This past year has been an emotional roller coaster through the world of climate action (or inaction) in Ireland. I started blogging nearly 12 months ago in an effort to understand the intricacies of climate change in an Irish context in the lead up to the 21st United Nations’ Conference of Parties (COP21) on climate change. I took on the questions I had no obvious answers to, both to evaluate the evidence for myself and to inform anyone else who might be interested.
Over time, my blogs marked emotional moments in my journey: from frustration with our politicians’ insistence on maintaining the status quo to the death of my first climate mentor on unexpected thin Arctic ice and battles with media outlets who fanned the flames of climate denial. Through blogging, I had an outlet to write about climate change with emotion – a writing style that was repressed in me since I began my career as a scientist over two decades ago but I now realize is an essential way to create public engagement.
Over time, my blogs marked emotional moments in my journey: from frustration with our politicians’ insistence on maintaining the status quo to the death of my first climate mentor on unexpected thin Arctic ice and battles with media outlets who fanned the flames of climate denial. Through blogging, I had an outlet to write about climate change with emotion – a writing style that was repressed in me since I began my career as a scientist over two decades ago but I now realize is an essential way to create public engagement.
Dublin Climate March 2015 stopclimatechaos.ie
Through emotion, interest in my blog grew from less than 300 readers in the first month to over 2,500 readers per blog to date and I gained more resolve to “fight the good fight”. It’s been a privilege to participate in some small way to a growing movement of Irish climate activism that culminated with over 5,000 people marching in Dublin earlier this month and some even braving rough seas and official detainment to march in Paris last week.
Through emotion, interest in my blog grew from less than 300 readers in the first month to over 2,500 readers per blog to date and I gained more resolve to “fight the good fight”. It’s been a privilege to participate in some small way to a growing movement of Irish climate activism that culminated with over 5,000 people marching in Dublin earlier this month and some even braving rough seas and official detainment to march in Paris last week.
The pinnacle of my climate journey was COP21 itself, which I attended as an NGO representative for Friends of the Earth Ireland. Irrespective of the outcome, the experience of seeing 45,000 people all working on the climate crisis in their own little way was inspiring. On the inside, “the suits” (mostly men) worked toward global policy agreement while NGOs applied pressure to hold them to it. On the outside, the public made themselves heard in the most creative ways to demand ambition. For a climate nerd like me, witnessing so many different types of people all working to solve climate change was heaven.
Whether or not COP21 was a success is not an easy question to answer. On one hand, it’s a miracle to witness 195 countries agree on anything and the goal of keeping the Earth below 1.5ºC of warming above pre-Industrial temperatures is more ambitious than most of us expected. On the other hand, that ambition is detached from the science. - While it may have been possible to achieve such a goal 15 or 20 years ago, our lack of action so far and the delayed timescales of the agreement makes achieving the goal nearly impossible now.
Instead of finding myself at the end of a journey, I find myself at the beginning. As Friends of the Earth CEO Craig Bennett said, the Paris Agreement “puts fossil fuels on the wrong side of history”. December 12th, 2015 marks the day the world acknowledged it was time to move beyond the Industrial Revolution and towards a clean energy revolution. To protect us from the worst impacts of climate change, the transition to a fossil free society has to be in place by 2050 – Only 35 years from now or a generation away.
In the first week of COP21, I got on stage at TEDxUCD and reflected on what that fossil free society could be like, particularly how it might affect my 5-year-old daughter when she is an adult. Now, we find ourselves potentially on the cusp of that society, bridging a fossil fuel driven past with a renewable future. The Paris agreement alone will not solve climate change. Rather, we have been handed a tool and given permission to start building. Welcome to the Transition.
Photo credit: Matt Moher for Green Party Ireland
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