Date and venue: Friday 26th July 2024 at 11.30am. Maldron Hotel Shandon as part of Spirit of Mother Jones Summer School.
John Barry is Professor of Green Political Economy and Co-Director of the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action at Queens University Belfast. He is also Co-Chair of the Belfast Climate Commission. His last book was The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World (Oxford University Press).
John Barry at Climate Change Rally in Belfast in 2021.
John Barry is a father, a political activist, trades unionist, recovering politician and a member of the Sustainable Future Committee of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
What keeps him awake at night is the life opportunities and future wellbeing of his and other children in this age of the planetary emergency and intersecting social and economic injustices within and between countries. What also keeps him awake at night is the following question: why is it easier for most people to believe in the end of the world than the end of capitalism and economic growth? What keeps him awake during his day job is why higher education is continuing in a ‘business as usual’ manner while the planet burns, inequality increases, and militarisation and conflict within and between societies grows?
John Barry at Palestinian Demonstration Recently.
His areas of academic research include post-growth and heterodox political economy; the politics, policy and political economy of climate breakdown and climate resilience; socio-technical analyses of low carbon just energy and sustainability transitions; and the overlap between conflict transformation and these sustainability transitions.
“A Sense of Wonder”, a documentary by Kaiulani Lee about the life of Rachel Carson will be shown on Friday afternoon, 28th July at 2:30pm at the Maldron Hotel.
Rachel Carson, a marine biologist, published Silent Spring in 1962 which warned the world of the dangers of using pesticides on nature. The synthetic chemicals originally used during the Second World War were repackaged by some chemical companies for farmers to use on insects and weeds with little or no regulation. She highlighted the aerial spraying of DDT in particular.
Carson’s challenging and ground-breaking book resulted in a sustained and personal attack by the chemical industry on her findings and on her personally. However she faced down the industry, defended her work which subsequently led to a huge questioning by many scientists and citizens all over the world of the destruction of the environment through the use of pesticides and biocides in the natural environment. For her bravery, her work and her warnings Rachel Carson is regarded by many as the “Mother of the Environmental movement”.
Unfortunately in spite of growing scientific evidence of the impact of chemicals on birds, insects and vegetation the destruction has continued for the most part in spite of some governmental regulations. The ongoing loss of biodiversity and the growth of industrial agriculture is adding to the current mass extinction.
Carson quoted Albert Schweitzer as follows
“Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth”
We are honoured to show “ A Sense of Wonder” which was written and performed by Kaiulani Lee, with the help and guidance of many of Ms Carson’s friends and colleagues.
Kaiulani Lee.
Using many of Rachel Carson’s own words, Kaiulani embodies Carson in a documentary style film which depicts her in the final year of her life. As she battles the cancer, which was to take her life shortly afterwards, Carson tells the story of the attacks by the chemical industry, the government and the press as she tries to get the scientific evidence of destruction to be taken seriously by US legislators and people.
Kaiulani’s overreaching message in filming the documentary was to promote the interrelatedness of all life and the interconnection of all life. She says there has to be a shift in our consciousness and we have to know our place in the wider cosmos. We destroy life on the Earth at our peril.
Rachel Carson passed away on 14th April 1964, in Silver Springs, Maryland a few miles from where Mother Jones had died in 1930.
It is performed with humour, wit, sadness and anger by Kaiulani Lee, who has attended the Spirit of Mother Jones festivals in 2012 and 2015 and whose recent production of Fight Like Hell: – The testimony of Mother Jones is available to watch on Bullfrog Films.
Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. John Buttimer with Kaiulani Lee 2012.
The documentary will be introduced by Gerard (Ger) Mullally who is a sociology lecturer at University College Cork, specializing in the areas of environment, community, sustainable development and climate change. He also created the university-wide module in sustainability which is freely available to UCC students and staff as well as community members. This will be followed by an open discussion.
As part of the ongoing debate relating to the climate change taking place (one we feel would have been embraced by Mother Jones, especially in view of her fight against the exploitation of labour by unregulated capitalism, which now in turn exploits the environment), we welcome Niamh Guiry who will discuss how insights from Ireland’s ancient past might assist Ireland developing a sustainable path to resolving its environmental issues.
Niamh Guiry will speak at the Maldron Hotel Shandon on Friday morning 28th July at 10.30 am Conservation Insights from Brehon Law: Exploring Ireland’s Ancient Tree Considerations.
