The Quiet Road

For me, food miles have become the single biggest factor when I do my weekly shop. They over-ride pretty much all other considerations these days. “Nothing from outside Europe” is the basic rule… broken only very rarely for certain tropical fruit. Usually in a fit of “Goddamn it! Mango is my favourite food! We’re all going to die someday and I’m denying myself my favourite food! It’s right there in front of me, for a price I can afford. I’m surrounded by people buying apples flown in from Chile despite the fact that they’re on a shelf next to some Irish ones and I’m denying myself a single mango. I’m a frakking hair-shirted weirdo! That’s it! I’m buying one!”

And yes, I do use that many exclamation marks when I’m thinking about it.

But by and large I spend time making sure that everything I buy is sourced from as close to me as is possible. I vividly recall standing in the supermarket one afternoon and pointing out to the woman next to me that she was buying Chilean apples rather than Irish ones. I’ll never forget the look of contempt I got… “I’ll buy what I want!” she insisted in brittle tones. There’s a part of me convinced that she now goes out of her way to buy food from the furthest flung corners of the earth just to spite me. She had that kind of look in her eyes and a terrible hiss in her voice.

It’s a little disheartening to say the least; the thought that my watchful attitude towards food miles is now merely balancing out the damage done by saying, “Excuse me, but did you realise that by choosing the Irish apples you’d be doing your part to combat Climate Change?” in as friendly a voice as serious ol’ me is capable.

Of course, it’s not quite as simple as “Buy homegrown. Save the planet. Everyone lives happily ever after.” Because nothing’s ever that simple. Well, almost nothing. In fact it’s questionable as to whether it’s even possible any more. Can Europe grow enough food to support its population? According to the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), for example, it most certainly can’t. They claim that Western Europe’s arable land is only capable of carrying approximately a third of our current population at “present lifestyle”. This number increases to two thirds if we reduce our levels of consumption to what OPT describes as a “modest lifestyle”.

You can download the Excel Spreadsheet containing detailed global numbers, but for a brief flavour of OPT’s calculations; with zero food imports, the UK has a ‘present lifestyle’ carrying capacity of less than one third its current population. Belgium and Luxembourg; one tenth. France; a half. Germany; a quarter. Holland; one eighth. And so on.

The only Western European nations that come even close to being able to support their own populations at current levels of consumption are Finland, Ireland and Sweden. If you reduce consumption to modest levels, you can add Norway and Denmark to that list. The implications are clear… unless Europe reduces its population significantly, it will need to continue to import large amounts of food from Africa and elsewhere just to prevent starvation (note: this is even if we restrict our consumption to sensible / modest levels).

And that’s not the end of the story either. Hypothetically, what if Western Europe was suddenly capable of supporting the current population? Would we find ourselves in the “Buy homegrown. Save the planet. Everyone lives happily ever after.” situation? Sadly not. As this post over at worldchanging (via Gyrus) makes clear, Western Europe’s voracious appetite has led to a large number of poorer nations retooling their entire economy to function as an extension of European arable land. Huge areas of Kenya, for instance, are devoted to growing salad vegetables for European tables. If that market disappears, it will result in significant problems for Kenyan farmers.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that’s a good enough reason for us to be flying mange-tout and sugar-snap peas up from the equator. Frankly when you realise that amongst the nations bordering Kenya are three (Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia) which suffer regular devastating famines, the fact that Kenya is growing baby corn for our salads instead of regular corn to prevent local starvation becomes rather sinister. We all know the old cliché that famine is not a result of food shortages, but is instead a consequence of inequitable distribution and political corruption. Nonetheless, how many of us are aware of our own culpability in this inequity when we buy Kenyan vegetables?

God bless the market, eh? We in Europe can currently pay more to a Kenyan farmer to airlift fresh salad on to our table than an Ethiopian can pay the same farmer — his or her neighbour — to put staple food items on to theirs. As Tim Worstall (blogging economist) so eloquently put it, “Making money from customers is what businesses do, it is the very reason for their existence.” Market capitalism ensures that agriculture is a business like any other. It does not exist to feed the hungry, it exists to generate profit. Market economists see this as a good thing.

