Chairman’s Address IDEA Annual Public meeting Feb 2006, NUI Maynooth

Welcome Attendees

Speakers Christian Farrer-Hockley [for Genon Jensen]

Cathy Sinnot MEP

Dr Patrick McLoughlin

This session will finish at 1600hrs, break for tea/coffee, and then AGM at 1630hrs

This is our 9th Annual Public Meeting. IDEA was founded to try to highlight the close and inseparable association between the environment and health as it was believed that scant recognition of this reality was exhibited by government & official bodies and organisations despite the obvious and progressive environmental degradation and its putative, though not perhaps always scientifically proven, effects on population health. Have things improved in those 9 years? I believe the evidence, with a few notable exceptions, indicates the opposite, despite our efforts and thousands of environmental activists in Ireland & millions world-wide. The WHO report issued last month "Ecosystems & Human Well-being; Health Synthesis" - part of the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report which has taken 1300 scientists 4 years to prepare, confirmed what we already knew, that "over the past 50 years humans have changed natural ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period in human history". While the report acknowledges that the planet has been transformed, with substantial net gains in health and economic development, this only applies in certain areas of the world, it also admits that "pressure on ecosystems could have unpredictable and severe impacts on future human health" I believe that should read "has had" [think of all the severe weather events and of the droughts and crop failures in Africa]. In other words we have arrived at an entirely unique moment in human history.

Which of the plethora of environmental hazards are the most threatening? We have Climate Change [CC], Chemicals, EMR, Ionising radiation, GMOs, and more recently, Nanotechnology and energy shortages ["peak oil"]. I consider that CC has to be the most potent risk as it is likely to damage &/or destroy huge land areas and affect the greatest numbers of people, directly and indirectly. A recent paper from a group of Australian scientists warns that CC will trigger or exacerbate huge health problems, including heat stroke [an estimated 35,000 people died in Europe in the 2003 heatwave],allergies, cholera and other infectious diseases, and starvation. Another paper from the UN University, this month, predicts that CC and other environmental changes will - not might or could - produce 50 million environmental refugees within 5 years. I believe we are already seeing the start of this and that the figure quoted is a very conservative one. Ex president Bill Clinton, who is not a scientist but would have access to good information and at this stage probably has no axe to grind, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last month, stated that CC was the single most pressing problem facing the world to-day. He added that "its the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilisation as we know it" and he called on the assembled world economic leaders and government ministers to make "a serious global effort to develop a clean energy future". And what is happening in the real world?! We definitely won’t bother looking at America, but we should be looking at Sweden and Austria. In Ireland it is well known that we are already 25% above our allotted quota for CO2 emissions under Kyoto. Norman Foster, the distinguished architect, estimated that 75% of energy used is utilised in transport and housing. Another pertinent fact is that for every ton of regular cement which is manufactured a ton of CO2 is produced. What is our response? We built a record number of standard concrete houses in 2005 and intend to do likewise this year. Some of these contain steel internal frames and nearly all contain toxic PVC windows and doors, thus making them even more energy-consuming and less eco-friendly. And what about the motor car - that essential accessory of modern life that would certainly be banned immediately if it were subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment [EIA]. In the last month we managed to break all records for new vehicle sales, many of them monstrous high-embodied-energy gas guzzling SUVs. And we continue to create vast stretches of land-consuming motorways despite the fact that there is an emerging consensus that we are at or about the era of "Peak Oil", and that over the next few years it is highly likely that fuel prices will skyrocket beyond the reach of all but the wealthy few, thereby leaving our lovely highways all but deserted.

It is well known that the Bush administration in the USA is colluding with industry and big business to sabotage attempts to control environmental degradation and destruction. The previously mentioned WHO "Health Synthesis" report states that 60% of global ecosystems which support all life on earth, including human, "are being degraded or used unsustainably". In Europe we recently had the chastening experience of an excellent piece of proposed EU legislation on chemical contamination of the environment - the REACH proposals- being savaged by the combined well- orchestrated and well documented efforts of the multinational chemical companies, aided by the US State Department, with the collusion of many EU governments and MEPs with the honourable exception of Kathy Sinnott and a handful of her Irish colleagues. Someone in authority needs to do some ‘joined-up thinking’ very rapidly, as we are actually cutting off our nose to spite our face. Although there is a myriad of reports, assessments and scientific papers appearing on a daily basis and despite increasing media interest and exposure, we still need to work to overcome public apathy by providing good accurate and easily assimilable information to counteract corporate obfuscation and obstruction and government paralysis. An ever increasing number of NGOs are being formed to do this but there is poor co-ordination and the message is not clear concise and focused. This is the great value of the EEN, which Christian will be speaking about, and I was delighted to learn in the last week that a new Irish umbrella organisation, the Irish Environmental Forum, under the chairmanship of Kathy Sinnott, has been formed, and I congratulate her and wish her great success in that endeavour. Hopefully it will enable us to move away from our present ‘one step forward, two steps back’ scenario.

Many people believe that science and technology will save the situation. Technology is like drugs/medicines. No medication is without unwanted ‘side’effects.Though all drugs released onto the market now have to be rigorously tested, particularly since the Thalidomide disaster, we still have numerous cases where drugs have to withdrawn due to the discovery of unforeseen adverse effects after more prolonged/extensive use. There are well defined mechanisms in place for continuous monitoring and withdrawal if necessary. Contrast this with technologies and chemicals which have been, and continue to be, marketed with little or no prior testing and absolutely no recognition of the essential interconnectedness of all life on earth, with the result that we are all effectively part of a multipronged multifaceted global experiment which has gone horribly wrong. Science and technology have brought us many wonderful gifts but their abuse and overuse has brought destruction to the planetary ecosystems and damaged our health, directly and indirectly.

Prof James Lovelock, widely acknowledged as one of the fathers of environmental science and the originator of the Gaia theory of planetary evolution, in his most recent very sobering book published last week - it should be obligatory reading for all those in authority - made, to me, a particularly striking statement. It was to the effect that unless we pull together as one, as in a war situation - which he would well remember being 86 - he saw little prospect of saving the situation.

Apropos the above and by way of specific illustration I thought that I would mention just two items hot off the press:

One is that PFOA [perfluorooctanoic acid - Teflon, Gortex] has just been officially categorised by the US EPA as a "likely" human carcinogen, and in a study released simultaneously by researchers from Johns Hopkins medical school it was shown that 298 of 300 neonates had this chemical in their cord blood. What am I to do with my Goretex walking jacket? If I keep it am I absorbing PFOA? If I dump it - heaven forbid!- will it appear in someone’s drinking water? Goodness only knows what would be dispersed into the air if I burned it. I suppose I should send it for incineration where the chemicals would, hopefully, and if we believe Indavar, be scrubbed.

The second item, released last Fri 10th, relates to bottled drinking water and comes from the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, and provides some interesting stats.

The USA -surprise,surprise - drinks the most overall [25ml/person/day] but the Italians drink the most per person [750ml/d].

Bottled water is often no safer, and in fact tap water in many countries e.g. Europe and the USA is more stringently regulated.

China’s intake doubled and India’s trebled between 1999- 2004.

World-wide 2.7 million tons of plastic [polyethylene terephthalate -PET] per year is used to bottle it. In the USA alone this requires 1.5 million barrels of oil -enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year, to which must be added transport/distribution energy costs.

Disposal in the USA - 85% to landfill where it will take a thousand years to bio-degrade, and 40% of the recycled bottles are shipped to China!

How crazy can we get??!! The bottom line here of course is that if we didn’t pollute our water in the first place, we wouldn’t need to even think of bottling it!

However we are not discouraged by our apparent lack of progress. I detect the beginnings of an awakening of a public consciousness of our perilous situation. I believe we must redouble our efforts to fan that spark into a flame, so that we can make that planned withdrawal that Lovelock pleads for, the ‘energy descent’ already taking place in Sweden and Austria and planned for in our own Kinsale, to avoid a conflagration of an entirely different dimension. Common sense plus the wise application of technology and science which recognises and validates our essential symbiotic relationship with the ecosphere can rescue the situation, if we act now and in unison, always bearing in mind that we are opposed by extremely powerful forces with virtually limitless funds at their disposal who seek to maintain the status quo.

Dr Philip Michael Feb 2006