‘Irish foolishness’ and one American’s ignorance (or Jonathan V. Last is a moronic hack)
Monday, June 4th, 2007Hat-tip to Simon for making me aware of this on IE.com - he picked it up from politics.ie.
What follows is an account of the Irish election according to Philidelphia Inquirer columnist Jonathan V. Last, who obviously read about it all on a box of Corn Flakes and is now an expert.
For the latest example of European dithering, we turn to the Republic of Ireland.
In the waning days of April, Ireland’s parliament, the Dail, was dissolved and new elections were called. The sitting prime minister (the Irish call the position the Taoiseach) was a fellow named Bertie Ahern, who led the center-left Fianna Fail party.
It’s generally accepted that Fianna Fáil are centre-right actually - although this tends to sway depending on their coalition partners. They certainly began life as conservative been right-leaning for much of the last 20 years and they’re stance on the European stage is anything but liberal.
Because Ireland, like many American big cities, has no right wing, the contest was between Fianna Fail and its smaller center-left coalition partners and a more radical coalition of Ireland’s Fine Gael, Labour and Green parties.
Well Ireland, like an increasing number of European countries, tends not to deal in idealogical extremes. There is no right and left because realistically life doesn’t (and politicians shouldn’t) deal in such blunt pigeon-holes and definitions. The PDs, which Last describes as centre-left also, are economically liberal but increasingly conservative in a social context… the truth is they’re no more right-wing than they are left-wing and like most Irish parties are willing to try and define themselves in more than two words.
The brief election campaign — barely five weeks — was dominated by a low-grade financial scandal of Ahern’s, but when the scandal wasn’t in the headlines, one of the main issues was: climate change.
Ok - first off, five weeks? That’s an interesting figure to come to. The official election campaign (that being the period between the Dáil’s dissolution and polling day) was around three and a half weeks long - ask any politician, however, and they’ll say that they’ve been working on their re-election since the latter part of 2006 at the very least. Either way Last’s calculations are way off.
Secondly, maybe in a world of predatorial grooming and corrupt lobbyists the questionable financial dealings of a country’s most powerful man would be considered ‘low-grade’, but here in quaint little Oireland we’ve not got as much high-octane scandal as the US so we need to focus on the boring stuff from time to time.
Thirdly, climate change was never an issue in the Irish election campaign. Never. That’s part of the reason why the Green party, who had been polling well, failed to make any breakthrough. In fact, a debate on RTÉ about the environment was scheduled and later canceled because it was decided to focus on something else instead.
The Green Party made global warming the center of its campaign
How odd that an organisation called The Green Party, which is built around policies that are environmentally friendly, would try and focus its campaign on global warming.
Ahern’s party anted up, trying to outdo them in their devotion to the environment, touting a recently imposed plastic-bag tax, a pilot program to eliminate chewing-gum litter, more bicycle lanes, a proposal to use wood as a renewable energy source and a plan to somewhat reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
They did? When? Where? None of the press briefings I saw ever dealt with the environment and the last time I remember Fianna Fáil touting their green credentials was in December 2006 during the Budget… the reason for that was because everyone thought the environment would be a big deal in the upcoming election - it wasn’t so parties shut up about it.
This last item — reducing emissions — also carried with it a corollary: a plan to pay about 270 million euros (roughly $364 million) for carbon credits over the next eight years. This in a country with a gross domestic product of only $177 billion.
Ah - right, it is the budget he’s referring to. The carbon credits thing was announced in December 2006. Maybe Last has a really slow internet connection, or is still relying on pigeons for news from Europe.
But the reality is that even if everything the global-warming enthusiasts believe is true, there is one simple, immutable problem: Only 4.2 million people live in Ireland. That’s 0.063 percent of the world’s population, and, if the climate really is changing, then it’s highly improbable that Ireland’s handful of residents can do anything about it.
He’s right - and there are only 1.5 million people living in Philadelphia City too, which is an even smaller proportion of the world’s population, so they shouldn’t bother with the whole “green” thing either. In fact, modern households tend to be no bigger than 4-5 people, so they shouldn’t get to worried - sure what can they do to save the world? And as individuals we make even less of a difference, so let’s not get too worried - someone else will fix it.
The only thing the Irish might do is slaughter the 6 million cows and sheep that dot their countryside. A 2006 U.N. report suggested that livestock account for 18 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. That’s more than cars, trucks, buses and planes put together.
Lost isn’t supporting the ideal of a veganist world, is he? Bloody hippy.
Of course all those greenhouse gases come from the methane the animals produce and humans do that too. I hope you’re doing your bit, Last, and being as anally retentive in live as you appear to be on paper.
