Letters to the Editor: Farmers targeted on climate, but what about aviation?

EDITOR – In the midst of all the recent noise about climate emissions, the farming sector is still well ahead of other sectors of the economy as the main target for blame. 

This is despite the fact that it’s food that farmers produce, which is the main ingredient for human survival. 

The ongoing clamour about increasing land use diversity and reducing the national herd by lobbyists and Green Party activists, fails to quantify the long-term effect this will have on food security – especially at a time when food inflation has rocketed in Ireland, and the global population – having now reached 8bn people who must all be fed. 

Of course, emissions from all sectors that expose us to extreme climate change will have to be reduced. This includes farm emissions where methane reduction is a huge challenge. 

However, the use of feed supplements and genetic changes in breeding will eventually achieve the required reduction to farming emissions. The European Food Safety Authority has now approved the use of a new feed additive that’s predicted to cut methane from dairy cows by up to 30%. 

This would drastically reduce emissions in dairy herds. Selective genetic change will also contribute, especially in the beef herd.

Despite the recent pessimistic report from the EPA, realistically, there are many positive changes being implemented in farming which will reduce the emission per animal of the national herd.  

This will require the EPA to update and perfect its procedure for measuring farm emissions, to take account of evolving strategies being taken by farmers to reduce emissions. 

However, it’s still ironic that the lobbyists that shout the loudest about climate emissions have little to say about emissions from the aviation industry, or the 425,000 passengers that passed through Dublin Airport during the June bank holiday in 2,860 flights.  This is in addition to the 9.3m passengers who have already travelled through the airport in the first four months of 2023. 

In fact, I have never seen a climate change protest at any airport in Ireland or heard any climate activist say that they had, or they intend to, cancel their foreign holidays to reduce aviation emissions.

 This is despite recent research that claims that aviation emissions are substantially under-estimated, which is due to the amount of a lethal pollutant called nitrate oxide that is emitted from jet engines in addition to CO2 being grossly under-stated. 

Hopefully, in the future, climate change activists, who are fully entitled to protest of course, will have the vision and desire to target all emission sources, including aviation, in the interest of fairness to all our citizens.

Diarmuid Cohalan

Ballinhassig.

Stammering should not define any of us

EDITOR – It really made me feel good to read your article ‘I’m proof you can get past a stammer’, and especially that athletes are involved with Stuttering Awareness Mental Well Being Ireland. 

During my difficult childhood as a stammering child trying to navigate school, I loved the escape of the playing fields of football and hurling because speech was not a factor. The work of this organisation deserves praise and publicity.

Ireland has produced some unique stammerers, as is evident by biographical article on John Mackay on the website of the Stuttering Foundation (www.StutteringHelp.org). 

The Dublin native left Ireland as a young boy with his family to settle in New York City, where a short time later he had to leave school and age 11 to work and support his family. 

As a young adult he went out to California to partake in the Gold Rush of 1848; after seven years of no luck, he hit it big. His countless millions saw him expand into telecoms and real estate. For a period of a few years Mackay, dubbed The Bonanza King, was the richest man in the world. He was determined that his lifelong stammering would neither hold him back nor define him. The Stuttering Foundation has biographical articles on other Irish stammerers such as Dermot Bolger, Colm Toibín, Elizabeth Bowen, and Proinsias De Rossa. In addition there are several articles on people in the Irish diaspora such as Noel Gallagher, American celebrity journalist Dominick Dunne, and famed Cuban author Calvert Casey. Stammering should not define stammerers. Kudos to Stuttering Awareness Mental Well Being Ireland.

Colm Ruane, 

Bronx, 

New York.

Offering us pieces of silver to reduce herd numbers

EDITOR – The latest shock comes as a severe blow to farming – cutting back the number of cows by offering the farmers 30 pieces of silver, like the fishermen, and hoping that it will work. 

That will be the rock Ireland will perish on.  

Let’s not forget that our nation was reared on cow’s milk. 

It would be downright disastrous to attempt to take away our cattle from us like the British did in1845, which caused the loss of millions of lives by creating a famine. 

Are we in the final furlong of another famine, is history repeating itself? 

Michael O’Sullivan, 

Cahermore, 

Allihies, 

Beara.