Dear Editor,
I am consistently concerned by Galway City and County Councils’ attitude towards flood defences, as evident in last week’s Galway Advertiser article “City’s Flood Defences May Need Massive Re-Engineering As Climate Change Hits”.
The article notes a number of possible adaptative measures for Galway, including but not limited to, sea walls, road raising, and tidal gates. This comes following An Taoiseach Varadkar’s comments last week that ”adaptation to climate change would be the most effective response”.
Whilst some of these measures are more than likely required for storm surges and should have been proactively sought out decades ago by previous local governments, we must be cognisant not to disregard the importance that mitigation measures can have to reduce flooding impacts.
For every degree centigrade the earth warms, the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture. Rapidly moving to cleaner energy production, reducing the necessity of vehicular transport, and reducing agricultural emissions in Ireland, and around the world, is essential.
Maintaining and ensuring permanent green spaces in our city should be a priority. We need more trees, shrubs, plants, and overall green spaces which can hold moisture and prevent some levels of flooding.
Ireland’s land use requires a sincere and rapid transformation, from overgrazed fields populated by ruminant agriculture to land for carbon sequestration, wildlife proliferation, and soil and nutrient restoration.
We have the solutions to tackle the issues exacerbated by climate change. The science is settled and unequivocally clear.
However, none of these changes will occur with the current government parties in action, nor without severing the idea that “business as usual” ever had a place on our fragile planet.
Is mise le meas,
Criodán Ó Murchú
An Taisce Climate Committee Member
