We need to learn how to tackle increased flooding
Date Published: {J}
I DON'T want to write this. I have to be in it all day; don't need to think of five hundred and fifty words about it as well. I refer of course to the lovely weather.
While it's a staple of conversation, at times you get just so fed up of the bloody stuff that it's not funny. Let's talk about nicer things instead. The opening of the cartoon exhibition in Sheridans' went well.
It's lovely when people pay attention to you. No seriously, as a cartoonist you are very much a comedian without an audience, you almost never see how people react to your work.
At an exhibition though you have a chance to casually lurk while others read. When you hear them laugh, that's gold dust, that's rainbows and kittens. So far I think the most popular are the Bord Snip and NAMA ones. The celebration afterwards too went pretty well.
You know you're drunk when you say ‘thank you’ to an ATM. But other people didn't have such a good week. Ok, there is no way I can avoid the issue. I know several people now who have been flooded out, including Declan Moore the archaeologist. Ironically, his company just invested in underwater detection equipment.
At least he'll be able to find his keys. No really, it's not funny. People's houses are being destroyed. And not just houses built on ‘flood plains’ – almost the entire country is a flood plain if it rains enough – but houses that have been high and dry for as long as anyone remembers.
Is it climate change? Weather is so variable that it is difficult to pick out a trend, but those icebergs from the North Pole must have gone somewhere. Mostly, they seem to have gone down the back of my neck.
That was the wettest November since most records began, and you and I know that there are some pretty damn wet Novembers on record.So I'm inclined to think, yeah, this is climate change.
How will we deal with it? Well there are no two ways about this; we need to improve the drainage. Ditches and canals seem like ancient technology that no longer matters, but it turns out this is the stuff that keeps us from drowning.
As the climate gets wetter, we'll need to think more like the Dutch, and pump water out using wind power. If sea levels rise, we'll need to build dams and double the pumping. Otherwise, Ireland is going to end up looking like a Pacific atoll – a ring of mountains sticking up out of the ocean. The main difference being, a much colder ocean. So the survival of all houses and farms and property in the future is going to depend on us getting it together to build some enormous engineering projects.
You may want to make your investment decisions with that in mind.