"Green" policies are destroying this country

That is kind of you 😀

I'd encourage you to do some reading/thinking about the implications of climate change though. As I said above, rising sea levels are the least of the concerns.

The climate catastrophists are spouting manure. We know this from the history and the consequences of the Mediaeval and Roman warm periods and that earlier one, I forget the name of. We know from the Paleological and geological records that the planet is generally more amenable to life when it is warmer than the present. The real and documented threat to humanity is colder conditions, like the Dark Ages and the little ice age and glaciation events.

Rapidly rising CO2 and temperature together with the AMOC current in the Atlantic slowing and stopping are historic events that at multiple times in the past, all occured more or less simultaneously, as they are now. These events are usually harbingers of the onset of new periods of glaciation, not ever increasing temperature rises.

You're reading way too much into that. 83% of the USA's population live in cities, 75% of Europe's, 64% of China's and 92% of Japan's. All of those numbers are greater than the 60% of emissions you quote. Of course globally rural populations are much larger in poorer and developing nations where emissions are much lower than heavily industrialised nations. This does not mean someone in Ireland living in a large one off rural house that drives their diesel everywhere and requires any goods they consume to be taken a much further distance off the beaten track is magically generating fewer greenhouse gases than someone living in a city who walks or takes public transport everywhere and shares amenities and infrastructure with a huge number of other people.

Edit: Ah, I see this point has been answered far better above.

I would love to hear your thoughts on how we are in a much better position to deal with it. I'm always looking for good news on this topic.

But the risk of cancellation is great is it not. People are now saying what they are expected by the masses to say. There is no such thing as independent thought on certain subjects anymore.

You wont see a study get funded to see if they can debunk climate change or even parts of it.

First of all you wont get anyone to risk participating in it.

Secondly, if they did, their careers would be over should they get results that go against the mob.

Well it does show that there is not much choose between them in terms of pollution, with some posters saying how much greener city living is you would expect to see a marked difference in the data, but its not there.

They've been invited by the committee. The committee are meeting to discuss urban regeneration, and when discussing anything, the method used by our elected officials is to ask people who think there should be a change to explain why they think there should be a change. You open it up to scrutiny, and then the committee have their own private discussions where they consider the evidence they've been presented with. On urban regeneration, their position is that removing vehicles from the town centre and enabling active travel will have positive benefits. On a personal note, I've been in towns in other countries where the town centre was pedestrianised and there was a train and bus station and car parks situated at the edges of the pedestrianised area. It was a much nicer shopping experience, and was much better for sitting outside a coffee shop having coffee and a sandwich and reading. Last year, when we weren't allowed to eat inside, I tried sitting outside restaurants having lunch. It is distinctly unappealing to eat your lunch with a diesel truck (or even a car) sitting idling in traffic a meter two from you.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), the committee doesn't actually get to make any decisions about planning. Regulatory decisions either come from the houses of the Oireachtas or directly from the minister, depending on what the regulation is, and gets implemented by trained professional planners in the County Councils or An Bord Pleanala. The committee does get to talk about it and make lots of statements that will gain them attention from their supporters/opposition and claim their expenses.

This disconnect around planning has come as historically our elected officials have shown themselves to be not above taking an envelope full of cash in exchange for sorting out planning permission for someone.

Thats the thing the majority of people living in the countryside don't live in 'large' houses. The majority live in mediocre bungalows or similar, old board of health houses or done up old labourers cottages. As for cars - I reckon there's as many petrol cars as urban areas. And remember goods are transported from rural areas and between urban areas for distribution and consumption. And yes people living in urban areas also have cars both diesel and petrol and drive to their local shop but yes also use the much better public transport which is subsidised by everyone in the country both urban and rural.

People in rural areas also share amenities and infrastructure or in many cases simply don't have them or pay for them themselves as opposed to those amenities and infrastructure used in urban areas but paid at least in part by people who will never get to use them. It's simply swings and roundabouts. Using stereotypes doesn't help.