I don’t, needless to say. But as I’ve already illustrated, there is no easy solution here. Europe simply cannot grow enough food to feed itself. We could reduce our consumption significantly and still not have enough land. That said, I would nonetheless urge Kenyan farmers to restructure their economy, accept the pay cut, and start to feed their neighbours. Our inability to feed ourselves is our problem, and leaving hundreds of thousands of nameless black people to starve half a world away is not an ethical solution to that problem*.

For now, I shall continue to support Irish farmers 100% (OK, 99.9%… I’ll still buy the occasional mango). And as transportation fuel becomes less abundant, driving the price of imported food ever upwards, it will become easier to do so. But Europe will soon need to face up to this problem of how we feed our massive population. And between peak oil and climate change, it seems unlikely that using Africa and South America as our personal gardens will be an option for very much longer.

Have you ever been on a five hour coach journey that became a twelve hour perdition due to bad weather? It’s pretty damn ugly let me tell you. Just arriving at a coach station is enough to shake a person’s confidence. The deep alien throb of two dozen large bus engines idling. It’s not the scream of jets, but you can still hear the planet burn. And while I’m far from being a religious man, and I don’t know about heaven or hell, I know for damn certain there’s a purgatory. The Catholics are right on the money about that one. It turns out you see, that the corporeal manifestation of the realm of lost souls forever denied grace… is the Irish public transport system.

And in one fell swoop, the Catholicism thing is explained. How else could that weird little gentleman’s club have held sway over a country for so long? For the answer; just show up at an Irish bus-stop and wait. I’m not saying it’s definitely enough to drive an entire nation to its knees, but it’s worth thinking about.

In truth though, torrential rains and galeforce winds making roads temporarily impassable is hardly a peculiarly Irish phenomenon. And half a day cooped up in a narrow coach seat isn’t noticeably improved by the nationality of the tarmac being slowly traversed. On that, sadly, I speak from bitter experience. A deep grimness cuts right to the soul. There’s a moment… about seven and a half hours into your five hour journey… as you pass what looks suspiciously like the halfway point, when you gradually become aware that you’ve exhausted every one of the limited number of possible positions your body can occupy in the restrictive confines of your seat. You enter a permanent stage of significant discomfort, and god help you if there’s a child within three seats. One with a toothache.

But as I say, coaches get delayed by bad weather all over the world. So it’s not really fair for me to lay this one squarely on the Irish public transport system. Unlike, say, when I want to catch the 75 bus to Stillorgan and find myself — an hour and a half into my wait — seething under my breath about how “I’ve been in third world countries with better public transport”. Which of course then gets me even more pissed off, because I don’t like the unconsciously patronising undertones of the phrase “third world” and I wonder whether my frustration at the bus is actually revealing cultural prejudice on some level. And nothing’s guaranteed to mess up your day more than a brutal dose of “dear god! maybe I’m even more riddled with unconscious prejudices than I thought”. Seriously, by the time I eventually get to Stillorgan I’m ready to emigrate again.

Please. Just take me to a place where the buses work… Is that really so much to ask?

This is a copy of a letter I’ve just emailed to one of my parliamentary representatives, Mr. Paul Gogarty TD. He’s a member of the Irish Green Party and my email was in response to a mail-shot on the subject of energy. Much of the leaflet was sound information on energy efficiency, renewables, grants for installing solar panels and heat pumps, a denunciation of nuclear energy… all good stuff. But the very first item is an article under the headline, “Biofuels can create new Irish jobs”. This piece heralds the worrying news that the EU has apparently set a target of almost 6% of transportation fuel to be sourced from biofuelstock by 2010.

I have a lot of time for The Greens, but am simultaneously irritated by their apparent desire not to rock the boat too much. If society decides to take the issue of Climate Change seriously, and in the face of a peak in oil and gas supply, then it will mean that individuals consume significantly less energy than they currently do. And although this may well provide long-term health and fulfillment benefits, it will be extremely uncomfortable, unpopular and maybe even unpleasant in the short to midterm.

