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Chapter 1: How do global disasters impact the environment?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.
Well, you may have seen last week the failed test launch of the Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin rocket, which led to a massive explosion. We've also seen firefighters in Ireland struggling to contain early summer gorse fires in Wicklow in recent days, not to mention the destruction wreaked by war and conflict in the Middle East, Ukraine... and Africa and further afield.
So the question we're asking is how damaging are these events to the environment and how much could it offset the recycling and the climate action that you do in your own home? Well, I'm joined by journalist and activist George Monbiot. George, good morning. Hi, Clare.
It can all make us feel a little hopeless, really, watching these events unfold as we recycle our glass and use our brown bin and put our clean, dry recyclables into the green bin. Is it all for nothing?
Chapter 2: What role does military activity play in environmental destruction?
No, I mean, we ought to keep on doing this. And, you know, we have to maintain standards, even if other people aren't, because then there really is no hope if we give up. But of course, we also have to bring under control these really big sources of emissions. And the military is one of them. And we just don't talk about it nearly enough.
Yeah, and you have been writing about this extensively and it is an eye opener just to spend a moment thinking about what these conflicts do in terms of environmental destruction. Can you talk us through it? So a lot of this is kind of out of sight and out of mind. It was partly through US lobbying.
You won't be surprised to hear military emissions were exempted from mandatory reporting under the Paris Climate Agreement.
Chapter 3: How significant are military emissions in the context of climate change?
And so you don't have a proper account of how much harm the military is doing. Now, you know, the issue is further compounded by the fact that if they're not concerned about killing people, well, why would they be concerned about their greenhouse gas emissions?
And it can feel a bit hopeless saying you've got to sort this out when they're not even sorting out concern for human life in the very direct way. But, of course, that doesn't make the greenhouse gas emissions go away. And Our estimate, or the one produced by the Conflict and Environment Observatory, suggests that the military is responsible for about 5.5% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
It's an extraordinary figure. And then when we look at the destruction of the land, the fertile land in the Middle East that feeds so many people, I mean, that is something that will have intergenerational impact, right?
Yes.
Very much so. And what we're seeing in Lebanon is very similar to what we've seen in Gaza, where we're just seeing the land completely destroyed. And in Gaza, it seems there was what could be described as a holocide and it was carried out deliberately. And a holocide is where you destroy not just the people, but everything. So you basically make it uninhabitable area. in the future.
And there is a deliberate, still going on in some places, bulldozing of olive trees, fruit trees, destruction of farmland, bulldozers toppling orchards, ploughing out crops, crushing the soil, plane spraying herbicides over the fields. It's just horrendous and monstrous. And it means that
From what I can see, the Israeli government is just trying to make this place unusable for the people of Gaza forevermore. And in that case and in other conflicts, the problem is, as you told us at the beginning, that the people who are doing this don't have to account for it, for the devastation and the deforestation and the soil destruction.
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Chapter 4: What are the long-term effects of land destruction in conflict zones?
They don't have to tell us what sort of impact they have had. That's right. It's just out of the range of public view and of public action. And of course, that's a very dangerous thing in any situation. When any aspect of government is unaccountable, well, democracy becomes a dead letter.
So what do you say to this listener who has just been in touch to say, I stopped being so militant about my recycling. I do what I can, but no further. I clean my plastic when I think of it. I chuck my cardboard into the recycling, obviously, but the rest of the world doesn't seem to care. So why exhaust myself? Look at China. Look at the wars.
Yeah, it is interesting this, that a lot of people seem to believe that other people don't care, but the figures are really consistent that the great majority of the world's people, regardless of where you are, really, really do care about a habitable planet and about reducing our carbon emissions. But what we're constantly told by a lot of the billionaire media is that people don't care.
And that you're a sucker if you do it because other people won't be. And it's just not true. It really isn't. And your listener mentions China. Well, China's now leading the world in the green transition. It's doing it on a massive scale, getting out of fossil fuels.
Chapter 5: How does recycling at home compare to larger environmental issues?
and into renewables. It's providing us with many of our green technologies. So this whole idea of blaming China for what we're not prepared to do, I mean, it was never moral. It was never a sensible way of arguing, but it's now just completely redundant and out of date. Your listener needs to get themselves informed.
Well, this listener, and take some hope from this, I have to look my children in the face when they grow up, so I'll still do what I can.
You mentioned the billionaires, George, so let's talk about Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, and let's throw Richard Branson in there as well, because they are now very seriously examining space tourism, and we began by talking about the explosion of the Blue Origin rocket. Talk us through where you see that heading. Yes. So we're talking about a very major energy demand.
You need an awful lot of energy to get your rocket into orbit, a great deal of thrust, and that means a great deal of fuel. Now, people like Jeff Bezos will say, well, our rockets are powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, and so they're not producing carbon emissions. And you say, well, hang on a moment. How are you producing that liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen?
These are very energy intensive processes. And the great majority of hydrogen being produced around the world is being produced from fossil fuels. And so if we are to expand this on a major scale, what we're going to see is Is space tourism massively adding to our climate crisis? And all for a handful of extremely rich people who surely have better things to do with their money.
It just seems completely decadent.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of space tourism on our climate crisis?
I mean, how is it at all acceptable in the middle of a climate emergency for the ultra-rich to be finding even more ways of trashing the planet and of stamping their footprint on everybody else's faces. Well, Jeff Bezos is paying in part for the fuel with all of the bits and bobs that he has flying around the world for Amazon customers, which is an added irony to that one.
A listener asks, what positive impact have all of the actions had taken so far? For example, EVs. I mean, there is that argument, isn't there, that the most environmentally friendly car is the one that you already own, not the brand new EV that you're buying this year when you maybe don't need it.
Yeah, I mean, we do need to phase out internal combustion engines, but buying new is always going to impose a major punishment on the planet. So ideally, yeah, get yourself an EV, but get a secondhand one. And there's a lot on the secondhand market at the moment. I mean, it has tightened up a bit since the Iran war started, since Trump and Israel started bombarding Iran.
A lot more people want TVs. It's kind of ironic that Trump is trying to stop the green transition, but he seems to be accelerating it. But, you know, it still represents a good investment to buy a secondhand one. George, always good to talk to you. Thank you for your time this morning. That's George Monbiot, who is a journalist and activist.
The Clare Byrne Show. With Aviva Insurance.
Weekday mornings at 9.
On Newstalk.
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Chapter 7: What positive impacts can individual actions have on the environment?
Conversation that counts.