Category Archives: Eco-Awareness

Only the ‘Eco-Awareness’ columns from 2021 onwards are accessible here. For older Eco-Awareness columns by Larry Speight please click on the “Go to our pre-2021 Archive Website’ tag on the right of this page. Also see ‘Eco Echoes’ – a selection from his columns – in ‘Pamphlets’ under ‘Much more’ in the menu bar.

Eco-Awareness; Entitlement and genocide

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Larry Speight brings us his monthly column –

After watching a documentary on the RTE Irish language station TG4 about the relationship between Irish immigrants and the Indigenous Peoples of North America (Éire agus na chéad náisiúin, broadcast on 5 September) I visited U.S. General Philip Sheridan’s family house in Killinkere, County Cavan. In front of the gable wall stands a large memorial block erected in June 1969 that has an inscription declaring that the house is General Sheridan’s birth place. Sheridan’s place of birth has not been verified. He might have been born on route to the United States or in Albany, New York State as he claimed. Underneath the inscription is a quote from General Ulysess S. Grant dedicated to General Sheridan. It reads –

“He belongs to the very first rank of captains not only of our army but of the world. I rank him with Napoleon and Frederick and the great commanders of history.”

Sheridan, who was born in 1839 and died in 1888, not only fought with utter ruthlessness against the Confederate Army in the American Civil War but committed acts of genocide against the indigenous peoples of the United States. Among the tribes he waged scorched-earth war against are the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa.

As befitting his genocidal actions Sheridan is reputed to have said that “the only good Indian is a dead one.” As with his birth place this is disputed but accords with the view that was common among his military peers and the people who sought to make a home for themselves on land that the indigenous peoples had lived on for generations. On his deathbed Sheridan was honoured by been promoted to the rank of General of the Army.

Although General Sheridan never explicitly advocated the extermination of the indigenous peoples of North America it was more a matter that many of the European settlers and their descendants thought that this is what should happen. This was encapsulated in the idea of Manifest Destiny which considered the indigenous peoples to be an impediment to the fulfilment of God’s plan for the continent which was for it to become the home of the Christian peoples of the world, in particular white people.

The idea of Manifest Destiny was first publicly aired by newspaper editor John O’Sullivan in mid-1845 and promoted by the 11th President of the United States, James K. Polk who mentioned it in his first State of the Union Address on 2 December 1845. For those interested in genealogy the president’s family emigrated from the north of Ireland in the 1720s. John O’Sullivan’s father was from Ireland and his mother from England.

Implicit in the concept of Manifest Destiny is the sense of entitlement. This is the idea that one is entitled to something because they believe they are superior in a multitude of ways to others, perhaps by virtue of their social class or because they believe that what they desire has been bequeathed to them by God. In either case they see their role, their life’s work, to take from others what they think is theirs by right or because they deserve it. On the basis of their sense of righteousness, they don’t regard killing those who have what they want as sinful or as a stain on their character. Their moral defence is that their brutality is sanctioned by an authority higher than them which can be history, government or God. In their eyes, and the group they identify with, they are God’s avenging angel.

It is this sense of entitlement that likely enabled the new arrivals in the United States, Australia and elsewhere to eliminate, contain and enculturate the indigenous peoples. The same credo is evident amongst the Jews who think that Palestine was bequeathed to them by God as stated in Genesis 12: 7, 17:8 and Numbers 34 in the Old Testament/Hebrew scriptures.

The template as to how European colonialists should treat the Indigenous Peoples who had what they wanted might be said to be contained in Exodus, (33:1), the second book of the Bible. A similar message is conveyed in Deuteronomy, (20: 16-17), the fifth book of the Bible.

“But as for the towns of these peoples … you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them – the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites … just as the Lord your God has commanded.”

It is difficult to know if the suffering one group imposes on anther is based wholly on the belief that they are simply doing God’s will or are using God, or an authority such as a government, to disguise their intentions for self-advancement.

We can learn a number of things from Sheridan’s life story. One is that we are susceptible to being brutalised and coming to regard people who appear different from us as of less moral worth than us. Regular exposure to any phenomena makes it seem normal. The once widespread practice of corporal punishment in schools and smoking in enclosed public spaces are examples.

Young children don’t tend to see killing people and eliminating cultures as one of the things they want to do later in life. Nevertheless, a sizeable number grow up to believe that they are entitled to belittle, intimate and kill those they see as a threat. This is largely due to their susceptibility to the message that the group / tribe / nation they identify with is under existential threat. This is at the heart of this September’s cross-community dispute of the Orange Order’s wish, supported by a Court of Appeal ruling, to parade along the Garvaghy Road in Portadown.

One way to counter this narrow sense of belonging and of entitlement is through nurturing the view that there is no ‘other’, that all sentient beings deserve respect and are an integral part of the whole. The Chinese and the Russians are not the enemy, as militarists want us to believe. Nor are people with a different skin colour or culture from us, which is something General P. Sheridan and his ilk did not appreciate. The real impediments to living on good terms with others, and with nonhuman nature, are ignorance, fear and greed.

Eco-Awareness with Larry Speight: National identities eschew ecological identity

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One thing that the twin forms of nationalism on this island have in common is that both eschew a sense of identity with nonhuman nature.

On a walk through Loyalist communities before this year’s 12th of July celebrations I was struck by the extent to which the murals and many of the flags are of a militarist nature and embrace Britain’s colonial past in particular the wars it fought not only in defence of the British Isles but of its empire. Nowhere did I see any indication that the Loyalist / Unionist identity encompassed a love of nonhuman nature.