Anyways… the letter…

Dear Paul,

I received your latest mail-out today (entitled €NERGY). With the exception of The Green Party, there is nobody in the political mainstream that comes even close to representing my views. Yet you seem to be doing your level-best to alienate even me, and turn my Green vote into a protest spoilt-ballot.

Your leaflet made some interesting points about energy efficiency, offered a rational dismissal of nuclear power and provided some useful information about renewable energy grants. But it also contained an extremely worrying recommendation of biofuels. You may as well have lauded China’s expansion of coal-power on the front page.

In fact, both your website and this latest mail-out trumpet “Biofuels” as a responsible alternative to fossil fuels. This is itself a wildly irresponsible position. The Chief economist at the UK’s Department for International Development recently estimated that “the grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year”. He may have been ’rounding-up’ the numbers for effect, but it still makes a mockery of biofuels as ‘ethical’ in a world where millions starve.
http://www.owen.org/blog/673

Even worse, George Monbiot’s excellent article, ‘Worse Than Fossil Fuel’, explains exactly why large scale biofuel projects have traditionally worked out as being even more carbon intensive than burning oil or gas!
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/

We live at a time when global climate change is perhaps the largest issue faced by our civilisation, and at a time when oil and gas supply could well be peaking. Organisations like The Green Party need to be loudly and frequently emphasising the need to dramatically scale back our energy usage as a society.

Yet such calls, where they are made in your literature, are greatly outnumbered and overshadowed by the glowing promise of more jobs (“Biofuels can create new Irish jobs”) and shiny new technology. One of the physical definitions of energy is ‘the ability to do work’. Our economy (the sum total of the work carried out by society) is no less than a giant engine to convert energy into material wealth. By promising more jobs, you are merely promising to accelerate that process.

Anyone who genuinely seeks to reduce carbon emissions needs to accept that the primary method of doing so must be a scaling back of economic activity. To promise such a thing may well seem like political suicide, but it would be honest. And I’ll always vote for the honest man above the good politician.

Yours sincerely,

Jim… (name and address provided)

[UPDATE] A Reasonable Response

Rather to my shock, Paul Gogarty TD responded to my email within a couple of hours of my sending it. More than that, he responded in a reasonable and measured manner which made my initial letter seem a wee bit shouty. I should probably make it a rule in the future not to write letters to politicians immediately having written a blog entry. It’s one thing being a bit strident and righteous when proclaiming to an unseen audience of billions; it’s quite another in a letter to another person.

Paul comes across very well in his response. I was just about to email him and ask if it was OK to post it here, when he posted it himself in the comments below (hi Paul!) which is where I’ll add a few further comments when I’ve worked out exactly what they are.

From Europhobia (now dressed in lovely WordPress trousers and sporting a shiny new URL) comes news that investigations into European complicity in US war crimes have identified 147 occasions when Irish soil was “suspected of being used for ‘extraordinary renditions’ or transfer of prisoners without trial or legal redress to sites such as Guantanamo Bay or Uzbekistan.”

It’s clear that the so-called “neutrality” of Ireland is a sham. At Shannon we provide transfer, refuelling and storage facilities for the US Air Force. I suspect that our government would not have offered the same hospitality to the Iraqi airforce in the geographically unlikely event that Saddam Hussein had made the request.

That said, our constitution is pretty damn clear about the neutrality of Ireland, and it’s always been a strict rule that Shannon could not be used for combat missions. This means that long-range bombers can’t refuel in Ireland on their way to drop explosives on a city, but a plane full of marines on their way to shoot people in that city is acceptable. I wonder whether the revered group of idealists, poets, socialists and agitators who framed our constitution would be proud of a government willing to make such spurious distinctions.

Or of a people willing to quietly acquiesce.

But use of Irish soil during these CIA ‘extraordinary renditions’? That brings the moral transgression and culpability to a whole other level. Here we have the Irish State actively and regularly assisting a policy of kidnap and torture. And 147 flights over a period of a few years is pretty damn regular. We’re not talking about a couple of isolated incidents here.