What makes this all particularly interesting is that, while the Irish were fussing this way and that over what non-solutions they could offer to a problem that may or may not exist, they glossed over one very real and pressing problem: the water in Galway.
This is Last’s first and only good point. It could be argued that the water situation in Galway was only important to Galway itself, but the reality is that the city is not alone in its lackluster water-treatment and it would be hard to find an area of the country that wasn’t under direct or indirect threat from under-resourced and aged facilities.
Galway is Ireland’s third-largest and fastest-growing city, home to about 159,000 people in the metropolitan area. And since March, its water has been undrinkable, infected with parasites from the genus Cryptosporidium.
Ah - all his good work undone. Galway city’s population is 72,729 according to last year’s census. It’s total population (county and city) is 231,035 according to the same census. The figure he’s quoting is for County Galway, minus the City’s population. In other words, 159,000 is the population of everything but the metropolitan area of Galway.
Galway authorities never did find the source of the problem. But over the next several weeks, they counseled residents to use bottled water or to boil the bejeezus out of their tap water. No one seems to have a strict count on how many bottles of water were brought in. But suppose you have 159,000 people consuming two liters of water a day, say an average of two one-liter bottles per person. That would be 23.85 million bottles of waste so far.
Unless there’s ‘bejeezus’ in it, how exactly can you boil it out of it?
Anyway, I’ll go ahead and ignore the maths because it’s based on dodgy numbers (and Last is assuming that people consume two litres of water a day on average, which I don’t think is a fair guestimation)
And imagine the related energy costs. That amount of water would weigh 26,235 tons, without packaging. I’ll leave it to the environmentalists to calculate the carbon impact of transportation and distribution for such a haul.
So humans are having a negative impact on the environment? Make up your mind, Last.
Even now, three months into what the Irish refer to as “the water crisis,” Galway is still importing its water in bottles. It’s a funny juxtaposition: a government going through contortions to try to solve an environmental problem that, even if it does exist, is beyond its capacity to solve and, at the same time, a government that cannot deliver a basic environmental service — safe drinking water.
Last is right. This is hilarious. The article I mean. Basically he decided to fabricate information on our election to invent a juxtaposition which wrapped up his column neatly and made his point of view seem like the right one. Nice work Last, but it makes you look less smart if the comparison you’re making is based entirely on fallacies. That’s like me saying*:
“It’s a funny juxtaposition: a government going through contortions to try and solve a humanitarian crisis that it created in Iraq that, even if it had good reason to start it, is beyond its mental capacity to solve and, at the same time, a government that cannot deliver a basic humanitarian service - aid for victims of the Katrina hurricane.”
*(But only if you assume that I made one of those two points up.)
Blogs elsewhere
June 4th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Just to point out one thing, Fianna Fail did make a little bit of a song and dance when they launched their environmental policy during the election runup, there was media interest in it at the time. Some people also passed the comment that other parties were trying to be more green than the Greens at times.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
True, from December to around March it seemed like every party was stealing the Greens’ clothes as far as environmental policies go and Last would be right if he was referring to that stage - but by April/May the issue had run out of steam in favour of the economy and health.
Vaguely remember the FF press conference on the environment so that’s a fair point too - it certainly wasn’t an election issue though… it didn’t even get 1 day of attention like most other things got.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:47 am
While I agree that the article isn’t great, I think it may not be as inaccurate as you seem to think it is. Firstly the left/right is defined very differently in the states. The fact that FF is not immediately attempting to dismantle the welfare state is proof enough that it falls on the center-left in American political terms. This would make it an American “liberal” party, which I assume you know means something totally different in America, much as the words republican, conservative, libertarian, etc. mean something completely different.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
That’s a fair enough point - although it does suggest a slight bit of narrow thinking on Last’s part (and others who think that pro-welfare = leftie).
I was just commenting elsewhere on how conservative is supposed to mean balanced budgets, small government and libertarianism (as in the state stays out of people’s lives/homes) and how the supposed US conservatives are doing the complete opposite. I suppose much about the US system is hard to compare to other countries.
June 19th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Hi Adam. I actually mailed Jonathan Last pointing out that his piece was strewn with errors. Below is his reply. Clearly facts aren’t something he’s especially keen on .Then again, this is a chap who once wrote a piece arguing that the empire were the good guys in Star Wars.
Dear Ed,
Attached please find a copy of the 2006 census results from Ireland. You’ll note that Galway is, in fact, Ireland’s third-largest city.
You’ll forgive me if I leave that as a sign that it’s not worth spending time refuting the rest of your specious charges.
Thanks for the note.
Best,
JVL