Buried within the new EPA report on the state of the environment, amidst the usual references to climate change and the Green Deal, are the actual reasons for the deterioration of our environment - the growing economy and the resulting increased population. Although they stop short of mentioning immigration as the link between the two.
These economic and population changes have inevitably brought about changes in our natural environment. The increasing population and increasing levels of unsustainable production and consumption place pressures on water quality, air quality, biodiversity and land, and this is largely at the root of the continuing deterioration in environmental quality since the previously published integrated assessment of Ireland’s environment in 2016.
The government's 2040 plan of increasing the population by one million is therefore in direct conflict with their climate goals.
The report makes for pretty scary reading and spells out a crisis arguably much worse than Covid-19 :
- 85% of our listed habitats are now in “unfavourable condition”
- The number of ‘pristine’ rivers has fallen from 500 to 20 in just 30 years
- We generate more than one million tonnes of food waste every year
Regrettably no mention was made of the damage wind farms have done to the environment.
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