Protestations of ignorance are hollow and meaningless. An independent neutral republic not only has a right, it has a duty, to regulate any foreign military traffic that crosses its border. And for precisely this reason! So that we are not complicit in acts inconsistent with our international obligations. If a US airforce plane lands in Shannon and it contains people snatched from the street by the CIA en route for torture in an Uzbek detention centre, the Irish authorities have an absolute legal obligation to detain that flight and prevent a crime against humanity.

That these flights were never once detained demonstrates either than the Irish authorities were aware of their nature and chose to provide assistance nonetheless; or that a deliberate policy of ignorance was in place. Imagine an Irish airport had been used as a stop-off point for plane-loads of Afghan heroin for the past few years. Imagine that in order to gain favour with the heroin producers, the Irish government ordered the contents of the planes not to be examined. Imagine that the government later claimed they didn’t realise anything dodgy was going on. Lastly, imagine how naive you’d have to be to believe them.

You may consider that an extreme analogy. And it’s true, it would take a peculiar kind of eejit to think nothing dodgy was going on if Afghan heroin producers asked them to ignore some planes. But the C.I.A.? I mean, come on! You can trust them to be completely legit and above-board, right?

As I say; a peculiar kind of eejit. The kind we seem to elect.

What’s worse is that even despite widespread acknowledgement that these torture buses were fuelled and resupplied by Ireland, we have not denied the US military use of the facilities at Shannon. Instead we have accepted assurances that such flights will never stop in Ireland if indeed they ever happen which they don’t.

So we’re checking the planes now? Well no. They’ve promised to be all legit and above-board from now on, so we don’t need to.

Who has? Ummmm… the C.I.A.

You mean the kidnappers and torturers? Doh!

I must be the only person in Ireland who doesn’t give a flying feck about Bertie’s loans. Quite how the issue has dominated the national media for two weeks now is completely beyond me. For those who haven’t been following it; it seems our current taoiseach got a few off-the-record “loans” when he was in personal financial difficulty back in the early 1990s. Initially the government tried to prevent a corruption inquiry from investigating these loans, which was actually the worst thing that occurred in my view (seeking to abuse their political power to secure preferential treatment).

During the investigation a few other things turned up; but basically it’s all roughly in the same ballpark… over a decade ago, to get him through some money-problems, Bertie accepted a few thousand quid that – in retrospect – he probably shouldn’t have. This has been seized upon by every opposition politician as an opportunity to publicly link Bertie and the idea of “corruption” in the eyes of the electorate.

Here’s my thing… there have been more important things to talk about for the past two weeks than Bertie making a bad decision 12 years ago. These ridiculous ideas in the media that Bertie’s loans “strike at the very heart of democracy” and they represent a “vital issue of public trust” are just that… ridiculous ideas. Of course Bertie Ahern is corrupt and untrustworthy. Anyone, here in 2006, who is still labouring under the delusion that any politician should be trusted needs a serious talking to. Maybe one of those “stop acting so hysterically” slaps. Politicians are a bunch of liars and cheats and should be regarded as The Enemy until further notice. OK?

Sheesh. Some people.

Y’know, way back in April I argued that privatising Aer Lingus was an absurd idea. It would essentially be trading an important public asset for a small increase in wealth for the already wealthy. Aer Lingus was a successful public service, doing roughly what the people of Ireland needed of it. It was under our control and had a legal obligation to serve our needs. How could we possibly expect to improve on that by putting it under someone else’s control and giving it a legal obligation to serve their needs?

It makes no sense to me. I guess most people believe that the needs of wealthy investors will tend to coincide with the needs of the average member of the Irish population. That’s not an article of faith I share.

Of course, there was one way the Irish government and their policy of selling off the family silver could screw over the Irish people even more than floating Aer Lingus… they could flog it to Ryanair for a bargain-basement price. You gotta love Bertie; he’s found a way to do both.

Yes folks; it seems that Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, has authorised the purchase of 16% of Aer Lingus and put in a bid for controlling interest. He’s paying 27% above the floatation price. So the people with the money to invest in Aer Lingus have made 27% on their money in a little over one week. And unless Aer Lingus has done something remarkable during that week to make their value soar, it poses the question of why the Irish people had their goods sold off at a price substantially lower than someone is obviously willing to pay.