Niamh Guiry.
Many ancient cultures seemed to embody a multi-dimensional understanding of their local environment, recognising the practical benefits of healthy ecosystems as well as their more-than-human qualities.
Delving into Ireland’s past, we find a legacy of environmental considerations, reflected in the legal, social, and cultural value the people of early Irish society bestowed upon trees. Exploring the Old-Irish tree list found in Bretha Comaithchesa (Judgements of Neighbourhood) of Brehon law, mythological stories, and the spiritual practices of the time, this talk discusses how we could use insights from Ireland’s ancient environmental considerations to strengthen our approach to conservation.
Niamh Guiry is a climate activist and PhD Researcher at the School of Law, University College Cork. Her PhD research explores the interrelationship between the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, global environmental governance, and evolving patterns of international law-making.
A member of Not Here NotAnywhere, a grassroots organisation campaigning to end fossil fuel exploration and the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure in Ireland, Niamh has a keen interest in biodiversity protection, climate justice, and environmental communication.
Eoghan Daltun will speak at the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival on Friday morning 11.30am about his recent book, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding.
Eoghan was born in London, brought up in Dublin, lived in several countries and now resides on the Beara peninsula in West Cork. Sculptor and author Eoghan purchased the old Crowley farm of 33 acres with 40 acres of mountain commonage back in 2009. He talks of how the power of nature at Bofickil near Eyeries has regenerated the old woodland and helped to create a temperate rainforest on the farm.
Eoghan Daltun.
The Bofickil woods came about as a result of neglect rather than design. The original owner, Phllip Crowley was a copper miner who worked in nearby Allihies, later emigrated in 1909 to Butte, Montana to work in the copper mines and never came back. While other family members looked after the farm, wild native forest gradually became established and when Eoghan moved in a hundred years later, he provided the protection needed to enhance the natural progress of regeneration. Eoghan had become a conservator and rewilder.
Bofickil Wood
In his book he considers the state of nature in the wider context of the developing ecological crisis across the planet. He has some harsh comments to make about official European Union policy which destroys wildlife habitat and have become box-ticking bureaucratic exercises or fig-leaf solutions.
“….it financially penalises farmers who don’t remove existing wild patches on their land, while other schemes pay them to take token actions that are useless to wildlife. Strange as it might seem, what birds, bats, bees and everything else really need isnt boxes stuck on trees or fence posts, or piles of builders sand, but actual habitat.”
Eoghan cites the influence of James Lovelock and biologist Rachel Carson. Lovelock developed the scientific theory of GAIA about how the Earth’s natural ecosystems sustain the world’s conditions which are conducive and essential to life on planet Earth. By coincidence, Lovelock, a British scientist, once lived about 25 kilometres back the road at Ard Carrig in Adrigole during the period in which he developed the hypothesis of Gaia. The stunning natural beauty and raw nature of the Beara peninsula may have influenced Lovelock as it does Eoghan Daltun.
Eoghan Daltun appears at the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival on Friday 28th July at 11.30am at the Maldron Hotel in Shandon.
Cathedral Visitor Centre, Friday afternoon, 2nd August at 2.30.
Fridays for Future Cork
This lecture will explore issues of environmental and climate justice from local and regional levels to the planetary scale. The conversation will be grounded in ecological and environmental sciences with pertinent background information provided with the intention of moving the discourse beyond established dogmas.
Dr. John Barimo
The talk will include experiential insights into traditional Native American cultures with regards to land use practices and ecological awareness. Representative historical events will be explored to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the environmental movement.
The concept of NIMBY will be considered with local and regional environmental issues with attention focused on case studies where inequalities can be generally detected along socio-economic lines. Finally, concepts will be scaled up to planetary level to consider the linked issues of carbon emissions, ocean acidification and climate change, and their disproportionate impacts on developing countries and small island nations.
This lecture will be immediately followed by a short film Remembering the Cork Climate Change March 2019. (Frameworks Films). This impressive, colourful and vocal march of students protesting about the failure to tackle Climate Change took place on 15th March 2019 beginning at Emmet Place in Cork and finishing at City Hall Cork. Over 5000 students participated.
Micah Nelson
Micah Neilson is a member of Fridays For Future Cork which helped to organise the Cork Climate Change march. She will then discuss the role of the grassroots movement Fridays For Future Cork has played in the recent student strikes in Ireland and how they have propelled the impact of Climate Change to the very top of the political and social agenda.