Military victories and perceived military triumphs are celebrated in word and image but no homages are paid to nature as in depictions of woodlands, lakes, rivers and the animals we share the island with. I saw no reference to the four seasons that affect the annual cycle of our lives or even to the food we produce. These it seems don’t have a place in the sense of what it means to be a Loyalist / Unionist.

As in Loyalists communities the murals and flags in Irish nationalist communities are overwhelming militarist with a notable absence of depictions that express an affinity with the greater nature we are an integral part of. In the broader field of communal identity none of the main political parties, both North and South, other than the Green Party, have shown any interest in the welfare of the natural world until very recently.

Further, when ecological issues are on the agenda be it the decline of biodiversity, water pollution or the warming of the planet, one thing the main political parties agree on is that nothing must get in the way of economic growth as measured by GDP. This is their most sacred of sacred cows.

If this were otherwise we would not have had the Northern Ireland Assembly’s 2014 ‘Going For Growth Strategy’ in regard to the Agri-Food industry which has played a pivotal role in the blue-green algae that has devastated marine life on Lough Neagh, Lough Erne and other bodies of water.

If the national identity of people in Northern Ireland encompassed the biological reality that we are the very essence of what constitutes nature, and that nonhuman nature has intrinsic moral worth, the N.I. Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) would not have had to issue a report in mid-June informing us that in the past five years over 50,000 fish were killed as a result of 65 reported pollution incidents.

The DAERA figures for fish kills in Northern Ireland over the past five years are as follows. Farming accounts for 43% of fish kill incidents, 16% of pollution incidents are classified as other, 10% are attributed to industrial and chemical incidents, 4% to domestic incidents and 3% to Northern Ireland Water. The biological condition of waterways in the South of Ireland differs little from that in the North as illustrated by the case that in the 1980s, 500 rivers in the Republic were classified as pristine compared with 20 today.

These figures suggest that while some sectors of society are more responsible for the pollution of our waterways than others we all have a part to play in ensuring rivers, lakes and loughs are free from pollution by not dropping litter, not flushing sanitary products down the toilet, not pouring oils and paints into drains and not using toxic chemicals on pets as flea treatments.

If our sense of identity were as embracing of nature as that of Christ in Saint Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer (of ancient origin) then it is almost certain that the enormity of our ecological problems would be much less than what they are. Replacing the word ‘Christ’ with the word ‘Nature’ the prayer reads:

“Nature with me. Nature before me. Nature behind me. Nature beneath me. Nature above me. Nature on my Right. Nature on my left. Nature when I lie down. Nature when I sit down. Nature when I arise.”

Nature is all encompassing. It includes the estimated 38 trillion microbes that live on our skin to the entire cosmos. The minerals which compose the human body were formed on the occasion of the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago. The moisture in our bodies, we are 70% water, originates on the Earth. Some of the clouds you once gazed at could be in your veins having fallen as rain into a river or lough from where you draw your drinking water.

If a significant number of people lived life in the full knowledge that humans are nature then legislation rooted in this view would likely come into effect. We would be inclined to design the type of social and physical infrastructure that enables us to live rewarding useful lives in an ecologically sustainable way. Aware that all life-forms have interests, live in community and like us have an invested interest in the health of our shared, complex and vibrant ecosystem, we world likely treat all life with respect on all occasions.

It is apt when taking stock of our situation in this summer of extremely high temperatures, devastating forest fires, water-use restrictions and the large number of deaths attributed to the high temperatures to examine the mosaic of features that make up our sense of national identity. There would be no greater legacy if nationalists of every hue ditched the militarist component of their identity and internalised our defining feature which is that we are Nature.

Internalising this sense of ourselves would provide us with a life-affirming perspective from which to challenge the orthodoxy that economic growth triumphs over the integrity of ecological systems and social justice. If we don’t come to realise our sense of place in the larger picture and re-engineer the fundamentals of how we live we will inevitably discover that the biosphere can’t indefinitely satisfy our appetite for more and more things and that valuing military prowess over caring for the biosphere is utterly futile.

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Eco-Awareness with Larry Speight: Our failure to manage material waste

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Larry Speight brings us his monthly column –

A report issued on the 8 June, which is the UN declared World Ocean Day, states that an estimated 52 million tonnes of plastics enter the ocean every year. I challenge you to imagine the scale of this amount. What does 52 million tons of any substance look like? The truth is the amount is so vast we have no readily available reference points.

This, sad to say, is not the total sum of our waste. It is but the measure of one of the materials we use and discard almost without thought in the course of our day. We have a plastic wrapping in our hands one moment and if in a public space are likely let it fall at our feet or if in a moving vehicle throw it out the window. If you don’t believe this look around you. On seashores, river embankments, in woodlands, on the verge of country roads and on city pavements you will find discarded plastic along with other items such as cigarette butts and vapes. They are found on the top of mountains and at places that were traditionally considered sacred such as holy wells and wishing trees.

Throwing away plastic wrappings, bags, bottles and containers of every kind is for many as unconscious as the stream of unregistered thoughts involved in our physical dexterity such as walking or reaching for something. An exception is when we have suffered an injury and every move has to be consciously planned in order to minimise the pain.

Throwing away things we no longer want is an integral part of many a person’s mindset, something the archaeological evidence shows we having being doing since our species first evolved. For most of this time this was not an ecological or social problem as what we used was organic and decomposed. However, with the advent of the industrial age and the development of synthetic materials how to dispose of things in a way that causes the least harm is a major problem.

Are readers aware that in both Northern and Southern Ireland most landfill sites have reached full capacity and the waste is transported by lorries to mainland Britain and Europe to feed incinerators that generate electricity. This embeds waste management across our island in the global fossil fuel economy and every penny rise in the cost of liquid fuels means that Councils have less money to spend on meeting other public needs. This is a millstone around our necks pulling us ever deeper into the mire of economic and ecological dysfunction.

