General election 2020 (4 Viewers)

[nuke terrorist]

when I was a teen 30 years ago, 'round here the main jobs going in Summer
were ripping up the bogs for turf or raising animals for slaughter on a farm.
you would be privileged if you got any other job.

my parents got me a job on a farm and then bullied me into continuing with it
when I said I wasn't going to go back the next year. when I finished with it,
I'd spent about 55 weeks doing this 1990-1993.

I was lucky - my folks didn't own a farm so eventually I got away.
but if I lived on a farm who knows what might have happened.

 

[seanc]

bogs are a massive carbon sink. and they need to be wet to work; drying out bogs leads to massive carbon release, as the anaerobic conditions required to stop them 'rotting', require water.
it's a major issue with tree planting; bogs are marginal, low value land usually, so an ideal place financially to grow trees - as you're not displacing livestock - but the trees dry out the bogs and even if you don't harvest the trees, the trees growing there actually release carbon rather than sequester it.

That's more or less what I thought. But that article starts with a couple of worthwhile points, and then just kinda loses the run of itself. Wish it was still there, nearest I can find is this: https://twitter.com/whexaminer?lang=en

iirc, I think the article complained that re-wetting the bogs wouldn't make them usable again. It'd just be wasted land.

 

[seanc]

Re-reading all that. So the re-wetting is to do with carbon sequestering? I can see how the locals, on a local level, wouldn't like that. Because they're just looking at their own bit of bog.

However I've seen what BNM have done across the whole middle of the country on an industrial scale, and that's just desert now. Can that actually be re-watered properly? And more importantly, how would local people be able to benefit from it? If it ain't giving jobs, food or fuel, then it just looks like some wanky thing imposed on them from Dublin and Brussels.

 

[Cormcolash]

turf cutting rights - i think this was what ming was fighting for, and actually represents somethign like 2% of the bogs, not the intensified ones.

Yeah Ming just wants to be able to cut turf for the house from his own bog

 

[JohnnyRaz]

Re-reading all that. So the re-wetting is to do with carbon sequestering? I can see how the locals, on a local level, wouldn't like that. Because they're just looking at their own bit of bog.

However I've seen what BNM have done across the whole middle of the country on an industrial scale, and that's just desert now. Can that actually be re-watered properly? And more importantly, how would local people be able to benefit from it? If it ain't giving jobs, food or fuel, then it just looks like some wanky thing imposed on them from Dublin and Brussels.

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but to ann posts point - bogs were the closest a lot of rural areas got to steady industry (combined with the power plants that some of them fed). leaves a big gap financially and psychological when they go
(speaking as a bogger here)

 

[magicbastarder]

Yeah Ming just wants to be able to cut turf for the house from his own bog

i don't think the sort of turf cutting a lot of his supporters were doing was yer standard john hinde picture postcard stuff. there was a good bit of small industrial level stuff going on. heavy machinery, albeit not at the level BNM would have been using.

 

[magicbastarder]

However I've seen what BNM have done across the whole middle of the country on an industrial scale, and that's just desert now. Can that actually be re-watered properly? And more importantly, how would local people be able to benefit from it? If it ain't giving jobs, food or fuel, then it just looks like some wanky thing imposed on them from Dublin and Brussels.

there's a place called girly bog up near kells, which i think is regarded as the most intact raised bog in the east of the country. had been damaged by draining, though. i think what they were doing up there was driving large rigid plastic sheets across the drains, to dam them, and piling straw bales into the ditches, to act as a structure for the bog to regenerate. i assume after some time, the sheets can be removed.

 

[Unicron]

I live bog adjacent, if I go out the door and turn right 500m later I'm at the bog. In recent years whatever BNM has done there has altered the water table so much that the farmer next door has had to dramatically widen and deepen a small river that drains out of the bog to supply water to his farm during summer because otherwise the flow had stopped.

 

[egg_]

I think the article complained that re-wetting the bogs wouldn't make them usable again. It'd just be wasted land.

This is a big cultural thing with farmers - they hate "wasted land" and think all land should be producing something.

 

[ann post]

there was a good bit of small industrial level stuff going on. heavy machinery, albeit not at the level BNM would have been using.

I grew up knowing a few of these - It's usually one farmer/contractor who is doing the turbary rights for a region, because saving the turf is nightmare level labour.

 

[therealjohnny]

bogs are a massive carbon sink. and they need to be wet to work

The last bog I worked on (many years ago) is now bare parched stones. It's been completely destroyed by people with sleáns, not machinery. But at least some of us didn't have to pay for home heating for a few years.

