Irish Climate

Kevin Sweeney: ”This is not Africa, where … the rain may dry up and millions of people might have to move. People can raise their children, they can make a living, they can find sustenance in Ireland, but it will look and feel and be different. And that’s the subtlety we want to explain here. We don’t want to project that this is catastrophe.”

Kevin’s worked in business, branding, and government for the last two decades, some of which seems to have had something to do with climate and Ireland (or so his resume proclaims), so he must know what he’s talking about, right? We always hope and assume that the breadth of one’s experience is what makes valuable one’s conclusions and observations of the world. So those to whom much worldly experience is given, much should be expected. But listen to the man.

What he’s saying is that Africa is a crisis, and Ireland is merely a shame. And in spite of all the bloviating, nothing could be further from the truth. If we have to listen to this kind of nonsense, let it be in an environment where everyone understands the polit-speak and basically ignores it. But that’s unlikely to be the way this goes down. Supposedly important people speak, and there are always those who listen, even when it is against their interest, and even when the words are noise disguised as commentary.

I suppose it may be significant enough that double-speaking corporate tools are even starting to pay lip service to environmental causes, now that they’ve been shown a way in which it may be profitable for them to do so. Better a small amount of poorly-understood ‘common knowledge’ served up in sound bytes than encouraging depth of understanding and personal passion — which is frequently dangerous to unwieldy systems of institutionalized thinking.

Please feel free to speak up on this matter, especially if you experiences or genuine knowledge that can contribute to our understanding of the motives behind such behavior. We would really like to know how this kind of hypocrisy gets started and basically what’s at its root in our society.