Ireland’s foremost climate scientist has accused the US bishops of failure to show leadership on the climate crisis.
Speaking to The Tablet after his presentation titled: "Climate Change: Where Are We Now?" at a conference organised by the Columban Ecological Institute, Professor John Sweeney of Maynooth University warned that the US bishops’ “conservatism will ultimately come back to haunt them”.
“Protection of the status quo will not last forever as a policy,” he said, adding that the Church ought to recognise that we live in a common home and should help societies to make difficult moral decisions.
Professor Sweeney said Pope Francis’ leadership has been “a beacon of light” in the past few years, but warned the US bishops would be “identified very closely with Donald Trump”.
“Just as in the rest of the world, the younger population have been deserting the Church in droves; climate justice is an issue that would bring them back in droves if it was properly handled,” he said.
In his address at Dalgan Park Professor Sweeney outlined the impact of climate change on Ireland.
“We are experiencing climate change here in Ireland. We know Ireland is half a degree warmer in every month of the year than it was 30 years ago. We know that will continue from the modelling we have done in Maynooth [University].”
With an increase in temperature by another half degree in the next 30 years, the country would see “a lot more changes in our rainfall, with the west of Ireland getting more rain in the winter creating a flood problem, and the east getting less rainfall in summer, creating a drought and water supply.”
One of the main drivers in the decline in biodiversity is climate change, he said, and warned that “we are seeing biodiversity decline faster now than at any time in human history” with a cost for habitats such as marshlands and bog lands.
He highlighted that there are just 160 breeding pairs of curlews left in Ireland now and warned “they are going to be the next casualty of climate change”.
Another speaker, Dr Lona Gold, author of Climate Generation, noted that Friday marks the first anniversary of the founding of the Climate Strike Movement in Ireland which sees thousands of schoolchildren participate in protests every Friday calling for action on the climate crisis.
Dr Gold explained how over the past 12 months 100 local climate groups have been founded across Ireland’s towns. She said faith groups and unions were now getting involved and focused on ensuring a just transition for communities affected by the move away from fossil fuel production.
She called for a Green New Deal to rethink economics and secure a just transition in the reduction of climate emissions