Fáilte, welcome to the blog from the ecovillage. I’m hoping to create a space here, both in English and in Irish, to comment on the world as it appears to me from Ireland’s only ecovillage, Cloughjordan in County Tipperary. Beidh mé ag cur in iúil smaointe agus tuairimí a ritheann chugam ó lá go lá nó chun macnamh a dhéanamh ar eachtraí ár linne de réir mar a tharlaíonn siad.

It is very important to clarify at the beginning that I am not speaking for or on behalf of the ecovillage. We are an intentional community and interact in a myriad of ways, but of course we don’t have a common view on almost anything, certainly not on the great issues of our times. So this may be a blog from the ecovillage, but it is most certainly not the ecovillage blog!

Does living in an ecovillage offer a distinctive viewing point on the world? An dtugann sé dúinn radharc faoi leith ar a bhfuil ag titim amach máguaird orainn? The best answer I can give to this question comes from a wonderful book I have just finished reading, Ecovillages by Professor Karen T. Litfin (Polity 2014). Prof. Litfin describes ecovillages as ‘living laboratories’ modeling in the most varied of ways some essential elements of the great transition towards a low-carbon society that is now the most urgent challenge facing humankind.

So as I look out across the world, I do so from within one of...