 

[ann post]

The last bog I worked on (many years ago) is now bare parched stones. It's been completely destroyed by people with sleáns, not machinery. But at least some of us didn't have to pay for home heating for a few years.

Slean - The great desk for remote working

Un bureau et une chaise eco-responsables, bons pour le dos et qui s'installent partout

slean.com

weird

 

[magicbastarder]

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[Lili Marlene]

This is a big cultural thing with farmers - they hate "wasted land" and think all land should be producing something.

Makes perfect sense under capitalism, can't really blame them.



Here, in regards the Greens approving this CETA thing, as far as I can tell that's as bad as it gets and no manner of climate bills are gonna change that or mitigate the damage it will do so while I appreciate the argument that Eamon Ryan is a martyr nailing himself to a cross to make our lives better and making compromises that our own purity politics are just too rigid to understand... it doesn't really hold a lot of water if it can all be undermined, which it can and will be under CETA.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Tell me why i'm wrong.

 

[magicbastarder]

isn't there some phrase like 'regulatory capture' where the regulator and regulated become a bit too friendly - they tend to speak the same language, come from similar backgrounds, etc. etc., so lose any sort of combative relationship?
i suspect that's what happens to a lot of the greens in government - they come from a party which demands every single voice from top to bottom, is heard, and is built totally around consensus; but is a party whose followers demand there can be no compromise in dealings *outside* the party.

 

[therealjohnny]

Slean - The great desk for remote working

Un bureau et une chaise eco-responsables, bons pour le dos et qui s'installent partout

slean.com

weird

Apropos of nothing, I only realised recently while watching a foreign tv show with subtitles that the Irish "Seomra" sounds like the French "Chambre"

 

[ann post]

Tell me why i'm wrong.

You aren't. And in complete contradiction to my pointing out that Ryan is doing things while people are leaving the party and bitching about him on twitter, I think the possible outcome here is that FFG will have realised at this point that Ryan can't win over his own party on this. I'm not saying ryan is 4d chess outsmarting the whole dail #Q, more a case of the party disintegrating might halt it - as mentioned above, there isn't concensus for this. Ryan is as well telling the shirts he'll vote for the thing if it gets his packages from the PFG through.

Generally i think it all returns to the basic point of the GP though. with the carbon timeline they have to go into any govt going or their reason to exist is pretty much gone in about 8 years. I'm not sure angry twitter greens grasp the need for legislation just yet.

 

[egg_]

Makes perfect sense under capitalism, can't really blame them

Can't blame capitalism for this one, really. Lots of them lose money on what they produce on marginal land, but they keep producing it anyway

 

[Lili Marlene]

Can't blame capitalism for this one, really. Lots of them lose money on what they produce on marginal land, but they keep producing it anyway

Oh I certainly can and will. These things seep into our psyche, why do we even want land to "produce," where does that come from?

Here you don't listen to that How to Save a Planet podcast do you? It's terrifically market-based neoliberal greenwashing but I listen anyway; they had an episode recently that speaks to what you were saying from a US perspective, about farmers refusing to change farming methods until they literally had no other choice, and all the other farmers being incredibly judgemental about it because they don't see this other method of farming as proper "hard work"

Soil: The Dirty Climate Solution | How to Save a Planet

On this week's episode, we meet two farmers who, at first glance, seem very different. One is a first-generation farmer in upstate New York raising fruits and vegetables for the local community. The other is a third generation farmer in Minnesota who sells commodity crops—corn and soybeans—to...

gimletmedia.com

You aren't. And in complete contradiction to my pointing out that Ryan is doing things while people are leaving the party and bitching about him on twitter, I think the possible outcome here is that FFG will have realised at this point that Ryan can't win over his own party on this. I'm not saying ryan is 4d chess outsmarting the whole dail #Q, more a case of the party disintegrating might halt it - as mentioned above, there isn't concensus for this. Ryan is as well telling the shirts he'll vote for the thing if it gets his packages from the PFG through.

Generally i think it all returns to the basic point of the GP though. with the carbon timeline they have to go into any govt going or their reason to exist is pretty much gone in about 8 years. I'm not sure angry twitter greens grasp the need for legislation just yet.

Yeah, still gonna probably side with Twitter on this though. The Greens are worth ignoring until they manage to get farmers on their side, we'd probably be better off focusing on getting every other party to push forward better climate legislation that works for everyone. Easy for me to say of course.