Did the investors need that 27% more than the Irish people needed Aer Lingus? Let’s hope so. Because it’s gone for good. And people fond of flying Ryanair will be happy to hear that it comes in two colours now.

A leaflet fluttered through my letterbox yesterday. It was from a local politician… a prospective Fine Gael (Fee-neh Gale) candidate in next years General Election. Her name is Frances Fitzgerald and her leaflet is a bit of early canvassing for next year, outlining some of her policies on mostly local – but also some wider – issues.

It took all of five seconds to establish that she has a whelk’s chance in a supernova of ever getting my vote. But that was never likely let’s face it. Fine Gael are a conservative centre-right party with a capitalist ideology. If there’s a mad independent candidate with staring eyes who is running on a ticket of whatever the aliens tell him… then he will better represent my views than Frances Fitzgerald. Because if Frances is standing for a party which seeks to perpetuate our rampant over-consumption and unsustainable economic growth, then she’s standing on the opposite side of the barricades to me.

The policy part of her leaflet opens with a section on crime. It’s beyond predictable; real mass-psychology 101 stuff, y’know? Open with fear. Scared people are more compliant… more receptive to any future statements you make once you’ve adopted the guise of “protector”. And what better way to do this than talk about…

• “more Gardaí­ on the beat”;
• “more [Garda] cars and CCTV”;
• “implement a policy of zero-tolerance”; and
• “ensure that criminals serve their time… not back on the streets posing a threat”.

That’s a distillation of the first four items in her 5-point plan to “restore law and order to all our communities”. The fifth and final point talks about investment in “recreational facilities for young people”. In the name of all that’s sacred! Does a politician who thinks in such an unimaginative and insultingly simplistic way honestly believe she can represent my views?

Solving crime

Look, if there is indeed a crime problem then let’s make a serious attempt to solve it. No, no, I’m not suggesting that we’re ever going to stop murder and mayhem. That’s never going away. We’re apes, and there’ll always be plenty of folks willing to act as a reminder. But despite this, clearly we could choose to address the crime problem more rationally than we’re doing at present.

I mean, tell me; has “more CCTV” ever resulted in “restoring law and order”? I lived in the UK for a while… land of the everpresent cycloptian eye. Everywhere you turn in London there’s a half dozen CCTV cameras peering at you accusingly. Yet they appear not to have eliminated crime in London as yet. Presumably, therefore, to have the desired effect we’ll need more than they’ve got in London. How many more Frances? Do you want us living in a world where our every moment is scrutinised by the lens?

I know a book about that.

And when you proudly proclaim your intolerance Frances, like a badge of honour, then I shudder at the thought of being represented by someone with so little compassion. Zero tolerance, eh? Whenever I hear a politician utter that phrase I hear a distant response… “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. And I want to demand that politician imagine their life today if their every past transgression had been treated with zero-tolerance. Demand they tell me whether the compassion and forgiveness of others had any part at all in forming the person they are today. And why they seek to deny that to others.

Zero-tolerance is not a policy. It’s a way of looking at the world. And one that I will never vote for.

Of course I’m well aware of how difficult it is to accurately trace lines of cause and effect when it comes to something as complex as a social system. There’s just too many damn variables. Nonetheless, there’s a phrase from systems engineering… “predictable consequence”. It’s important to read that phrase as a technical term; one which is ever-so-slightly different to the literal. Think of it as a defined as “on the balance of probabilities and based upon what we know of the most influential factors of the system, this is a likely outcome”.

The point of the phrase is that it’s how the analyst identifies something that requires action. If I say that a predictable consequence of running a system at the required pressure would be blown valves; I’m not saying that the valves will blow. I’m saying they need to be replaced. It may sound like splitting hairs, I guess, but the distinction is a real one.

Now, to describe our drug policy as counter-productive is like describing the sun as warm. We have decided, voluntarily, to place one of the world’s largest and most lucrative industries entirely into the hands of violent criminals. We have voluntarily surrendered all control over the manufacture and distribution of some of the world’s most addictive substances. We have passed laws to ensure that the consumption of these substances is made vastly more dangerous than is necessary. And we have entire government agencies working tirelessly to drive up the price of these addictive substances.