The Mediaeval warm period was not confined to Europe. More climate scientist efforts to write an inconvenience out of the record.

East Asian warm season temperature variations over the past two millennia

"followed by a multi-century long cooling period and again a warm interval covering the 900–1200 CE period (Medieval Climate Anomaly, MCA)."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-26038-8

Medieval Temperature Trends in Africa and Arabia

"Lüning et al. correlated and synthesized the findings of 44 published paleotemperature case studies from across the region and mapped the resulting trends of the anomaly’s central period, which lasted from about 1000 to 1200 C

To better characterize temperature fluctuations in Africa and Arabia during medieval times, researchers synthesized paleotemperature records from across the region, including the Tanzanian portion of Lake Tanganyika (pictured here). A core from this lake represents one of the few medieval paleotemperature reconstructions that are available from the East Africa Rift. Credit: Andreas31, CC BY-SA 3.0

The results indicate that the majority of onshore Afro-Arabian sites experienced warming during the Medieval Climate Anomaly."

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/medieval-temperature-trends-in-africa-and-arabia

Climate and Culture Change in North America AD 900–1600

"During the first century of the new millennium, the surface temperature in the Northern Hemisphere rapidly increased and continued to warm western Europe, the North Atlantic, and the southern temperate zone of North America."

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7560/737419

Evidence of the Medieval Warm Period in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania

By Sebastian Lüning

Effects of the Little Ice Age on Asia, Africa and the Americas:

Little Ice Age wetting of interior Asian deserts and the rise of the Mongol Empire

"indicating that wetter-than-present conditions characterized the core of the inner Asian desert belt during the Little Ice Age,"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379115301542

The Little Ice Age and medieval warming in South Africa

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230751443_The_Little_Ice_Age_and_medieval_warming_in_South_Africa

The Effects of the Little Ice Age (c. 1300-1850)

http://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/the-effects-of-the-little-ice-age/

Your claim that the Mediaval warm period and little ice age were local regional events only, is demonstrably garbage.

The Roman warm period, Mediaeval warm period and little ice age, are all reflected in lake bed sediments in Alaska:

"In discussing their findings, Hu et al. remark that "the warmth before AD 300 at Farewell Lake coincides with a warm episode extensively documented in northern Europe," i.e., the Roman Warm Period, "whereas the AD 600 cooling is coeval with the European 'Dark Ages'." They also say that "the relatively warm climate AD 850-1200 at Farewell Lake corresponds to the Medieval Climatic Anomaly," which they describe as "a time of marked climatic departure over much of the planet." And they say that "these concurrent changes suggest large-scale teleconnections in natural climatic variability during the last two millennia, likely driven by atmospheric controls." http://www.co2science.org/subject/r/summaries/rwpnortham.php

I didn't suggest past warmings during the current Holocene were accompanied by elevated CO2, I referenced that to events during the current ice age that presaged glaciation events. To suggest atmospheric CO2 levels have never been as high as they are presently is to lie.

Not everybody lives in a so called McMansion in rural Ireland, but you do appear to have a terrible chip on your shoulder due to people being able to afford to build decent accommodation for themselves and their families in rural Ireland, and being able to pass it on to the next generation rather than in some featureless box where they will be gouged renting for the rest of their lives. Your posts come across as are more to do with jealousy than any concern for the planet.

What a complete load of nonsense.

Address the argument that village and town living is far better for the environment than the McMansions ruining our countryside and put your preconceived pejorative notions about the motivations of posters aside.

Some countries are doing quite well economically out of this greening. China are already the worlds major suppliers of solar panels and now from your post appear poised to do likewise with EV`s.

I imagine for a country that generates almost 60% of it`s energy from burning coal, (which year on year is over 50% of all coal burned worldwide) and are planning to build more coal burning plants, using a cheap energy source that is so frowned upon by greens is a major factor when it comes to having an economic competitive edge. I find it a bit amazing that greens do not appear to have a problem with the many questionable environmental practices and energy sources used to provide many of these greening products they so much crave