The challenge of disposing what we don’t want, which are often perfectly usable goods, is an educational and legislative one involving the chicken and egg scenario. Legislation is needed at all levels of government, including at the international level, to ensure that manufactured goods can be repaired rather junked for the reason that the items can’t be repaired and if they can it is more expensive to repair them than buy a new one. This applies to things as transparently simple and inexpensive as a pair of flip-flops as it does to items as sophisticated and expensive as mobile phones. Long passed are the days when you could leave electric devices such as a radio, television and tape recorder into a shop to be repaired.

Legislation is also needed to change the materials in which things are contained and carried. When I travelled in India in the 1990s train passengers were served tea in clay cups which were, as our ancestors would have done, thrown away after the liquid was drank. Today it is plastic cups that are thrown away. Food items were served in paper cones, on palm leaves, in newspaper or pages torn out of an old school text book.

The conglomerates that dominate the global economy should be compelled by internationally enforceable legislation to produce packaging that when disposed of will decompose and can be used as compost on gardens and fields.

Some progress has been made in producing carrier bags that decompose but the research shows that outside of laboratory conditions the decomposition takes more than a human life-span. The majority of the clothes that likely adorn your body at this very moment will exist somewhere on the planet long after your flesh and bones have been digested by the guts of our planet. Your legacy won’t be engraved on a block of polished marble but be all the things you purchased during the course of your life which, as in a horror film, never die.

Your body is wearing your ghost.

Your immortality is your life-long accumulation of all the inorganic things you have ever owned and fossil fuels you have ever used or used for your benefit. It is said that all of our good and harmful deeds are recorded in a ledger overseen by God and that our immortal fate will be determined by what is the ledger, in other words by our own deeds. What will be the magnitude of the harm done to nonhuman beings and our fellow humans, including the generations yet to be born, when the record of your deeds is set before you so that you know you have chosen your own type of eternity?

Perhaps, as in court rooms today, we might plead ignorance as a mitigating circumstance, except that in law ignorance is no excuse. This brings us to the chicken and egg scenario. In order to achieve effective waste management legislation we need to lobby our legislative bodies to pass the legislation. Start with your elected political representatives. We also need to ensure that the conglomerates fulfill their ecological responsibilities and educate ourselves about the ecological niche we occupy and the harm we do as well as the good we can do.

The Earth is being suffocated by the things we dispose of which means we are self-harming and this should stop. The first step towards restoring our collective health can be taken today. No excuses.

Eco-Awareness: The conundrum of modernity

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Larry Speight brings us his monthly column –

Although we live in an integrated world, as the disruption to the global oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz show, we don’t seem to realise that when we buy food, cosmetics, cleaning products and pet food that we are almost certainly contributing to the demise of the ecological sustainability of the biosphere. What this means is that we are in a direct, measurable and tangible way undermining our children’s and grandchildren’s future.

No doubt some readers will feel affronted by this deduction, thinking ‘I would do absolutely anything for my family and those I care about’. Would you, however, forego buying products with palm oil in them? If you want to be thought of as a good ancestor who lived in compliance with the regenerative capacities of nonhuman nature then your response would be affirmative.

What would not using products with palm oil entail? As 72% of the global food market relies on palm oil it would mean not eating most types of biscuit, cake, crisps, breakfast cereals, breads, spreads and ice cream. If you already abstain from eating these on taste or health grounds would you forego using most brands of tooth paste, soap, shampoo, facial cream, lipstick as well as many cleaning products? In the case of the latter 18% of cosmetics and cleaning products use palm oil. If you drive a petrol or diesel vehicle will you cease to drive it on learning that legislation requires that petrol and diesel is composed of 10% biofuels and that 10% to 15% of this comes from palm oil?

As our dependency on palm oil shows fossil fuels are not the only commodity that enmeshes us in the web of the global economy and thus widespread ecological destruction and structural injustices.

Palm oil originated in the rainforests of the Guinea coast in West Africa and has been used for millennium by local communities for cooking, healing and rituals. It was also traded as traces of it have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back 5,000 years. It was not, however, until the nineteenth century that European colonialists in Africa realised its versatile properties and transplanted it to Indonesia and Malaysia where it is widely grown today.

Although palm oil is beginning to make its ecologically disruptive presence felt in tropical Africa, central and south America, it is Indonesia and Malaysia account for the vast majority of the palm oil used around the world. Malaysia supplies 25% of the market while Indonesia 60%.

There is nothing ecologically wrong with palm oil per se. (Biologically it is not classified as a tree.) The problem is they are planted in vast regimented formations on land that has been cleared of bio-rich forests either by bulldozing them down or turning them into ash by setting them alight. The loss of these forests is immeasurable as it results in the extinction of flora including some not known to science but familiar to the Indigenous communities who use them in an ecologically sustainable way.

In Indonesia palm oil plantations have led to the catastrophic demise of the Sumatra tiger, forest elephant, forest rhino and the three species of orangutan. It has led to soil erosion and water contamination through the indiscriminate use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers. Indigenous people in Kalimantan, Sumatra and Papua have been particularly affected losing much of the forest that sustained them physically, psychologically and culturally.

Losing a culturally significant site is important as verified by the August 2017 and November 2024 protests in the Sandy Row area of Belfast over the dismantling of the Boyne Bridge as part of the construction of Grand Central Station. Between 2006 and 2008 there were sustained local and international protests against the building of the M3 motorway through the culturally important landscape in the vicinity of the Hill of Tara, County Meath.

