Update from Kathleen O’Connor member of the Wilton Justice Group:
Call to Action!
The Wilton Justice group organised two events during Lent, both calling us to action. The first event was the showing the film “Plastic Ocean”, which highlighted the damage that plastics are doing to sea life. It is frightening that a deep ocean whale was beached off Norway and died and when a post mortem was completed the result was disturbing, stating that the whale had died as a result of it’s stomach been full of plastic.
The film showed how many sea birds and fish are killed because they are ingesting plastics. The most startling aspect of the film was that plastics are getting into the food chain. Micro plastics have been found in the fish that we eat.
Some plastics never decompose in the sea. It takes 10-20 years for plastic bags to decompose. It take 100-1000 years for plastic cutlery to decompose.
Plastic is so much part of our modern life but we could reduce plastic contamination by stop buying plastic as wrapping or containers for our purchases and recycling the plastic that we have .
The second event was a talk with slides on global warming. The presenter, Richard Morrison an expert on climate reality demonstrated his information with very good slides highlighting the effects of global warming and climate disturbance. These included the floods all over the world; mudslides , forest fires , storms, typhoons, at a much increased frequency than heretofore. In Ireland we had Ophilia, a major storm and a serious snow storm in March.
At the end of his talk there was hope. It is hopeful that many countries are developing renewable energy programs, leading to a lessening of global warming. Ireland is failing to keep pace with its international obligations in developing renewable energy. So we need to talk to our politicans to demand programs to promote renewable energy.
However, each one of us have a responsibility to reduce carbon emissions, by using public transport rather than driving cars; by seeing how we can lesson the use of carbon in our homes.