Alicia O’Sullivan
Alicia O’Sullivan is from Skibbereen in West Cork and is Ireland’s Youth Ambassador for the Oceans. She admitted recently that the impact of Climate Charge has made her afraid of the future. An activist on social issues she will also discuss the role of the youth of the world in saving the planet from extinction. She has recently campaigned against the planning permission for a plastics factory in her native town.
The meeting will conclude with a full panel Questions and Answers.
Timetable for Day Three of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival – Thursday, 3rd August 2017.
There is an environmental theme to today’s events which begin at 11.00am with what promises to be an interesting and topical talk by Councillor Marcia D’Alton on “The Environmental Battle for Cork Harbour”.
We will have Music at the Maldron Hotel at 1.00pm and at 2.30pm at the Firkin Crane we will be showing the thought-provoking documentary “A Plastic Ocean” by Australian journalist and film-maker Craig Leeson.
at 7.30pm we will have a lecture at the Maldron entitled “Climate Change – Our Response” by Fr. Sean McDonagh who has written extensively on environmental issues and is currently President of An Taisce.
Warming of Planet Earth – Photo via NASA / Wikimedia (Public Domain)
Fr Sean McDonagh will present a talk entitled “Climate Change – Our Response” at the Maldron Hotel on Thursday 3rd August 2017 as part of a general “environment day” at the 2017 Spirit of Mother Jones summer school.
Fr. Sean McDonagh was born in Nenagh, Co Tipperary in 1944 and was ordained a priest in the Columban order in 1969. He was sent to work in Mindanao in the Philippines where he spent four years working in Oroqueita City. Later he worked amongst the T’boli indigenous people near Lake Sebu where he witnessed at first hand the destruction of the local forests. Thus began his environmental activism which has led to a huge literary output and his travels across the world explaining that environmental destruction leads to global poverty especially amongst the poor.
Fr. Sean McDonagh (right) meets Pope Francis
He highlights the causes and effects of climate warming, the lack of access to fresh water, the destruction of our oceans. He opposes the patenting of seeds and animals and warns of the dangers of genetic engineering which concentrates power and control over food production in a few unaccountable multinationals. In 2006 he published Climate Change: The Challenge to Us All in which he discusses the consequences of Global Warming. His is a passionate and urgent call to all, including the churches to become active in ensuring solutions are found.
Fr McDonagh has written numerous articles and papers for various newspapers and magazines around the world. He is a strong advocate for Pope Francis’s recent Encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si – On Care for our Common Home”, described by many as the most revolutionary papal encyclical ever. He argues for the Church to become the catalyst for the change needed to safeguard the planet. Currently President of An Taisce: The National Trust for Ireland, Fr Sean has assisted many environmental organisations over the decades. He is a proud Tipperary person and enjoys the game of hurling.
Climate Change: As a result mainly of the combustion of fossil fuels, there is an accumulation of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxides in the atmosphere leading to the rise in average global temperatures by 0.6 C degrees in the past 100 years but scientists are predicting that the earth’s temperature could rise by between 1.4 C degrees this century. Many scientists also predict that this rise will have catastrophic results for the earth. High temperatures, heat waves, rising sea levels, violent storms, loss of food production, loss of wildlife, water shortages, the list is endless. But one thing is clear- it will have a major change on the world as we know it.
On Wednesday 19th July 2017, the Irish Government produced the National Mitigation Plan which detailed 106 ways to reduce the impact of Climate Change in Ireland. It promised a “fundamental societal transformation”. However Ireland is likely to be well short of reaching its target for a 20% reduction in emissions from the 2005 figures by the year 2020. Indeed emissions are projected by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency to increase 2015-2020 by between 10% and 20% in the transport sector and 5% in the agricultural sectors. These are the big emitters with Agriculture contributing 33% and Transport 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions in Ireland.
Fr. Sean McDonagh
The Paris Agreement aims to restrict global temperature rises to well below 2% above pre-industrial levels and is committed as a whole to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. Ireland is currently way off the mark! Will the latest glossy green brochure of the National Mitigation Plan be just another symbol of Irish indifference to climate change? Or are we all going to ensure we do not remain bystanders to the threat facing future generations?
Fr Sean McDonagh will present his views on Thursday evening 3rd August at 7.30 at the Maldron Hotel, Cork.