To grasp the importance sites of cultural significance are to our sense of identity imagine how you would you feel if a company acquired an iconic site such as Devenish Island in County Fermanagh and without prior and informed consent levelled what is left of the monastic buildings and planted row upon row of gooseberry bushes. Likewise, how would you feel if a graveyard where your loved ones are buried was acquired by a company who bulldozed away the graves in order to use the land to grow a commercial crop.

This is what has happened in Indonesia and Malaysia since the nineteenth century and as Muhamad Isnur informs us in The Jakarta Post, 12 May 2026, it is happening on a large scale today in Papua, one of the 17,024 islands in the Indonesian archipelago. Here Indigenous communities are losing their land to corporations with the active support of the government and military.

Although Indonesia and Malaysia are a long way from Ireland if we use palm oil we are complicit in the suffering caused to the people and nonhuman life forms in both countries even if we are unaware of the devastation caused by the palm oil plantations. Like it or not we are entangled in the web of international commerce simply by spending money.

Is there a way out of the conundrum of enjoying the comforts, conveniences and opportunities offered by modernity which inescapably entails us violating our values and principles? This is something we all need to ask ourselves whilst examining plausible resolutions.

First though we need to see what is wrong with how we live as we won’t attempt to fix what we don’t know is broken. To do this we need to breach the membrane of our enculturalisation and have an idea of what we are looking for in the foliage of the taken for granted.

Education in the sense of training our minds to see the consequences of our behaviour on the disempowered as well as the capacity of nonhuman life forms to live according to their endowments is critical. As all things are connected when we harm others we harm ourselves.

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Eco-Awareness with Larry Speight: The militarist mindset

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The statistics presented to us through the various media outlets about the war in the Middle East fail to convey the full horror of its impact on human and nonhuman life and the commentary tells us little about the negative consequences for the descendants of those who suffer from the violence as well as the harm done to the biosphere which will last for millennia.

Our lack of exposure to the full horror of the war is not entirely the fault of the media as much of what is happening is not seen by them. Although the visuals aired for a few minutes on our screens and the brief accounts that are broadcast of the anguish and inconsolable grief felt by those whose loved ones have been injured and killed resonate with most people, we living far from the suffering have no voice in the war cabinets of the United States, Israel and Iran. Nor do we have a voice in the war cabinets in Ukraine and Russia or the desert camps of the warring parties in Sudan. No one on our rain-soaked island can declare that a war in a faraway land is over.

What we can do is educate ourselves about the horror and the consequences of war which might lead to a mass opting out of the militarist mindset which holds that there is no alternative to organised violence, a view that the 1998 Northern Ireland Peace Agreement firmly rejected.

The militarist mindset is dangerously flawed as it is based on a fractured view of humanity. On the one hand it depicts an entire people, in the case of the United States’ war on Iran, 93 million humans, as undeserving of the essentials of life such as water, food and energy as well as freedom from anxiety and fear. This is underscored by President Donald Trump saying that he will bomb the Iranian people “back to the Stone Ages where they belong.”

The word ‘belong’ is telling as it reveals that in his cosmology there are the deserving and the undeserving, those who have entitlements ascribed by divine providence and those that don’t. This view of the so-called enemy is prevalent amongst all warring groups. It was articulated by Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Secretary of War, who in a religious service at the Pentagon on the 25 March said that the wicked should be eliminated and called on God, with reference to Iran, to “break the teeth” and kill the “wicked” enemies “who deserve no mercy” and should be “delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.”

The militarist mindset can simultaneously consider a whole ethnic group or nation unworthy of life while exalting those of their in-group / country / who cause others enormous suffering and commit mass murder if it is perceived to further the interests of their group.

Aside from the inaccuracy of this fractured view of humanity and the indifference to the suffering it causes, which is overwhelmingly borne by women and children, there is an additional ecological and human cost even if not a single person receives a scratch in the war zone. Both arise out of military spending.

The projected global sum that will be spent on the military in 2026 is $2.9 trillion. The United States is expected to spend in excess of $1 trillion while the European Union is expected to increase its spending by 60 billion Euro bringing the total to an estimated 460 billion Euro. This is money that could be spent on meeting social needs such as affordable housing, health care, education, care of the vulnerable and regenerative agriculture both at home and abroad.

A positive outcome of redirecting the enormous amount of money spent on the military towards social need is that it lessens the potential for social conflict thus helping neuter the perceived need for military hardware and trained killers.

As the 30-year long period of political violence in Northern Ireland reveals there is the phenomena of inter-generational trauma which carries a litany of wellbeing issues including chronic ill-health as revealed by the 2025 report ‘The Prevalence and Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Northern Ireland’ which was commissioned by the N.I. Executive. In the case of the violence and destruction of civic infrastructure in Palestine, Sudan and other war zones the children not only experience deep trauma but as their schools have been destroyed and many of their teachers killed they will likely grow up without receiving a formal education.

With few exceptions media coverage of wars neglect to examine their impact on the biosphere including the ecosystems in the war zones. When the ghastly plumes of black smoke rise into the sky from bombed buildings, oil storage tanks and ships an easy reference could be made by the commentators that the smoke and dust emitted from the bombed structures contribute to the warming of the planet and that the fallout will poison water, soil and plants and likely be inhaled by the human and nonhuman population causing chronic health problems.

The amount of global warming gasses emitted by war is substantial. The Guardian reports that in the first two weeks of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran the global warming emissions exceeded the amount emitted by Iceland in the course of a year. In February 2025, Earth.org reported that the global warming emissions from Russia’s war on Ukraine was the equivalent of the annual emissions of Austria, Hungry, Czech Republic and Slovakia combined. Globally, the military’s annual emission of global warming gases totals approximately 5.5 percent of the annual global total emissions. If the military were a country they would rank as the fourth-largest national emitter.

