Climate & Environment

Ireland feels the heat, but our politicians are behaving like slow learners

Irish politicians appear not to have fully accepted the dangers of climate change and seem happy to pay lip service to the vague ‘net zero by 2050’ – political-speak for ‘not our problem'

While very few Irish people outright deny the reality of climate change, the real denial remains that we mostly think it’s simply not our problem. Picture: Getty

Being caught in a severe heatwave is akin to being strangled and suffocated at the same time. I learned this the hard way on a sweltering July day in 1987, when I landed in the Turkish city of Izmir, where temperatures were in the high 40s and rumoured to have briefly touched 50C.

Stepping off the plane, I felt like I’d been hit by the blast from an industrial oven. Even though I was young ...