FOR ST. PADDY’S DAY, SAVE IRELAND

From RUNNING TO PARADISE by William Butler Yeats:
"...The wind is old and still at play
While I must hurry upon my way.
For I am running to paradise;
Yet never have I lit on a friend
To take my fancy like the wind
That nobody can buy or bind..."

In Ireland, it often comes back to poetry and music. So it is not a surprise to find a report on global climate change linking scientific findings with comments by poets, artists and musicians describing how the changes could affect Irish culture.

John Sweeney, lead scientist, Changing Shades of Green: “Who else but the Irish would invoke music to explain climate change?”

Famed Irish fiddler Martin Hayes: “People want to know that there are sacred places that we will protect…They want to know that we have a barometer in our being that stops us from doing the irreversible.”

At the end of the report on global climate change, the report adds the haunting line from William Butler Yeats’ immortal poem Easter 1916: “All changed, changed utterly…”

For anyone still denying climate change, there is a comment on the report from 2nd-generation Irish-American and Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey: “…[The report] fits into a larger pattern seen across the globe, changes these Irish eyes have unfortunately witnessed first-hand. Keeping the Emerald Isle from turning brown is one more reason the world must act…”

Laura McElwain, report co-author: "When the St. Patricks Day parties are over, we want the Irish to remember this. We want them to know they have a role to play. Those who want to keep Ireland green need to push for changes in our energy policies both in Ireland and in America. They need to push for changes to stop the worst effects of climate change from coming to pass…"

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But the Irish are not idly waiting for the world to act. The world’s first commercial-scale tidal energy project will be installed in a Northern Ireland lough next month. Meanwhile, the government is aggressively developing the nation’s grid to prepare it for New Energy.

Tidal energy world first for lough
12 March 2008 (PA News via Channel 4 News)
and
Gov blueprint for new electricity sector
March 13, 2008 (Business World Ireland)
and
Ireland’s Green Landscape Threatened By Climate Change; Irish-Americans can play a role in avoiding the worst effects
Colleen Murray, March 13, 2008 (Irish American Climate Project/PR Newswire via Yahoo News)

WHO
Irish American Climate Project (Kevin Sweeney, director); John Sweeney, report lead scientist/former president, Irish Meteorological Society; Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units (ICARUS); Laura McElwain, report co-author; Energy Minister Eamon Ryan; EirGrid; ESB; Marine Current Turbines (MCT)

EirGrid has big plans. (click to enlarge)

WHAT
- Changing Shades of Green, a new report from the Irish American Climate Project and ICARUS, details actual and potential global climate impacts to Ireland.
- Irish Energy Minister Ryan is working out a deal between grid operator EirGrid and grid owner ESB to develop transmission.
- MCT will install SeaGen, a 1.2 megawatt tidal turbine.

WHEN
- In the last 2 decades, mean temperatures in Ireland have risen faster than the world average.
- In the last century, rainfall in Donegal is up 30%.
- The report was released March 13.
- EirGrid is aiming to complete new east-west transmission by 2012.
- SeaGen will be installed Easter Monday. MCT expects to have a 500 megawatt tidal turbine capacity by 2015.

Artist's concept of a SeaGen tidal turbine installation. (click to enlarge)

WHERE
- Prolonged droughts in Ireland’s southeast could turn the green hillsides brown and rainfall patterns become more like those in Mediterranean countries.
- Heavy winter rains in Ireland’s north and west could erode the green surface, exposing brown granite and gravel.
- Dublin could face water shortages.
- SeaGen will be installed in the mouth of Northern Ireland's Strangford Lough.

WHY
- With warmer summers, bogs would dry and crack. Autumn and winter rains following would seep through the cracks to bedrock causing pieces of peat to rip loose and slide down the hillsides.
- Warmer, damper summers would cause a new potato blight, eliminating potatoes as an agricultural product by mid-century and force farmers to row crops, changing the Irish landscape.
- EirGrid’s Transmission Development Strategy 2025 is designed to support New Energy development.
- SeaGen, the biggest tidal turbine of its type in the world, will generate power from one of the fastest tidal flows in the world for the next 5 years.

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QUOTES
- Kevin Sweeney, director, Irish American Climate Project: “St. Patricks Day is a time to celebrate all things Irish…We celebrate the fact that Ireland is still green, still lovely beyond compare. But we also make it clear that this beauty is fragile. It can be lost if we fail to act.”
- Irish filmmaker Dermot Somers: “Everything in the Irish landscape depends on slow absorption, and slow release…When you get very abrupt drenches, these sudden downpours of heavy rain and severe wind, that process doesn't work anymore.”