The militarist mindset not only wages war against people, in particular women and children who are the main causalities of war, but on the biosphere itself. To undermine the ability of the biosphere to sustain life robs us of the right to call ourselves Homo sapiens – the wise ape.

Eco-Awareness with Larry Speight: The wisdom of the Pharaoh

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The idea of preparing for a rainy day, of having savings to pay for an unexpected setback such as repairing a much needed home appliance or buying your child a new pair of shoes is an intrinsic part of our culture. In fact, preparing for possible, if not inevitable, hard times seems to be a cross-cultural disposition. In Genesis chapter 41: 14 – 36, Joseph advises the Pharaoh to store surplus food during an expected seven years of plenty in preparation for seven years of famine that are thought will follow as foreseen in the Pharaoh’s dream.

The Pharaoh wisely took Joseph’s advice.

In a general sense people on this island, across Europe and most of the world have since the end of the second world war increasingly lived in an age of plenty, albeit with a terrible price paid by the biosphere in terms of loss of biodiversity, the rise in global temperature and pollution of soil, air and water. During these years of plenty and technological innovation governments have not acted with the wisdom of the Pharaoh and prepared their societies to cope with the predicted negative consequences of our irresponsible treatment of nonhuman nature.

There are, and have been, many Josephs who dedicated their lives to getting us to awaken to the folly of our consumer life-style. Among them are Rachel Carson (1907-1964) who is best known for her 1962 book Silent Spring, E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977) who crystalised his ideas of living within ecological limits in Small is Beautiful (1973). In our own time there is the Irish author and film maker Manchan Magan (1970 – 2025) who is perhaps best known for his book Thirty-Two Words for Field. A climate and human rights campaigner who is known internationally is Greta Thunberg who was Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year.

In addition to dedicated individuals there are organisations a plenty in Ireland and elsewhere who, on the basis of rigorous research and sound evidence, inform us that the rainy day we should have prepared for has arrived. We have been urged for decades to radically change our approach to organising the business of living whilst simultaneously preparing for the consequences of our historic abuse of the biosphere. The warnings have largely being ignored with tragic consequences in the form of life-inflicting and property destroying floods, droughts, storms, wild fires and the poisoning of waterways.

A major warning was given over 50 – years ago in the landmark report on the consequences of continuous economic growth titled The Limits To Growth (1972). It was produced by an international team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the think tank The Club of Rome. Thirty million copies were published and the report’s findings were widely debated but the transition to “a stable state society” was never undertaken.

An equally important warning was given in Our Common Future (1987), also known as The Brundtland Report, published by the UN. It had more success in getting society and governments to recognise the serious plight the biosphere was in due to our inconsiderate behaviour. It coined what is now a classic definition of sustainable development. This is: “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”

The report led to the first Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992 out of which came the Commission on Sustainable Development and in time the annual Conference of the Parties, better known as COPs, to address climate breakdown. They have been held annually since 1995. The most successful COP to date was the one held in Paris in 2015 in which agreement was reached by the governments of the world to limit global warming to 1.5 Celsius.

In spite of all the conferences, declarations, uncountable scientific reports on the ecological unsustainability of our economic order and the many successful nature conservation projects such as the RSPB’s Curlew protection programme on Upper and Lower Lough Erne, the protection of puffins on Rathlin Island and the Isle of Muck we are metaphorically clinging to the side of the life-boat.

Worryingly New Scientist, 14 March 2026, reports that the average global temperature is rising, sea levels are much higher than previously thought which if the trend continues will lead to the displacement of hundreds of millions of people, the loss of civil infrastructure, agricultural lands and habitat.

Just as disruptive, and unwelcomed by people who find prolonged cold weather insufferable, is the weakening of the ocean current which accounts for our mild climate. There has already been a measurable shift northward and as the New Scientist reports “any abrupt shift in the Gulf Stream could signal an imminent, catastrophic collapse in the ocean current.” If this were to happen the winter temperature in Ireland could at times drop to -20 Celsius.

Our ignoring the warnings of ecological catastrophe has led to the exceedingly poor ecological health of most lakes and rivers across the island including Lough Neagh, Lough Erne and Belfast Lough. The Guardian recently reported that genes capable of creating superbugs resistant to antibiotics have been detected in Lough Neagh and that a study found E coli bacteria in every sample of cattle manure tested in the Lough Neagh catchment area.

Genes capable of creating superbugs resistant to antibiotics could exist in other bodies of water. The existence of such genes is something the health and water authorities should take very seriously as the World Health Organisation describes antimicrobial resistance as “one of the most urgent, complex and frightening health challenges of our time”.

This situation alone highlights the case that if we value our health, which is not separate from the health of others, we need to embrace the credo of the likes of Rachel Carson, E.F. Schumacher and Manchan Magan and be cognisant that the technosphere is wholly dependent on the ecosphere and cease to be blasé about how we treat the only home we have.

Eco-Awareness with Larry Speight: Our degradation of nature is a national security issue

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Larry Speight brings us his monthly column –

It is said that a government’s overriding responsibility is to provide national security or as the UK Home Office says: “The first duty of government is to keep its citizens safe and the country secure.” The reasoning is that without a secure and well-ordered society there will be economic instability and the government will not have the means to deliver social services such as health care, education and sanitation. The truth of this is borne out by the civil war in Sudan and President Putin’s war against Ukraine. In Sudan public services have collapsed and in Ukraine the government struggles to provide its citizens with electricity during their harsh winter due to the targeting of power stations and the national grid by Putin’s war machine.

