world, putting first things first, I wondered specifically about Dooks, Co Kerry, and Blackrock, Dublin. Maybe it's not time to head for the hills just yet, but it might be prudent to check out land prices on the slopes of Carrantuohil or on the tops of the Dublin mountains.
This being Ireland, planning permission should not be too much trouble. We don't need schools or shops or community centres and basic roads will do. I suppose a hospital would be out of the question? We just want the normal kind of package from the Tammany Tent.
I am digressing again. Seriously though, my inability to proceed in a straight line is beginning to bother me; perhaps some future nurse practitioner could give me an aspirin or something to straighten me out? I won't hold my breath for that either.
We have plans, I believe, to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and lessen our emission of greenhouse gases. By 2020, we will be alright. Well we won't be; we'll be bloody cold, depressed in ourselves and in our economy, unless we take realistic steps right now.
One of our "on board" discussion groups was about future energy needs. There were many highly qualified, intelligent people participating. Consensus was that hydro-electric, solar panels, wind energy, biofuels, etc would, at the very most, supply 20 per cent of world energy requirements. Despite frenetic activity and innovation in this field, there still may be an immense energy shortfall.
Consensus again, bearing in mind that consensus does not equate with certainty, is that nuclear power is the only realistic option, unless we want civilisation to actually step backwards. I've been there, growing up at the time of the second World War and the lean post-war years. I remember what it was like to be cold and have to conserve energy and fuel. I remember a far more restricted world when poverty, hunger and disease were abroad in Ireland. I don't want to go back there.
My last point about my journey before my return to my native Hy-Brasil, was that in travelling, I visited three capital cities - Buenos Aires, Santiago and Lima. All were clean and tidy and in Lima, crews were street cleaning on a Sunday afternoon. All appeared well policed, with a visible presence, full-time or auxiliary. All appeared to have a lower cost of living, with comparable or better public services. In Lima we were taken to the seaside area of Miraflores, our guide told us that in this expensive neighbourhood, a three-bed apartment with sea views could cost $350,000 and a penthouse with six bedrooms could even reach $1 million.
What's the matter with us? Don't we care any more? How did we let all this happen and are we ever going to wake up? We're not the greatest little country in the world, folks, maybe we could have been, but we have squandered our treasure, and even to the most blinkered of us it is obvious that problems lie ahead.
Lastly on return, I heard a proposal to ban smoking in cars and Avril Doyle MEP talking of a smoking ban throughout Europe. Did she ever hear of prohibition and the criminality thus engendered, I wondered? Trouble is that when you let them out of the bottle it's quite hard to put them back. Hy-Brasil indeed.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.