Amid the many details of the Government’s Climate Action Plan which have been the main subject of focus since its publication, one major assumption stands out which has received little attention. This is the capacity of the Irish state to carry through the revolutionary series of changes outlined in this plan, unprecedented in scope and ambition since the foundation of the Irish state. This is largely a good plan, though it has many flaws, most especially in its abject failure to grasp the nettle of re-directing Irish agriculture on a more sustainable path in the face of determined opposition by…
Category: Blog
Spain bucks electoral trends
In a dramatic election result, Spanish voters have turned out in record numbers to elect what is likely to be Europe’s most left-wing government. While the far-right party Vox entered the Spanish parliament for the first time, it was disappointed that its 24 seats were far fewer than it had expected or that polls had predicted. The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, increased the Socialist Party’s number of deputies in the 350 seat Cortes from 85 to 123 while the Partido Popular (PP), the dominant right-wing party for decades, lost more than half its seats, dropping from 137 to 66….
Rise of the new right: Is Ireland immune?
It has often been said that Ireland has arrived to modernity ‘a little breathless and a little late’. Over the past decades, we were seen to be arriving late, if at all, to what was considered the norm elsewhere in western Europe: the left-right divide as the defining issue in political life, free secondary education, universal access to healthcare, motorways and a decent public transport system, to name but a few. In more recent years, we finally seemed to have caught up and, with the marriage equality and the repeal the Eighth votes, to have become a beacon of tolerance…
New climate action report signals a revolution in Ireland’s development: Are we up to it?
The report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action marks a sea-change in Irish policy making and signals nothing less than a revolution in Ireland’s development model. Though, as virtually all approaches to climate action are, it is structured around the sectoral challenges of reducing emissions in agriculture, transport, energy, buildings, yet the document is effectively an initial effort to map what a low-carbon development model would require. More than the various measures proposed to reduce emissions – many of them long overdue but still with weaknesses and omissions – by far the most significant recommendations are the precise,…
Welcome back/Fáilte thar n-ais…
After a long absence I’m back blogging. The absence was caused by technical problems with my website which it has taken some time to resolve but here I now am, live and eager to get back to commenting on and analysing the momentous events shaping our contemporary world. As always, I welcome comments and vigorous debate, though I hope we can avoid the vitriol, personal insults, assertions that have no empirical basis and posturing that unfortunately mar public debate today.
I hope over the coming months to look at the huge challenges that are facing humanity at this turning point in our history on this planet: clearly the two very different challenges of climate change and of artificial intelligence/robotisation are pushing human civilisation to the limit. At this very time, we are entering an era in which politics seems to be fragmenting into a new volatility and irrationality, making coherent action to address these challenges seemingly impossible. Yet, there are signs of hope – in the mobilisation of citizens after a time of widespread quiescence, in the breaking open of the iron cage of neoliberalism and elite rule that has characterised the period since the 1980s, and in the ways that climate change is forcing us to look anew at our destructive relationships with the natural world on which we depend.
So, perhaps more than every before in human history, everything is to play for and the nature of the future facing us is in our hands to shape. I will be developing my ideas around how we work to shape that future and the sort of future we can shape if we mobilise to do so. As I write a new book, drawing on the insights of Karl Polanyi addressing the need to transform market society in this era of climate change, I’ll be testing out ideas and proposing analyses of the possibilities for agency amid the structural constraints and opportunities of the present. Come on the journey with me…. Beidh mé ag feitheamh ort.