Because of the tremendous suffering that results from wars and internal violent conflict national security is justifiably a government priority. The default view across the main political parties and most governments is that this can be obtained and sustained through military might. This, the evidence suggests, is mistaken.

A primary reason why interpreting the need for national security in solely militaristic terms is flawed is because of its exclusivity in that it ignores the multiple needs that human wellbeing is based upon which leads to depravations often resulting in civil disorder which can escalate into prolonged armed conflict. There are many examples of this occurring around the world including in Northern Ireland.

One of the many problems with militarism is that it has an unquenchable thirst for money in order for a government to develop and stockpile the means of war. When a war begins the unquenchable thirst includes both human and nonhuman life.

Militarism nullifies the very purpose it is purported to serve which is the welfare of those in whose name wars are prepared for and fought. The case of nuclear warfare underlines the point.

The nuclear weapons of the nine countries that possess them are immensely more powerful than the 15-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in August 1945. It killed an estimated 70,000 people instantly with many thousands dying over the following years. The bomb used on Nagasaki three days later killed an estimated 200,00 people. The UK’s submarine-launched warheads are six times more powerful than these bombs and the U.S. B-41 bomb is 1,500 times more powerful.

The impact of the use of these weapons is beyond horrifying in terms of the number of deaths, life-long injuries and loss of infrastructure, built heritage and cultural archives that would occur. In addition, it is estimated that disruption to the climate would lead to two billion people suffering from famine. A nuclear war would turn our Garden of Eden into a burnt, dusty, poisoned planet making life exceedingly difficult for future generations.

A high cost is born by militarism even if a shot is never fired. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute inform us that in a single year, 2024, $2,718 billion was spend on the military worldwide. In the course of a decade this is $20, 718, 000, 000. And guess what, no matter how much governments spend on the military they will always feel that it is not enough and demand ever higher sums from their citizens further depriving them of social services. By way of contrast most people and businesses don’t invest their money on unrealisable projects.

Another dimension to the idea that national security can only be obtained through the threat of mass violence is that it is wholly disconnected from what is the real threat to human wellbeing and survival, nationally and globally. This is the increasing inability of the biosphere to sustain the life-style enjoyed by people living in rich countries like our own since end of the Second World War.

This reading of the terrain is not only held by environmental organisations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace but also, as will surprise many, by the UK Government. The report ‘Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security assessment’ compiled by the Joint Intelligence Committee, on which the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHO sit, emphatically states that the declining health of the biosphere is a national security issue.

The report was held back from publication and only made public through a freedom of information request lodged by the Green Alliance. Number 3 of its 7 Key judgements reads.

“Critical ecosystems that support major global food production and impact global climate, water and weather cycles are the most important for UK national security. Severe degradation or collapse of these would highly likely result in water insecurity, severely reduced crop yields, a global reduction in arable land, fisheries collapse, changes to global weather patterns, release of trapped carbon exacerbating climate change, novel zoonotic diseases and loss of pharmaceutical resources. The Amazon rainforest, Congo rainforest, boreal forests, the Himalayas and South East Asia’s coral reefs and mangroves are particularly significant for the UK.”

This deduction applies to our own island as we like Britain share a similar climate and import most of our food, animal feed and fertilisers. In fact, the warming of the planet, loss of biodiversity, infectious diseases and multiple types of pollution affect everyone on the planet which makes a mockery of the idea that national security can be achieved through military might.

The best way to achieve national security is not by the main political parties, public commentators, think-tanks and so forth clamouring for an increase in military spending but by unrelentingly petitioning governments to address the root causes for the collapse of the eco-services we take for granted. Governments can work to restore ecosystems within their jurisdiction and through supporting international efforts help less wealthy countries heal their ecosystems. As the UK national security assessment says we are dependent on them. This is also the view of other governments.

Given this one wonders why governments misconstrue what it means to keep their citizens secure and safe.

Eco-Awareness with Larry Speight: The Dominion Mandate

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Everything we do, both personal and political, is based on our value system and understanding of how the world works. A headline example of values determining behaviour was given by Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, when explaining President Donald Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro on CNN News. He said: “We live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Contrary to this view the evidence indicates that life in its myriad forms is based on cooperation rather than coercion. The important point is that how we see our place in the world determines how we act in it. If a view is erroneous then the consequences will, at the very least, be disruptive for those concerned.

The view of the world held by the leaders of the global political powers as in President Trump, President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin all subscribe to the nationalist belief of manifest destiny. The term was coined in the United States in 1845 by the prominent New York based newspaper editor John O’Sullivan who propagated the view that the westward expansion of the United States was divinely ordained. This in effect meant that those who endorsed the idea believed that the extermination of the Indigenous people and the theft of their land was endorsed by God.

The idea of Manifest Destiny combined with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which is a formal U.S. foreign policy declaration concerning spheres of political influence, governs the political sparring between the major powers today.

President Trump holds that the U.S. has a right to dominate the Western Hemisphere, thus his expressed intention to colonise Greenland. President Xi Jinping claims that China has a divine right, as ordained by history, to Taiwan and most of the South China Sea. For his part President Putin asserts that Russia has a right to Ukraine, vast areas of the Arctic seabed beyond its Exclusive Economic Zone in addition to other independent territories. Putin’s claim for having divine authority for his war on Ukraine is provided by the Russian Orthodox Church which describes it as a “holy war”.

The genocide in Palestine, another zone of terrible violence and suffering, also has its roots in the claim to divine authority as in the view of many in the Israeli government that Palestine was given to the Jewish people by God as stated in the Old Testament.

