On this edition of Enviro:

Jack O’Sullivan environmental consultant An Tinteán nua Ballymanus Castlepollard, County Westmeath. We conducted a wide ranging interview on environmental sustainability, the unprecedented threats and how these can be faced down if at all. Jack, Manon Munier and Joe Dunne talked about a range of issues including some of the following:

• Jack’s personal contribution to sustainability at his own home
• His renewable energy solar energy project
• His love of trees and practical tree plantings including the planting of an oak grove with Forest Friends Ireland on Saturday August 25 2019 and its significance.
• Jack’s environmental consultancy work was referred to.
• Jack, Joe Dunne and Manon Munier referred to the unprecedented forest fires in the Amazon and in the Arctic.

Jack was asked whether the present Capitalist system could deliver the environmental resuts that would prevent an unprecedented catastropy. His answer was “not in its present form”.

• Manon talked about Forest Friends Animal welfare week and what it achieved details of which were posted on Forest Friends Facebook.
• Brazil has had more than 72,000 fire outbreaks so far this year and 84% increase on the same period in 2018… Jar Bolsonaro has made things a lot worse by weakening the environmental agency, attacking conservation NGOs and promoting the opening of the Amazon to mining, farming and logging. He has sacked the head of the space agency. We need to block trade deals with countries that destroy their forests and to provide more support for countries that expand tree cover. Carlos Nobre a senior researcher at the university of Sao Paulo, said deforestation was taking the rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it would become a dry savannah. Organisations that support the forest, forest dwellers and biodiversity need to be supported, including organisations like ‘Instituto Sacioambiental, Amazon Watch, WWF, Greenpeace, Imazon, International Rivers and Friends of the Earth. See article in the Guardian Newspaper “World Demands Brazil act as Amazon burns” 24 August 2019 by Julian Borger, Jonathan Watts and Tom Phillips. 
  The key question is how adequate will the response of the G7 summit and its members be?
• The extensive damage which international trade agreements inflict on the environment.
  POSSIBLE ACTION: Banning Brazil and rainforest originated beef until Bolsonaro and other rainforest country leader take corrective action, abandoning the Mercosur deal with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay which has not yet been ratified.

Presented by John Haughton

Panellists Joe Dunne, Manon Munier and Jack O’Sullivan environmental consultant

Broadcast: 26/08/2019