by Larry Speight –
March and early April were the driest and warmest on this island in 60 years. This means that if you are under sixty they were the driest and warmest spring months you will have experienced during your entire life. Many people appreciated having sunny June weather in early April, taking the opportunity to spend more time outdoors than they usually do and if this involved physical activities such as gardening, walking, running or cycling this would likely have improved their physical health and emotional wellbeing.
The warm weather also benefited a whole range of life forms with a host of insects on the wing and in the undergrowth providing nourishment for bats and birds including the cuckoos who travelled all the way from the Democratic Republic of Congo to County Fermanagh and other parts of Ireland to feast on them. While we and our nonhuman neighbours took advantage of the summer-like weather in life affirming ways a few but significant number of people set fire to delicate, bio-rich, CO2 absorbing peatlands and gorse covered hillsides.
The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service reported that over this dry sunny period they attended 300 wildfires most of which they thought were set deliberately. Some of the most destructive were in the Mourne Mountains in County Down including one on Slieve Binnian and another near Hilltown. In the latter 100 firefighters fought to extinguish the fire over a period of two days. People in Newcastle complained that they were suffering from smoke inhalation.
In County Fermanagh there were wildfires in Belleek, Brookebrough, Cuilcagh and Lisnaskea. During the same period there were a large number of wildfires in the Republic of Ireland one of which was in Nephin National Park in County Mayo which turned a bio-rich habitat into a dead zone and destroyed a specially designed boardwalk eliminating peoples’ access to the peatland park.
Many people were upset and bereaved on learning about these catastrophes while at the same time baffled as to why people would deliberately destroy ecosystems which are not only home to multiple forms of life but provide humans with a life enriching amenity including services such as absorbing climate altering CO2 emissions, purifying water and providing a haven for pollinators.
Although the destruction seems to defy comprehension it was not as many have said mindless. The perpetrators have minds which means they have reason, impulse and motive. The wildfires were imagined, planned, rationalised and then acted upon. In the absence of an in-depth study of the mindset of these destroyers of nature, human health and material resources we can only hypothesise, drawing on what we know about human behaviour.
A viable hypothesis is that the arsonists feel that they lack agency in the overall schema of their lives and setting fire to a defenceless community of lifeforms, with a minimum chance of apprehension, is a potent way of demonstrating to themselves that they can make their mark on the world. The sense of being able to act beyond the sphere of their personal concerns might well be sharpened by the association of fear with fire. Causing fear is likely to have heightening their sense of power.
Although destroying habitat and disrupting lives simply because one can is monstrous the desire to feel that one has agency and is significant is part of what it means to be human. In the case of the arsonists the tragedy is that their existential drive for a sense of significance is void of empathy for the wildlife they intentionally destroyed and the people whose lives were endangered including the dedicated, highly trained and courageous fire fighters and the people in agencies who provided support.
The arsonists are a tiny fraction of the number of people here and across the globe who have a distinct lack of empathy for life-forms and people who they perceive as categorically different from them.
In terms of the latter there has been no groundswell of demand from across the human community, and in particular from governments, for an immediate halt to the genocide of the people in Gaza. The UN’s Human Rights Office puts the figure of women and children killed in Gaza by Israel with the active support of the United States at 70% of the total. The war waged by Israel involves the systemic destruction of all civic infrastructure including, hospitals, sewage treatment plants, water provision, electricity, homes, roads and the deprivation of food, fuel, medicines, sanitation products and the means by which people can earn a livelihood.
A case that vividly illustrates the extent of our alienation from nonhuman nature, our lack of empathy for the nonhuman lives we destroy, is that of Brazil building an eight-mile long (13km), four-lane highway through pristine rainforest ahead of the COP30 climate change summit it is hosting in Belem this November. The road, and the inevitable negative consequences it will spawn, will destroy a Garden of Eden treasure trove of biodiversity and disrupt the lives of the Indigenous people.
This act of vandalism leaves one wondering about the mental game-play involved in wilfully destroying what one claims to love. The seemingly unfathomable equation is resolved by the realisation that we, humanity, does not love nonhuman nature at all. Like the genocide in Palestine and Sudan the measure of universal empathy does not suffice to prevent our destruction of that which we perceive as categorically different from us but is in fact that which we are.
The tragedy of the arsonists who this spring turned large areas of this island’s precious biodiversity into a blackened wasteland, the living soils and imbedded seeds washed away by the rain, is their lack of empathy. Sadly, we can expect further hostility directed at our natural heritage during the long sunny spells forecast this summer.
That we are what we call ourselves, which is the wise ape, Homo Sapiens, is to be questioned given that other species have thrived for millions of years while we, a relatively evolved species, are on the verge of extinguishing ourselves.