Reliance on the idea of Manifest Destiny, or claim to know the will of God, is not only used by political leaders and movements to acquire territory through violence, including intimidation and deception, but by corporations and ordinary people who have a strong acquisitive drive. The Christian source of divine authority in regards to treating the Earth as a collection of material resources available for the exclusive use of humankind rather than the community of life-forms we share the planet with is Genesis 1: 26. The text is sometimes called the Dominion Mandate and says:

“And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our own likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” (King James Bible)

The Collins Etymological And Reference Dictionary (1953) states that dominion means supreme authority. To claim to have supreme authority over every species on Earth, many of which, as New Scientist, 17 January 2026, tells us have their own culture, values and emotions, is both hubris and self-aggrandisement. The Dominion Mandate, along with the belief that humans are created in the image of God, places us outside the natural order giving us licence to do with it as we wish without moral consequence.

The practical and moral consequences of this are evident in the steady rise in the average global temperature resulting in frequent extreme weather events that result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people every year and financial costs in hundreds of billions in hard currency. The Christian Aid report ‘Counting the cost 2025’ tells us that the estimated cost of climate breakdown in terms of physical damage between 1991 and 2020 is US$28 trillion.

Believing ourselves to be made in the image of God, superior to every species that has ever existed, has, in addition to climate breakdown, resulted in ecocide. Scientists estimate that between 20,000 and 2 million species went extinct during the 20th century due to human behaviour and according to the Royal Society a million species are currently threatened with extinction.

Given the extent of this annihilation of life one can only but conclude that to subscribe to the Dominion Mandate is to believe that God wants humans to eradicate all life on Earth and that we are His / Her/ Its executors somewhat akin to the Daleks in the 1960s BBC series Doctor Who whose mission was to exterminate all non-Dalek life.

The Daleks’ catchphrase. was “Exterminate” which they uttered as often in any given episode as our leading politicians utter the catchphrase ‘economic growth’ in any given speech or commentary with its rational to level mountains, build mega dams, change the course of rivers, mine the sea bed and eradicate all nonhuman life forms in order to realise economic goals. It would seem that we are so in love with ourselves we don’t want any other species to exist except those we have domesticated for our own use and gratification.

The healthy alternative to behaving like Daleks is to accept that we have no divine mandate and like every species are dependent upon the existence of a dynamic, evolving biosphere to survive and thrive. This means recognising the right of other species to exist through protecting their habitat from our avarice and sense of entitlement.

Eco-Awareness with Larry Speight: The global is local

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Larry Speight brings us his monthly column –

As the immediate has a profound effect on our lives it is not surprising that we on these islands are keen weather watchers and listen to weather forecasts throughout the day so that we can prepare for what is to come. Prolonged heavy rain might mean flooded roads requiring us to take detours to get to our destination and a storm might mean fallen electricity poles resulting in the loss of electricity to our homes. Knowing about what weather to expect incentivises us to prepare for it so that when it arrives we suffer less than we otherwise would have.

As a rule, we like to know about things in advance of them happening so that we can make the appropriate preparations, a redundancy for example. Under the radar of everyday life there is an industry that prepares us for death through encouraging us to draw up a will, write post-death letters to our loved ones and make provision for our funeral. As soon as young people get their first job they are encouraged to cast their minds 50-years into the future and save for their retirement.

The motto of the boy and girl scouts is Be Prepared.

Given humankind’s long history of living within set boundaries where our wellbeing was largely determined by local events it is not surprising that we in Ireland are inclined to frame issues in terms of the local. Until a few decades ago there were sound grounds for this, especially when much of our food was sourced locally. However, living as we do today in an exceedingly complex economy what happens globally is often more important that what happens locally. The price of oil is a case in point. A major disruption to the oil market could, within a matter of hours, raise the price of heating oil beyond most peoples’ means.

It is the global dimension to our lives that makes the annual two-weeks of negotiations on limiting global warming emissions under the auspices of the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) so important. The most recent one, COP 30, took place in Belem, Brazil this November.

Although the outcome was disappointing in that the petrostates along with other countries blocked reference in the final text to the core issue of transition away from fossil fuels. Agreements were reached on ecological literacy, climate-resilient health systems, expanded early-warning systems, climate justice and harmonising global carbon accounting standards.

The COP held in Paris in 2015 produced what is thought to be the most important outcome of all the COPs which is the agreement to limit global warming to 20 C with a focus on limiting the rise to 1.50 C as against pre-industrial levels. Today the global average temperature stands at 1.3OC and is on course to warm to 2.60 C by the end of the century.

There is almost near consensus among climatologists that to breach the 1.50 C limit will be catastrophic for life on Earth. Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, is quoted in the Guardian, 13 November 2025, as saying that: “A world at 2.6C means global disaster … (it) means the end of agriculture in the UK and across Europe, drought and monsoon failure in Asia and Africa, lethal heat and humanity.”

A temperature of 2.6C would lead to the collapse of the Atlantic Ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) which helps ensure that we on these islands enjoy a mild climate. It would also lead to in an increase in the melt rate of ice sheets resulting in a rise in sea levels displacing people in coastal towns and cities around the world including Dublin, Belfast, London, New York and Ho Chi Minh City. It would turn rainforests, which are one of the Earth’s major sinks for CO2, into savannah. Mosquito borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever, which are common in the tropics, would become more widespread.

What many will find particularly upsetting is that these likely outcomes are expected to occur within the life-span of children born in recent years who will live the nightmare of a chaotic world in which most of what we take for granted will cease to exist. This includes food variety and availability, water quality, electricity supply and convenient, comfortable transport.

