Green Drinks December 4th - Extinction Crisis

December's Green Drinks featured the IWT’s Pádraic Fogarty who gave an overview of the extinction crisis facing Ireland and the world. In light of the recent report from WWF/ZSL showing how the world has lost 60% of its large animals in the past 40 years, there can be no doubt that we find ourselves at the centre of an extinction crisis. How does it affect Ireland? What is the relationship between the extinction crisis and climate breakdown? What can individuals and communities do to prevent the crisis deepening?

Pádraic told the meeting that the extinction crisis is equally important to the climate change crisis. Carrying on with business as usual won’t help, instead there needs to be a radical change to the management of fishing, farming and forestry. It’s important to understand that species loss is caused by habitats destroyed by pollution and intensive farming not just by climate change, and a complete change of mindset is needed by everyone, from government agencies to the local community to end this. In the end, restoring nature - rewetting bogs, planting trees and developing nature friendly farming is the cheapest and easiest tool to tackle climate change.