It was good of this newspaper to give so much space last Monday to an article by-lined "Trevor Sargent" - though I suspect he didn't write it, writes Kevin Myers. He always seems to possess rather more intelligence than was evident in those "Vote No" vapourings. Was it Trevor being kind to Keith (14) or Conor (13) in the youth wing of the Continuity Greens, Na Fianna Glasa, by allowing them to write the piece for him?
"Notwithstanding the merits of catalytic converters and other environmental measures, the Nice Treaty is part of a push to increase energy consumption and intensive agriculture. This results in goods having to travel greater distances, creating greater consumption of finite resources, and worsening the crisis of climate change. Remember the floods in Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic in recent months."
Now tell me, Keith - or is it Conor? - do any of the consecutive clauses above relate syllogistically or even sequentially with one another? Do they make any internal factual sense? Are they even true? And what were you on when you wrote them? To start with: the Nice Treaty terms have nothing do with "a push to increase energy consumption and intensive agriculture". Why would they? They merely provide a method of enlargement.
So if enlargement means an increase in energy consumption and intensive agriculture, then however that enlargement comes about (and in Keith's - or Conor's - ideal world, it comes about through the Amsterdam Treaty) the result will be the same. If it were true. But it's not. Nice, per se, has nothing to do with energy or with agriculture any more than it has to do with pearl fishing in Indonesia or traffic management in Bombay.
Faraway places
But the canard that Nice is somehow or other about energy or agriculture leads on to other Continuity fatuities. For Conor - or Keith - says that "this results in goods having to travel greater distances, creating greater consumption of finite resources". So are the Continuity Greens saying that they don't like trade with faraway places? Is it the Continuity position that we shouldn't trade with Africa or Brazil, New Zealand or China, because they're too far away, and all those ships bringing their produce to us create too much pollution?
So what does one have for breakfast in a Continuity Green household, after, that is, beginning the day with a solemn reading of the Easter Proclamation? Native Irish foodstuffs only? So no orange juice, no grapefruit, no cornflakes, no tea, no coffee, no chocolate, no Rice Krispies; just stirabout and rashers, with mead at night-time, and rollicking childhoods enlivened by scurvy, beri-beri and rickets.
And what do we wear in Continuity Green land? Not cottons or silks or man-made fibres, but ethnic wools, and not even hessian, which is made of Indian jute. Naturally, we heat our houses with irreproachable peat, wet and unwarming; and of course, we treat our consequent rheumatism with toad-oil and a clove of garlic.
National sovereignty
So how did the Irish Greens become so Continuity? Their argument with Nice is not an environmental one, but a simple nationalistic one. Yet the issue of national sovereignty is not usually a green issue; for greens, other than Continuity Greens, know no nations, no borders. It is up to other, more conventional parties to talk about sovereignty: and hearing the Continuity Greens carp about the administrative details of the EU is like listening to the GAA angrily complaining about how the MCC is run.
Nice is simply about manageable enlargement to include those Eastern European countries which for over half-a-century were crushed by fascism and communism. How does helping to modernise Poland's backward, filthy industries, or welcoming the ancient civilisations of the Baltic states, constitute an assault on the environment? It's certainly true that the proposed new system will mean that every quarter-of-a-century or so, Ireland, like every other country, for a single year, will not have a Commissioner: and the Continuities froth greenly about this as a loss of sovereignty. But Commissioners do not represent "national" interests: David Byrne is a servant of Europe, not of Ireland. What Conor - or is it Keith? - is attempting to achieve is a simple guarantee of preferment for Irish politicians. How very sweet of him. Or them.
This is not to say that all is well with the EU. It isn't. For a start, though the set-asides and the Rural Environmental Protection Schemes are certainly progress of a sort, the Common Agricultural Policy generally is a criminal conspiracy against the farmers of the undeveloped countries of the world; for these are the people who absolutely need to trade with us for their very survival.
Pious non-sequitur
Yet the Continuity Greens (well, Keith and Conor anyway) are against any such trade, Why? Well, apparently because of the long distances involved. No, no, I agree, it doesn't make any sense, so they throw in a pious and sublimely cretinous non-sequitur linking the consumption of finite resources in such trade with the floods across Europe earlier this year.
Yes, of course we all know that those river banks were burst precisely because of recent climate change, which in turn was caused precisely by the environmental pollution resulting precisely from ships bringing New Zealand wine and Brazilian mangoes and Indian spices to my table. Indeed, Noah had precisely the same complaint.
Keith - or is it Conor? - one out of ten. Pathetic stuff. Must try harder.