One of the consequences of living in a world whose ecosphere is collapsing is that supply networks collapse with it. As an island people some might think that we have a propensity for economic self-sufficiency and should not be unduly worried about distant economic, ecological and political events. This view is mistaken.

Agriculture is an illustrative example. In spite of our island having mild weather and good soil 83 % of the fruit and vegetables we eat and 80% of the animal fed we use is imported. The latter comes from a variety of countries including Argentina, the EU, Brazil and the USA. When it comes to manufactured goods comparatively few are produced on either side of the border.

In the light of the ecological and economic catastrophe that will arise out of our collective mismanagement of our relationship with the rest of nature, which the former US vice-president Al Gore described at COP 30 as “literally insane”, what are we doing in terms of preparation? More to the point, what are we doing to avoid the predicted catastrophe?

If driving fast on a winding road we have the power to prevent a terrible collision by slowing down and driving with care. We don’t need to have a collision to learn a lesson about driving too fast. Likewise with the consequences of our consumer lifestyle which is eliminating biodiversity and raising the global temperature to a level that will make life unbearable.

While we should prepare for the collapse of the ecosphere and what this will mean in terms of meeting our everyday needs we should at the same time live in a more ecologically sensitive way whilst campaigning for systemic change underpinned by compassion.

Eco-Awareness with Larry Speight: Butterflies adapt

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Although humans like to disassociate themselves from the rest of nonhuman nature and hold that we are an exceptional species this is not the case which means that there is an enormous amount we can learn from nonhuman beings enabling us to relinquish the mindset that research shows is leading to only one destination, the collapse of the biosphere that we and other life-forms are dependent upon for our existence. The recent research on the breaching of two ecological tipping points suggests that this is likely to be sooner than previously thought. These are the loss of sea ice formation in the Antarctica and the demise of warm water coral reefs.

Dr. Jane Goodall, who recently died at the age of 91, overturned the conventional idea that what made humans exceptional was their tool making abilities. Her research of chimpanzees in the 1960s in Gombe, Tanzania, revealed that chimpanzees are not only capable of making tools but like humans are emotional creatures. They, like all forms of life, adapt to their environment, a fact which astounded most of the scientific and religious establishment when Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species in 1859. Until then it was thought, at least in the Western world, that God had made life-forms as finished entities as the various artistic depictions of Adam and Eve portrayed.

Darwin’s findings continue to be verified today. Photographer and researcher Roberto Garcia-Road, along with other researches, who are studying butterflies in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo, have found that butterflies lose their vibrant colours when indigenous forests are cut down and replaced with eucalyptus plantations. Prompted by evolution the butterflies do this in order to increase their chances of survival.

The question is will we, in the interests of our survival as a species, respond in a positive way to the ever-increasing harsh realities caused by our disruption of the climate system as it has functioned since the end of the last glacial period which occurred about 11,700 years ago. Doing this would mean transitioning to a whole new way of life based upon living within the regenerative capacities of the biosphere which would inevitably mean living a reduced consumer-based lifestyle.

This, as many mistakenly assume, would not automatically result in a decrease in the quality of peoples’ lives. Rather, if based on economic and social equity, it could well lead to a mean improvement in the quality of everyone’s life most notably that experienced by the billions of people who waken each morning not knowing if they and their family will eat a nutritious meal that day.

To date the evidence suggests that we are so accustomed to living in ignorance about the life-story of the things we use on a daily basis that we are blocking out the signals that are telling us that it is imperative that we adapt or face, as all living things do, extinction. The life story of the things we consume includes where the raw materials come from, how they are processed and turned into manufactured products and farmed produce, how they arrive in our shops and the ecological consequences of using and disposing of them. Given our cultural imperatives and the lack of education about the life-stories of what we consume this ignorance is understandable.

Our blocking out the signals about the increasing inability of the biosphere to sustain us is in part due to the case that a) we don’t like change and b) hubris. The former is a trait shared with other species, a basis for which is that we feel safe with what we know and that a substantial change usually takes resolution and energy. Hubris, as far as we know, is a trait other life-forms don’t have.

Hubris is proving to be a fatal flaw for our species. One reason why it is so toxic is that those afflicted with it, which includes groups of people as large as nations, have such a sense of grandiosity they believe themselves to be immortal and thus feel they have no need to respect ecological limits and the right of other species to live their lives as determined by their nature.

Another dysfunctional aspect of hubris is that those ailed with it tend to think that their class, culture and civilization is superior to others. The later was the basis of the numerous cases of genocide that took place during the past 500-years of European colonialism. The ones we in Ireland are most familiar with are those committed against the indigenous peoples of Australia and the United States. Genocide based on the coloniser’s sense of superiority also took place elsewhere including in Africa, central and south America.

The signals we are not listening to are those that tell us that we are breaching planetary boundaries. New Scientist, 11 October 2025, reports one such breach is the loss of sea ice formation in the Antarctic as a result of the warming of the oceans due to human behaviour. If the trend continues the consequences will be catastrophic as Antarctic sea ice contains enough water to raise global sea levels by 58 meters. One does not need to be a mathematician to work out that if the sea ice melts the infrastructure of coastal communities around the world will be underwater. Before this happens migrations on a scale never witnessed will occur raising the question of where these billions of people will live. Another casualty will be the loss of cultural treasures held in museums, libraries, art galleries and archives. We can also expect the digital world to collapse when energy and water hungry data centers cease to function.

As there are biospheric tipping points there are positive social ones which could be triggered by a significant number of people developing a deep sense of affinity with and love for the awe-inspiring biosphere we are part of. As many sages and sociologists have noted we care for and protect what we love.