The predictable consequence of that set of policies is a crime wave. It would not be stretching it too much to suggest that we’ve somehow managed to implement a set of drug policies which maximise the social damage of drugs. Rational drug law reform will not “solve crime”. However it will radically reduce the amount of violent and acquisitive crime in our society. So as a first step, I’d argue that’s the sensible place to start.

It’ll certainly do more to reduce crime than extra policemen and a couple of youth centres.

Improving public transport

Fine Gael is committed to introducing competition in the Dublin Bus market. By allowing private operators to tender competitively for licences…

Ohhhhhkaaaayyyy… I guess she’s really not after my vote. Well, it’s nice that she’s upfront about it.

Here’s my thing… this is what I actually want my bus to be. First and foremost, I want it to be a public service. Now that may sound selfish. “What about all those millions of people who want it to be a profitable business, eh?” you ask. But the thing is… are there really that many of them? Because I’ve yet to actually meet one, despite their prevelance in the political media circus.

I want a bus that leaves Rathcoole every half hour and takes me straight into the city centre bypassing the bottleneck that is Clondalkin. I don’t want the bus to make any profit, merely cover costs* and I want it to run 24 hours day (though the frequency can drop to one an hour between midnight and 5am).

That would be a public service. The fact that Frances Fitzgerald believes it would be a bad idea (or, mindbogglingly, that such a service is actually beyond the ability of Fine Gael to organise) suggests that her first desire isn’t to be a public servant. Rather she seeks to serve the interests of that portion of the population who would genuinely prefer the bus to be run primarily as a profitable business.

That can only mean the shareholders of the corporations tendering for the rights to make money out of our public transport. Good to know. All I need to do is become a wealthy shareholder in a predatory corporation seeking to run my bus service at the lowest possible cost to themselves and the highest possible cost to me. Then Frances Fitzgerald might want to represent my interests. Yay Fine Gael!

Almost time to take to the streets

Oh there’s plenty more, but really, who cares? If this is the best that mainstream politics can offer us… well, it’s clearly time to look outside mainstream politics for the solutions we need to the problems we’ve created. It’s time we swept aside the empty nonsense of the Frances Fitzgeralds of this world.

Woe betide the next politician to leaflet my street…

Irish politics have yet to really capture my interest. After a decade of closely following British politics, I still find myself automatically checking The Guardian and the BBC for general news. It’s far less often that I’ll visit The Irish Independent or The Examiner, and when I do it’s to read “the Irish news”, never just to get “the news”. Partly this is out of habit, but also partly because I still feel more involved with British politics.

This will change over time of course. I lived for fifteen years in the UK and I’ve only been in Ireland for a couple of months. Also, even though the general elections aren’t until next year, the campaign machinery is already beginning to rumble slowly into gear, and discussions about potential manifesto promises are beginning to surface in the media. No doubt I’ll become more engaged as this process starts to accelerate.

Thus far we’ve had the question of whether Fine Gael are really flirting with sensible drug policy? (Answer: No. They’ve just got a maverick candidate… for British readers; think Paul Flynn). The ubiquitous “who can be toughest on crime” contest has begun. Will the winner be Fine Gael, who claim not only to be tough on crime but also “tough on punishment”. Or will it be Fianna Fáil, who are not merely “tough on crime” but also “tough on the causes of crime”. Hmmm… haven’t I heard that somewhere before? And what’s all this about ASBOs? Surely you jest.

In fact, it seems like whole swathes of current government activity involves importing Blairite policies and desperately hoping they’ll work better for us than they did for Blair. I’m half-expecting Bertie to announce he’s ordered a pre-emptive strike against Iran. This view of Irish politics was compounded last week when the Tanaiste Mary Harney (deputy prime-minister and health secretary) failed to address the annual conference of the Irish Nurses Organisation. “There was no way she was going to let them do a Patricia Hewitt on her” was the quote that stuck in my mind.

It all seems a bit… well… derivative. It’s as though the current Irish government is a bad tribute band; Toni Blare and The Ugly Rumours; financing endless tours off the back of their one hit single, The Celtic Tiger.