"Green" policies are destroying this country

There isn't other fertilisers. Or do you mean fertiliser types? N is the primary driver of crop growth, and it comes from chemical fertiliser in the most part due to, usually, it's price. A low N price leads to low food prices as it's beneficial to spread it to increase yields. The UN FAO had a study showing the direct correlation between N prices and food prices. For the life of me I can't find it now where I store those studies so I'll have to go googling. We could spread organic fertiliser but that's frowned upon and there's active work ongoing to reduce the amount of that spread. We have things like MSS and clover, but that isn't helping in this run of weather unfortunately. There was a big push the last couple of years to get soil pH right, which was taken up by a lot of landowners only for the EPA to then turn around and say liming increased carbon emissions. But it's necessary for soil health. Then the question is - do you want healthier soil and some emissions from liming, or reduced emissions? Same for N. Do you want better yields or lower emissions? Food production is not carbon neutral, though food production off land is a hell of a lot closer than the processed garbage pushed by all and sundry.

That’s very flippant comment, I can say CO2 emissions continue to rise from every country and “the world hasn’t ended”

Someone already pointed out to you what a reduction in Nitrogen results in reduction in yields which leads to reduction in exports and increase in imports here which leads to higher prices which will be felt most in poorest countries

But that’s ok I guess, less people less carbon footprint, right?

People whose agricultural experience is limited to growing geraniums on a window sill should not advise how to grow and produce food at scale. See https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/

Modern food security largely derives from two of the most important scientific accomplishments of the twentieth century, the Haber-Bosch process to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia fertilizer presently using about 1% of global energy and 3-5% of global natural gas production. The second most important is due to Norman Borlaug’s effort to breed high yielding field crops as part of the green revolution. Consider what the https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-with-and-without-fertilizer might be like, your life probably depends on availability of nitrogen fertilizers. If you have been adding up your weekly shopping bills over the last few years, you know how much less money you have left over at the end of the week.

Pay attention, your food has further to travel from farm to fork. (I wonder why the food miles campaign that was all the rage a few years ago disappeared.), https://www.independent.ie/farming/news/just-60-field-vegetable-growers-left-in-the-country-bord-bia-director/a1130369415.html

If Ireland and the EU's leadership leads to other parts of the world reducing emissions, then it will have a consequence far beyond our contribution.

The unbelievable arrogance of this! China is the world leader in wind power by a huge margin. Every wind turbine installed in Ireland uses neodymium from China which has 90% of the world's refining capacity for that element. When it comes to wind power, China is showing us how to do it.

Since China is beating us at our own game their emissions must be decreasing, right? Nope. China's emissions from the energy sector went up 5.2% in 2023 (source).

Ahh, but we still have a special trick up our sleeve. Our plan is to massively overbuild wind and turn our surplus into hydrogen. That'll show the big boys how it's done. When our economies go down the crapper as a result, who do you think will be following our "leadership"? As has been hashed out on these pages ad nauseam, the plan is unworkable, unaffordable, and just plain daft on thermodynamic principles alone.

“and the world hasn’t ended” ^TM

Brazil has record beef and cereal exports for 2024 and meanwhile here we are trying to shut agriculture down. https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/brazil-reports-record-fresh-beef-exports-in-first-half-of-2024/

It's the PM 2.5 bogeyman, very fashionable in recent years, wrapped in a dodgy study. The key weasel word is "suggests" and the solution to no-ones surprise does not conflict with green policy targets. In the bag for future taxpayer funded grants.

While we have been able to control for many potential confounding factors at individual level, this is a cross-sectional study so it is not possible to draw conclusions about causality.

Prof Anne Nolan, one of the authors of the paper noted ‘The study results add to the body of evidence that suggests that the health-damaging effects of air pollution can operate at low levels of exposure. In Ireland, the recent Clean Air Strategy commits to the achievement of the WHO air quality guidelines by 2040. Hitting this target will require substantial measures to decarbonise home heating, alongside measures to reduce pollution from industry, transport and agriculture.’ source

And do these morons not realize that as an island in the Atlantic we probably have the best air quality in the world.

So Eamon Ryan says that DCC will lose funding if they don’t implement the city’s transport plan. I’m not I like this carry on from a government minister.

A load of childlike fairytale nonsense.

Have you heard of COP 26 Edinburgh 2021 ?

Nobody gives a rats behind what Ireland, or indeed for that matter, what the E.U. does about emissions. COP 26 major emitters like China, India, the U.S. and even Japan made it plain that when it came to signing an agreement on burning coal their priority was their economies not emissions. China in the last two years alone has sanctioned the addition of new coal burning plants to generate 218GW of electricity. That is x40 times our current requirements.

Greens here were dancing up and down demanding we cull 200,000 cattle to reduce global emissions. How many of the major beef producing countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Australia have taken note of your "demonstration or Dimino effects and reduced their herd number ? Not a single one!! They are all increasing their herd number because there is a rising demand worldwide for beef and dairy produce, with Brazil chopping down and burning rainforest to do so.

That's selective much? The council will have many plans for active travel and public transport that need funding. Why can't they choose to use this funding as they see fit. Why would it be conditional on using it for Eamon's plan?

Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder weighs in on the coming hydrogen economy.

That doesn't quite wash though does it. DCC like any organisation has staff that are in tune with Eamon's agendas and pusing them. The problem is that other staffers and those affected like businesses and interest groups are kicking back against Eamon's plan.

For people with an interest in this interview John O'Brien talks to Richard J Schenk, Research Fellow at MCC Brussels, about his report 'The Silent War on Farming - How EU policies are destroying our agriculture’. The report explains how, under the guise of environmental concerns, European regulation has slowly squeezed farmers – especially livestock farmers – to breaking point. The report examines the transformation of European agricultural policy into a tool of environmental policy as farms disappear across the EU.

The idea is essentially that European farmers should switch their business from growing crops and animals to
farming emissions trading certificates.” source

It isn't Eamon's plan, it's the council plan.

Here is how it works. Council prepares a plan, submits request for funding based on plan, gets funding approved. It is entirely natural and appropriate that if the Council changes the plan, the funding is withdrawn.

Look at what happened with the HSE and scoliosis. In that case, the Department and the Minister didn't know that the HSE diverted the money to other plans as they saw fit. If the Minister had known, he would have been right to withdraw the funding.