Plea not to remain silent on climate crisis made at Clonmel meeting

A capacity crowd of more than 100 people came to hear the journalist, broadcaster and environmental campaigner John Gibbons about climate change at Clonmel Town Hall.
The event was arranged by the Junction Arts Festival and Suircan Community Forum and supported by the Local Area Waters Authority.
John  Gibbons’ talk ‘This is NOT an environmental crisis’ was shocking and disturbing, yet left some room for hope and ideas for action.
He initially blitzed his audience with unassailable and shocking evidence of rapidly accelerating global warming and its causation — human actions — through our historic and increasing production of greenhouse gases. He showed images, graphics, videos and data concerning shrinking ice, rising and acidified oceans and catastrophic species decline. 
Gibbons pointed out that since 1970, the total number of wild animals worldwide has plummeted by nearly two thirds.
He warned we are already in what scientists have officially designated the Sixth Extinction, a global mass die-off of species on a scale not witnessed in the last 66 million years. He pointed to a recent German study which found a staggering 78% collapse in the total numbers of all flying insects since 1991. 
Insects have been a critical component of life on Earth for at least the last 300 million years but they are under threat due to human actions from excessive use of chemical pesticides and herbicides (which destroy many of their food sources) as well as habitat destruction and agricultural intensification and monocultural practices. 
He reminded older members of the audience of the phenomenon of ‘bug splat’ that was prevalent as recently as 20 to 30 year ago. When you drove in Ireland, especially at night, your windscreen would be covered in dead bugs. Today, you could drive from Clonmel to Cork and back at night and not expect to encounter more than a handful of flying insects.
The main contributors to the collapse of nature are unsustainable industrialised agriculture, over-consumption, spiralling fossil fuel emissions, excessive aviation and tourist and ever-expanding emissions from industry were highlighted, as was the irony that safer, more sustainable alternatives to the way we grow food, eat, and produce energy are all available to us now if we choose to change.  
Addressing the climate change denial lobby, he pointed to level of consensus amongst climate scientists that we humans are indeed the authors of our own destruction is 97%, even greater than the expert consensus that tobacco causes cancer.
Humanity is now at an existential crossroads, Gibbons warned. Another five, 10 or 20 years of ‘business as usual’ and we are committed to irreversible ecological breakdown, which will destroy our economies, wipe out food production and trigger a global catastrophe on an almost unimaginable scale. 
“They call me an ‘activist’ for speaking out about this crisis”, Gibbons said. “Anyone who remains silent or chooses to ignore this crisis is what I would call an ‘inactivist’. Nobody is neutral.
“We all have to decide which side of history we are on, and whether we are prepared to fight for our children’s future while this is still even possible.
He concluded The best time to have got involved in fighting for and demanding a better, safer world was 10 or 20 year but the second best time is today. right now.
“We can’t afford to sit this one out.”

Cashel library exhibition