Why have the greens been forgiven?

jmayo

Fred Cryton wrote: »

Just about the one and only thing i agree with the Shinners on is the Carbon tax.

Little Ireland, with no steel industry, no chemical industry, no auto manufacturing industry, no mining, no oil and gas industry of significance is not going to make even the remotest dent in the global climate. Taxing hard working people in rural ireland with no alternative to speak of will just lower the standard of living without the slightest impact on climate. Virtue signalling at its worst. I'm hoping for a FF/FG/Independents coalition.

But we do have cows.
Those feckers are the ones really ruining the planet. :rolleyes:

Not the industry, not the extraction of minerals for batteries for latest gadgets, the jets flying overhead or the jets taking stags and hens to Eastern Europe, the ships carting quinoa from South America, asparagus by air from Peru, avocados or mangoes from water shortage areas.

Yep it's all the fault of the cows.:rolleyes:

Beta Ray Bill

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

It's very easy to get by without beef and dairy. I don't think the biodiversity of our whole island should be at the mercy of farmers' exports however.

Nearly every job/business that's not in a city in Ireland, has a direct or indirect dependency on agriculture.
Their are a lot of small to medium sized farms, not very many huge ones.
The farms that are huge all grow crops. (it's very profitable once you're settled, you never see crop farmers protesting. in fact it's not even that labour intensive when compared to cattle farms)
The rest farm cattle as it's the only way they can make money given the land they have.

Less than 20% of farms in Ireland are crops farms.

To switch from cattle to crops would require two things to happen:
1: Merge farms together to create more usable land. This involves removing all ditches and trees, etc, it's actually quite harmful to local fauna. I think Stalin did something like this in the 1920's/1930's. Also farmers never sell land, cause it's viewed as "precious"
2: Up front purchase of extremely expensive equipment. Sowers, Cultivators, Plows, Fertilisers, Big Tractors capable of pulling the equipment and Harvesters.... You're talking hundreds of millions if not billions for a conversion to 80% crop farming.

Note, because of our climate we're limited to farming Wheat, Maize, Barley, Spuds and to an extent sugar beat.
We are unable to farm Soya, Nuts, Corn or in fact any protein rich crops... This is a major problem.

While I too like the idea of less Cattle/more Crops, the history, current setup and our climate mean that switching is going to be costly and very unlikely to happen in a big bang sort of fashion

Seth Brundle wrote: »

Ireland is a wealthy country and we should lead by example. If we can afford to change and don't then what hope have we that poorer countries change?
We are also massive polluters and need to get our own house in order, regardless of others.

I disagree, with the exception of crappy public transport and car use, our country is in the best "order" it can be.
We've seen time and time again that Irish people, like their cars and are more than prepared to sit in them for 3 or 4 hours a day, rather than use public transport.
This is because in terms of time and convenience (Take environmental impact out the equation) the car is still more efficient than public transport.
Example: I had to collect a large item from town on Saturday, so I drove in. I was in and out in 50 mins, 7 euro for parking.
If I were to use public transport you'd be talking at least double that time when you take in account that DART only runs every 25 mins on Saturday, and the shop I was going to was a 15 min walk away from Tara St station and it still cost about 5 euro for travel! :eek:
It also absolutely p*ssed rain on Saturday so I would have been soaked too had I used PT on this occasion.

Public transport needs massive investment. It needs to be faster than the Car for people to switch to it.

Seth Brundle

Beta Ray Bill wrote: »

I disagree, with the exception of crappy public transport and car use, our country is in the best "order" it can be.
We've seen time and time again that Irish people, like their cars and are more than prepared to sit in them for 3 or 4 hours a day, rather than use public transport.
This is because in terms of time and convenience (Take environmental impact out the equation) the car is still more efficient than public transport.
Example: I had to collect a large item from town on Saturday, so I drove in. I was in and out in 50 mins, 7 euro for parking.
If I were to use public transport you'd be talking at least double that time when you take in account that DART only runs every 25 mins on Saturday, and the shop I was going to was a 15 min walk away from Tara St station and it still cost about 5 euro for travel! :eek:
It also absolutely p*ssed rain on Saturday so I would have been soaked too had I used PT on this occasion.

Public transport needs massive investment. It needs to be faster than the Car for people to switch to it.

I'm not disagreeing about the need to make the car less popular for our journeys (our kids will not end up as fat either).
Our problem of urban sprawl leading to long commutes has been regarded as unsuatainable for decades but our politicians still choose to encourage it.

We still use far too much plastic.
We still don't recycle efficiently.
Air pollution in our city centres is unacceptable.
We are far too reliant on fossil fuels to heat our homes (again affecting air quality)
etc.

Ubbquittious

I used to like the greens. They were kind hearted folk and down to earth. They promoted things like self sufficiency and stepping away from the economic rat race, buying local fairtrade organic stuff and maybe having the odd puff of ganja and a sip of homebrew cider by a camp fire in the mountains to help you relax. They were open to experimenting with alternative technologies and ways of life

The new greens are nearly all Dublin poshies who seem to despise their fellow countrymen for simply being alive. And they detest to see anyone in a so-called 'one off house' living in the countryside. The new crowd are hell bent on banning and taxing and its very much a one size fits all approach. Ideally theyd like to fuk everyone into shoebox apartments in Dublin, make them buy heatpumps and tax the absolute fuk out of them so they cant afford to do anything other than sitting at home watching netflix in the cold

Wouldnt even give them a preference now

Seth Brundle

Ubbquittious wrote: »

I used to like the greens. They were kind hearted folk and down to earth. They promoted things like self sufficiency and stepping away from the economic rat race, buying local fairtrade organic stuff and maybe having the odd puff of ganja and a sip of homebrew cider by a camp fire in the mountains to help you relax. They were open to experimenting with alternative technologies and ways of life

The new greens are nearly all Dublin poshies who seem to despise their fellow countrymen for simply being alive. And they detest to see anyone in a so-called 'one off house' living in the countryside. The new crowd are hell bent on banning and taxing and its very much a one size fits all approach. Ideally theyd like to fuk everyone into shoebox apartments in Dublin, make them buy heatpumps and tax the absolute fuk out of them so they cant afford to do anything other than sitting at home watching netflix in the cold

Wouldnt even give them a preference now

In fairness that view is fairly wide of the mark!
:rolleyes: