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Updated 15.20pm
AS A NATION we have a long history of locking up our own people for the most spurious of reasons, whether it be the Magdalene Laundries, the industrial schools or psychiatric hospitals.
It is in our history, a stark and shameful fact about our country from which we cannot escape, and there are many former inmates still seeking compensation.
After every scandal that has emerged, the public asked one question: ‘How did we let this happen?’
What follows that question is a statement: ‘We will never let this happen again.’
The late journalist Mary Raftery stated in her 2011 documentary on the mental health system, Behind The Walls, that in the 1950s Ireland led the world in locking people up with impunity. There was an attitude against people who were ‘problematic’ and sadly, there still is.
There is no doubt that our mental health system today is far better than years gone by, that the move towards community care, the closing of the large-scale institutions dotted around the country is to be welcomed.
Today, people are still detained in psychiatric hospitals. Many of course need the supports and treatment a hospital can provide, but for others, a question mark hangs over their continued detention.
However progressive the Mental Health Act 2001 was for the time, there are a number of shortcomings – the status labelling of patients and the rights it affords them is one of them.
Under the act there are two types of patients – voluntary and involuntary. One of the fundamental flaws within the law is its definitions of these patients and the unequal rights between them.
You would be mistaken in thinking that a voluntary patient is someone that has walked into a hospital of their own accord seeking help. While some patients are admitted this way, it is not the full picture.
The definition of a voluntary patient under the act means “a person receiving care and treatment in an approved centre who is not the subject of an admission order or a renewal order”. While an involuntary patient is defined as a person who has been “involuntarily admitted to an approved centre pursuant to an application under… and detained there on the grounds that he or she is suffering from a mental disorder”.
Under the law, an involuntary patient who is admitted against their will has a right to appeal their detention – this right was afforded to involuntary patients following the pivotal Croke V Ireland case.
In the early 1980s the person at the centre of the Croke case was diagnosed with a mental illness and admitted to hospital, where he was detained for a number of years without review. His case was taken to the the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) under Article 5 of the Convention on Human Rights, which requires a proper system of judicial review of detention on the basis of mental disorder. He won his case. Following this landmark judgement, admission and review procedures were included in the new Mental Health Act 2001, but this was not enacted until 2006.
Tribunals were set up whereby after a period of 21 days the patient has the right to have their case heard in front of a tribunal of psychiatrists and legal experts.
Unfortunately, this right was not extended to voluntary patients.
Why would voluntary patients need a review of their detention: surely they can just leave? This is not always the case. A voluntary patient under the act is simply a person who is in hospital who is not subject to an admission order. In their interim report the expert group who is currently undertaking a fairly extensive re-writing of the mental health act cited this as something that needs to be investigated.
Some voluntary patients that are in approved centres lack the capacity to consent to their admission or treatment – yet their status is “voluntary”, not because they consented to be admitted, but because they had not the capacity to object. The expert group described this group of voluntary patients as the “defacto detained” and this group are not provided with any rights under the act.
Ultimately, you can walk into a treatment centre, ask for assistance and you are deemed voluntary, but a person who is incapacitated, who does not have the ability to make a reasoned decision about their treatment or admission, can also be a voluntary patient – as in you only can become an involuntary patient when you indicate you want to leave and are refused – you are then re-classed as an involuntary patient – and your rights begin to kick in. However, if you are a long term voluntary patient within a unit, who has neither the capacity nor the ability to indicate you want to leave or question your treatment, you are not entitled to a review.
In 2011, Amnesty Ireland highlighted this, stating that the “description of such patients as ‘voluntary’ is misleading, in that it suggests the exercise of free choice by the individual concerned”. The EH v St Vincent’s Hospital and Others in 2008 showed just how this could happen. This case involved an involuntary patient who had an order to extend her detention rejected by a tribunal. This, in turn, changed her status into a voluntary patient, because she lacked capacity. When she attempted to leave, the hospital invoked section 23 of the act, which gives the power to prevent a voluntary patient from leaving. Then a new admission order was made and patient’s status returned to involuntary and was detained further on successive renewal orders.
The case was taken to the Supreme Court where it was argued that she never should have been given the status of a voluntary patient as she was lacking in capacity, but the appeal was dismissed. Amnesty Ireland said that the lack of data on the numbers of “so-called compliant incapacitated patients” within the Irish mental health services is cause for an audit of these figures.
So who are these voluntary patients? While the Mental Health Commission strictly audits the numbers of involuntary patients per year, there is no breakdown as to what percentage of the voluntary patients are incapacitated.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie, Colm O’Gorman of Amnesty International Ireland said while the legislation was progressive at the time, it needs to be overhauled. He said the definitions of voluntary and involuntary patients is “rather fluid and arbitrary” adding, there is no traceability when someone is detained as a voluntary patient. He said:
Under the act they can detained if they are a risk to themselves or others, but there is no mandatory treatability requirement. They are not saying that they are being detained because they are a risk to themselves or others AND we believe that there is a therapeutic procedure that that will deal with that risk or will address that health problem – they are just simply being detained.In what other walk of life or context can you imagine something like this happening. On the basis of a risk alone is grounds for detention without any treatment and then the treatment can be ongoing.
He added that the new capacity legislation, which was published last week, should be linked up with the review group of the Mental Health Act. Leading legal and medical experts have criticised that this is not the case. O’Gorman said that it was not cohesive to have the review group and the new capacity legislation working in isolation of each other, as the two will have to interplay in reality. However, the minister denies that this is the case. Watch here:
Christina Finn/YouTube
Last week, the publication of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Bill 2013 was announced, which if working in conjunction with the mental health laws could improve matters for vulnerable people, such as those detained in institutions. Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said: “I am pleased to announce a comprehensive reform of the long-outdated law on mental capacity, which will greatly assist vulnerable people with limited decision making capacity to better manage their personal, property and financial affairs.”
Speaking about the new bill, law lecturer at NUI Galway, Mary Keys said:
The review of the Mental Health Act is still taking place. If we want to ensure the outcome of that review and the new capacity bill is not fragmented we need to ensure that the human rights principals are the same in both. The capacity legislation should underpin the mental health law. Links between the two need to be forged in order to avoid the fragmentation we have seen so far. This debate is really important and it is vital that it is incorporating the same value system into the Mental Health Act.
She added that she was concerned that the new capacity bill may be taking a very narrow approach to mental health law stating that other jurisdictions, like the UK, have prevented people that are formally detained to come under the capacity legislation, something that Ireland should not strive towards, she said. Keys added:
Both laws need to be complimentary and not to be collisional.
But it is not just the incapacitated. Some voluntary service users describe their experience as ‘‘compliance under the veil of coercion”. They have gone into hospital of their own accord, however, when they have decided to leave, their consulting psychiatrist has disagreed. Acting under the law, if your consulting psychiatrist believes he is acting in his patient’s “best interests” and if he believes they could be at risk to themselves or others, then he has the right to change your status from a voluntary patient to an involuntary.
Louise Bayliss, one such service user, who later became an advocate, said:
I was not well and I knew I needed some time out, to deal with it. I was voluntary as far as I was concerned, however when I decided I wanted to go, it became a big issue. My psychiatrist wanted me to stay but I was adamant I wanted to go, it was not what I thought it would be.I was effectively told that I could either stay as a voluntary patient or be made to stay as an involuntary, but that really, it would “look better” if I stayed as a voluntary – I mean, where is the voluntary choice there? And it seems the more you protest, the more likely you are to seem “distressed”, but wouldn’t anyone get distressed if they were told they couldn’t leave? Of course they would.
Rory Doody who has experienced mental health difficulties in the past said he would agree that this is very common. He said:
You have perhaps come out of hospital, you have gone back home and in order to get reviewed you go back into the outpatient department of the hospital and you meet a psychiatrist.
Depending on your day, whether you had trouble getting parking, if you had an argument with your loved one, if your favourite team lost a match the night before and you may be stressed, that can appear as ‘symptomatic’ and I have seen and sat in out patients departments where I have been asked ‘would you like to come inside, we think it would be best if you came inside’. What that does is actually negate community care.
Another service user who wished to remain anonymous said:
I voluntarily signed myself in to a mental health facility because I was concerned about my general frame of mind. At the time, I was under the impression that if you voluntarily sign yourself in, you can then leave when you feel ready to. Sadly, this was not the case and I was not informed of this when I signed myself in.It was only after I had signed myself in that I was then told by some of the other inpatients that I could only leave when whoever my attending psychiatrist had decided I was ready to. If I had known that this was how it worked, I would not have signed myself in at all, and I would not have subsequently ended up spending the next two months of my life being surrounded by some very disturbing people who I remain emotionally scarred about to this day.
She said she believed people should be fully informed of what it means to sign yourself in before they do so, stating “because I guarantee, if most people were to be fully informed, they would end up not signing themselves in at all.”
This is something the minister said she too is concerned about. Speaking in an interview with TheJournal.ie, she said incidences where people have their status changed from voluntary to involuntary “should be very rare”. She said she had asked the expert group to look at this issue stating:
There is clearly an issue between voluntary patients becoming involuntary and how does that happen… and if it is necessary then there needs a whole process put around it in order to ensure the person themselves know what the process involves and that you asking to leave, the suggestion then becoming that you are involuntary, that this triggers this process.
Dr Shari McDaid, policy officer for Mental Health Reform said, “Voluntary patients should have the right to leave. But there are cases where voluntary patients have been converted into involuntary and brought in under an admission order. Last year there was 567 of these cases where patients were regraded from voluntary to involuntary. What should happen in these cases is that they should be clearly told what is happening and all information should be presented to them.”
She said while the figures for involuntary patients looks relatively small in comparison to years gone by, with voluntary numbers on the rise, she said the figures might not reveal the full picture. She said:
There are about 15,000 admissions each year and about 2,000 of these are involuntary last year. In that sense, the figures look small, but but a quarter of involuntary admissions are actually voluntary patients who have been re-graded, so anyone going in needs to know that they can be regraded as involuntary.Also many patients, despite being kept in hospital, would prefer to remain under the status of voluntary because they think it’s viewed better, so that needs to be considered. Then there are the patients who don’t have the capacity to make the decisions, and they have no protections whatsoever, because they are under the status of voluntary.
Colm O’Gorman said that there is a real concern over incidences when a person might be coerced into remaining a voluntary patient.
“Someone who is coerced into staying in as a voluntary patient is not a voluntary patient. They are there because they are coerced into staying and/or they are threatened with involuntary detention because it is more onerous,” he said.
O’Gorman added: “Isn’t that incredibly stigmatising to someone who will find themselves detained. It suggests that if someone is being detained because they are experiencing a serious mental health difficulty that this is a black mark against that individual for the rest of their lives. There is the whole question of further stigmatising. It also speaks clearly to the fact that many voluntary patients may not be voluntary because they feel pressured or coerced into staying when actually they want to leave.”
The expert group’s interim report also flagged this issue, stating: “There have been suggestions that many (capacitated) voluntary patients are not truly voluntary as they have consented to admission or to treatment only because of the threat of detention.” They added that they would recommend that voluntary patients should be voluntary in all respects and that patients should be well informed of what it entails when you voluntarily sign in to a hospital.
Minister Lynch said there is extraordinary scrutiny of the status-regrading figures and the longer-duration detainment figures are audited.
However, Section 23 and 24 of the act provides the power to prevent a voluntary patient from leaving and allows for their detainment. The UN Committee Against Torture said in 2011 that there was a “lack of clarity” in the reclassification of patients’ status. Amnesty International Ireland state that they are concerned that this can make voluntary patients ‘involuntary’ in all but name.
They stated that while every time a patient is re-graded from voluntary to involuntary, the Mental Health Commission must be notified, there is no such notification requirement where the “holding power” of section 23 is invoked, but where section 24 – the right to detainment – is not invoked. They said that when section 23 of the act is invoked, the MHC should also be informed, so as to address any “inappropriate use of the power”.
When asked about the possible rolling over of section 23, where a person wants to leave can be held for up to 24 hours, then the patient could be coerced into staying as a voluntary patient and whether there was a possibility of this abuse taking place, Minister Lynch said:
I don’t think that anyone, no minister, anywhere, could ever absolutely swear that there are not abuses in the system.
Christina Finn/YouTube
The expert group has called for a review of section 23 and 24 of the act stating that “a voluntary patient that wants to leave should be able to do so”. Where the patient is deemed to be at risk, the recommended the short term detainment of the patient should be permitted for just 12 hours, rather than 24 hours.
Rory Doody said the Mental Health Act “legitimates inequality” adding that it legitimises discrimination, as it separates them and us. “It separates people from people,” he said adding that he believed too much power belongs to psychiatry.
When asked if the minister agreed with this statement, she said she had never met a consultant psychiatrist, in whatever area of medicine, who liked to have his judgement questioned, but said they were not being given power, but were being given responsibility. She also said that psychiatrists acting “god-like” and “arrogant” was a difficulty.
Christina Finn/YouTube
A review of the Act took place in 2007, but many of the recommendations have not been implemented.
Colm O’Gorman of Amnesty Ireland sounds a warning on the nation’s seeming inability to learn from the past:
We surely have to acknowledge that we have a huge legacy difficulty. History only becomes history when you have learned from it and moved on from the past. If we do not do that, then it most likely is still influencing our present.
If we come from a history of those difficulties then the legacy, that denial, that failure to understand the complexities involved in issues like how we should properly support those with mental health problems, that is likely to influence the approach we have today.
This article was written with the support of the Mary Raftery Journalism Fund. To find out more about the fund, please visit www.maryrafteryfund.ie or follow @maryrafteryfund on Twitter.
First published 6.45am
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Climate crisis? More like climate scam to tax your very existence.
Hey Damocles, this is the weakness of democracy Shane Bradley was talking about^^^^. Short-termist idiots like this case here have a vote, and also breed.
This is simply put and well said. The weakness of all democracies, our own included, is short termism and superficiality. Rarely do politicians see beyond the next election or beneath a newspaper headline.nThis is why when the economic bubble was expanding in the mid 2000s not one of the main political parties had a ‘let’s be prudent and stop spending’ manifesto and if they did, would they have enjoyed electoral success? I think not.nSo too with our fragile climate, which needs unpopular short term pain (public transport resources, running costs of cars increasing even more, water charges etc) for unseen and inexperienced benefits ( a sustainable future). Now that’s a real vote winner!!!
That’s a bit arrogant, Shane.
The majority of the electorate are shallow, vacuous people who are incapable of long term thoughts and only care about the latest glittery bauble presented by the greedy politicians, while only a small minority like yourself are capable of seeing the great vision?
Give people a chance, they might surprise you.
They constantly surprise us Damocles.
They elect Jackie Healy-Rae, then Michael; they elect Lowry and Cowen and Ahern and all their ilk. They surprise us every time.
Frankly, I wish they’d stop surprising us quite so much…
I stopped believing in climate change and other fairy-tales when I was a child. Most sensible people realize that the Earths climate goes through cycles and future generations are heading towards an Ice age regardless. What never ceases to amaze me is mans stupidity in believing Global Warming is anything but a political movement designed for taxes and careers. 10,000 years ago Arizona was under 40″ of ice, so we know that temperature can vary on its own. Glaciers world wide have been shrinking for the last 300 years, this means that things other than CO2 change our climate.
To keep things in context, a recent survey ‘The Petition Project’ featured over 31,000 of the worlds most esteemed scientists signing the petition stating “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere”
The Inconvenient Truth, like most political propaganda is for sheep.
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” Galileo Galileo
….and surprised again. Cheers for that Paula….
Go have a read:
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
BTW Paula your “petition project” ? “Doctor” Michael J Fox, “Doctor” Geri Halliwell, “Doctor” John C. Grisham and “Doctor” Perry S. Mason are all signatories. Now, I enjoyed Back to the Future as much as any other kid, but I don’t really think it qualified Michael J Fox to the point where his signature was sufficient evidence to discount the work of climatologists the world over for the past fifty years and the physical evidence they’ve uncovered and highlighted.
For anyone who genuinely wants to know the full story behind the “Petition Project”, take a read:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-11-12/#feature
Interesting article and very good points, the only problem is that if we were to reduce our beef farming then it will probably just move to somewhere like south America where it is in general not as sustainable and therefore increase carbon emissions worldwide but Ireland would have an A+
Well we could do a bit more tillage but buy doing so beef prices would rise, but still global warming is a theory, those climate scientists like to fudge reports to make them sound more dramatic, like those guys in England before Copenhagen 2009.
Yeah Peter, it’s just a theory.
Like, you know, the theory of gravity.
Anyday now, we’re going to prove that that silly gravity thing is just a theory and then we’ll all fly like pigeons…
The climate has always changed and always will.the cows have always belched and farted .and Molly will get paid to scare the s— out of us .more methaine.
Very true Eilish, but George Carlin put it better: “The Planet is fine, it doesn’t need saving. It’s the People who’re f*cked!”
This is the biggest load of rubbish i have ever read. Friends of the Earth should be called enemies of the people. What will people do when there is no food to eat or not enough lettuce to go around. Typical scaremongering from global warming morons. Ask any farmer if it’s getting too dry in the south of Ireland. It’s a complete washout. People like molly should not be entertained without facts and figures and also alternatives to her argument.
Yeah, quick, lets ask any farmer, anywhere in the world, if they’ve been seeing more extreme weather in the last decade or so. (Hint: The answer will be either “Yes” or “I’ve not been farming that long”).
Another great example of the Irish self-hate bias! No mention of the right of Americans to wastefully drive gas guzzlers, Canadian wastefulness in extracting shale oil or Chinese hunger for burning dirty coal ad inf. Paddy is attacking Paddy for producing less than 0.14% of the world’s greenhouse gas thus ignoring the real culprits and arguing for Paddy to shoot himself in the foot. Evidence if were needed that Irish journalism (like banking) is infected with mad cow disease!
While it’s a good point that those countries are being wasteful, telling others what you see they’re doing wrong (especially when Paddy has his own wrongdoings going on) often just gets people’s backs up. It doesn’t help the situation and distracts from what Irish people can actually change directly: the .14% of emissions as you put it.
Plus it doesn’t have to be a foot-shooting exercise, there is profitability in them their renewables.
While it’s a good point that those countries are being wasteful, telling others what you see they’re doing wrong (especially when Paddy has his own wrongdoings going on) often just gets people’s backs up. It doesn’t help the situation and distracts from what Irish people can actually change directly: the .14% of emissions as you put it.
Plus it doesn’t have to be a foot-shooting exercise, there is profitability in them there renewables.
Andrew – gross ineptitude is perhaps the best description of the “green movement” world wide and especially true of Ireland. It is not about cattle that are reared in Ireland to provide food for other countries, it is about consumerism and the mad unsustainable snobbish behaviours of humans in general. When the “airy fairy green loons” realise where the problem lies they might be able to solve it and the label of “gross ineptitude” might disappear.
Insects contain as much protein as beef and don’t produce any emissions, in years to come we will be ordering a plate of insects rather than a stake!
At which point, we’ll be doing what the majority of the human race already do.
BTW, pass those red M&M’s, would you? Gotta have me some of those insects…
Insect ‘meat’ is a more credible solution than we might imagine. Insects use a fraction of the space and feed resources of large animals. They give off close to zero methane and other harmful gases. They contain nearly twice as much protein per kilo and almost no fat.
A recent project at the Royal College of Art in London tried to imagine ‘cricket mince’ and ‘caterpillar croquettes’ on the prepared food aisle at your local Tesco: http://cargocollective.com/ento/Products
No worse than whatever foul grisel goes into a Supermac’s burger in my view.
Interesting link derrynairn, I may just go and buy some!
Ate insects regularly when living in Thailand.
No different from eating prawns or periwinkles.
some local farmers used to raise insects in cages for protein in their diet. Very cheap and convenient food.
Molly our Co2 emissions are relatively minuscule. Climate change is already happening and is more than likely irreversible. We however, have some of the worlds best real estate to deal with it, with our northern latitude and relatively high elevation. I would refute your drought stricken southern farm theory as folly. We should absolutely concentrate on departing from our fossil fuel dependence but mainly because we need to prepare for the transition as such power sources run out. The analogy of Co2 emissions and our economic depression is little more than a parlour trick designed to shed light on topics that are utterly unrelated.
CO2 not Co2 sorry to be pedantic, Carbon Dioxide (1 carbon 2 oxygen) not 2 cobalts
It’s not the governments fault, it’s ours. We vote them in, they want to stay in. If you want them to tackle climate it means higher taxes. We don’t want that.
Oh give me a break, who cares……
It’s true to say that cows (or more properly, their complementary load of methanogenic bacteria) release merhane to the armosphere.
Yet there is a duplicity here. The figures for the impact of agriculure on global warming are derived from
making many assumptions which may or may not be true, and which this writer is disingenuously glossing over.
Grain growing accounts for, by far, the largest carbon impact of all human food production. The calculations for livestock usually include a “grain loading” which is not appropriate to include in a calculation for grass-fed herds like Ireland’s. Pastured animals also CREATE soil, an important carbon sink, while grain crops steadily destroy soil and replace it with petroleum based feetilisers. I would request the writer do separate calculations on the impacts of grain-fed v grass-fed herds, and the im
…pacts of spil-building practices versus soil-destroying practices.
Is she suggesting that Irish livestock farms, which suit local conditions should be converted to less suitable and more destructive practices?
Or that we should let our hillsides go to fire-hazard whin-strewn undegrazed wilderness?
Some useful practical thinking is in order. And truthful use of statistics.
*trigger finger*
We are currently jn a race between human ingenuity and human stupidity ! We Have an economic system that requires perpetual growth to survive in a finite world. That is why we do need to find ways to reduce the farting of cows – we are getting ourselves into complex problems that require complex solutions so yes jay we do need the scientists.
Not to overly dwell on the farting thing but imagine the climate change when dinosaur s were at it .no wonder they had to go.
That’s pretty much exactly what happened to them Eilish, more than once (there was more than one extinction event – they were around for a few million years, we’ve only been here for at most a hundred thousand). Asteroid impacts, ice ages, supervolcano eruptions; all (ultimately) forms of climate change, species couldn’t adapt to the new climate and died out.
Basic facts are that the banking crisis WAS a man made problem and “Climate Change” is not. The pseudo-science involved in this modern myth is nothing more than researchers with no real work being able to get easy funding for almost anything they want as long as they make a link (No matter how tenuous) to climate. Climate cycles have been around as long as the planet and is a natural cycle and to mention Al Gore adds insult to injury… This is the man that tried to convince everyone he invented the internet while he was running for president and believes in climate change so much that he makes absolutely no attempt to reduce his own so called “Carbon Footprint” You only have to look at his house. I’m all for green energy if it means cheaper energy, but the funny thing is that when I looked at the prices here in Ireland, If you want to purchase solely renewable source electricity it’s the most expensive electricity you can buy!!! SCAM SCAM SCAM
Once upon a time Jay, folks would have argued with you about that.
These days, they just recognise you as a quack.
But here, go read the actual evidence for yourself. No reason you have to remain a quack.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Mark, the words ‘head’, ‘wall’, ‘banging’ spring to mind. Honestly The Journal is not the place to be if you are looking for rational debate, science and factual comments. I’m with you on this and agree with the science supporting your argument but the majority of comments here are not worth responding to. Just hold on to the thought that The Journal commenters are not representative of the Irish people (hopefully).
Those are your words, Damocles. In 2007, all the main parties had manifestos based on 4-6% economic growth – why, if not to get elected? nThe astuteness of the Irish electorate (or indeed of any democracy) is hard to judge and I am not making such an assessment. My comment is about democracy…which is littered with short termism etc. I am not sure what the answer is… But we are all paying the cost of poor leadership. Also the standard of public political debate…. Someone once said..’everything is political, except politics, which is personal’ (or some such). The personal slanging matches that often characterise Dail discussions and TV debates illustrate this well.
Just paraphrasing.
The politicians might be just after the quick electoral hit but it’s the electorate that give it to them, right?
If the electorate were half as well capable of seeing the grand vision that you do then they’d abandon such politicians for those who offer the long term solutions you see, surely?
But you say that the politicians, and hence the electorate, go for the quick hit. Incapable and unwilling to see the grand vision …
Maybe you’re right, maybe we need a long term vision from some sort of ‘new’ politician.
People seem to oppose austerity but support Green austerity. This agricultural plan is in fact anything but short termism, quite the opposite, and will provide jobs and exports. When Molly says we are on target for the reduction in car emissions, that is down to the recession. We won’t get out of the recession unless industries, or agriculture grow and that will involve more emissions, unless we have technical solutions on emissions instead of solutions to reduce consumption or production.
Economic contraction is not a solution, it creates human misery. Molly seems to suggest that we should not try to implement this report, and not compete for more exports in beef or cattle, exports which will be replaced elsewhere at a possible cost to the environment anyway, “good” for Ireland’s Green reports, but neutral, or worse, for the world’s. Thats a mugs game.
Instead of austerity Greenism we could try to reduce emissions per cow. I was going to suggest it wasn’t past the ingenuity of humans to reduce cow emissions, or trap them, and in fact it has been done, just not implemented.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/mar/22/germany.climatechange
We need a world government to control population and climate change. Thankfully it’s well on the way now even if they are just the super rich banksters.
Surprised so many people gave thumbs down to the idea of a World Government.
So many of today’s problems are global problems and require global solutions.
while some aspects of climate change, over the long run, should give us pause. the alarmist mentality that it is any sort “crisis” has been vastly overblown.
simply put, those who advocate this crisis cannot scientifically support their own arguments in any form of fair, honest public debate.
add in the fact that, if you are a professor or scientist, and you don’t advocate for the current climate change junk science. you’ll very soon find yourself out of a job. and ridiculed by peers.
many researchers and professors simply follow the research funding. which, for the most part, only flows into those who advocate for climate science, to the point where evidence against such is ridiculed. most of the true scientific work is heralded by retired members of the climate science community, no longer forced to provide one side only of the argument in order to receive funding and keep their university jobs (after all professors and scientists who don’t bring in funding aren’t of much use to the commercial income of any school).
it gets so bad, that even students who propose otherwise in their own papers are automatically failed by some professors, regardless of the merits of their research. simply for going against the status quo of the governing “consensus” with their views.
Climate change is a massive lie!!
That is a somewhat unsubstantiated claim. At least the issue is in dispute and evidence is suggestive that something significant is happening our climate (melting polar ice, atypical weather patterns globally over the last few years). While it is true the evidence is not without it’s detractors, I for one think it’s taking an unnecessary risk with our and future generations well being to deny the possibility of climate change.
human evolution favours the forces of psychological denial
May sound like a contradiction, but the carbon impact of building and running and transporting a new car outweighs the impact of continuing to run an older “dirtier” car thats already been built and shipped. Especially hybrids. They use hard to get rare earth minerals much more than standard diesel or petrol cars.
Those are your words, Damocles. In 2007, all the main parties had manifestos based on 4-6% economic growth – why, if not to get elected? nThe astuteness of the Irish electorate (or indeed of any democracy) is hard to judge and I am not making such an assessment. My comment is about democracy…which is littered with short termism etc. I am not sure what the answer is… But we are all paying the cost of poor leadership. Also the standard of public political debate…. Someone once said..’everything is political, except politics, which is personal’ (or some such). The personal slanging matches that often characterise Dail discussions and TV debates illustrate this well.
Mark ,as will happen,life s like that
Actually, *death and extinction of the species* is like that Eilish.
Thing is, while we currently couldn’t do very much about asteroid impacts or supervolcano eruptions, we’ve already proven with the Montreal Protocol, we can control our own impact on the environment. And if we’re going to go extinct as a species, let’s do it because of something massive and beyond our control, not because we couldn’t stop a few cows belching…
@mark….Oh it must be true it’s on nasa’s website… Governments want you to believe it so they can tax it. I’d rather hear it from independent scientists
If you want independent scientific reports, look up the publications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change..body of work reviewed is probably as extensive as possible to synthesise the existing research on the core issues. nTake it as a starter point to find additional literature to do your own reading around the issues. nObviously no one source can be unbiased enough so if you read widely you can come to your own conclusions. n http://www.ipcc.ch
http://carbon-based-ghg.blogspot.ie/2010/11/leaking-siberian-ice-raises-tricky.html when this happens were all shagged.cattle, insects people everything.
Yup, not to mention what happens if the Ross Shelf lets go or if the gulf stream shifts because of climate change. Mind you, at that point, as we sit here slowly freezing (our latitude is *cold* folks, if it wasn’t for the stream, we’d normally see winters like the one in 2010/11), all we’d here is “stupid scientists, call this global *warming* do you?”…
Is it still raining?
Ooo yeahh
have your say