A NEWBRIDGE woman has completed a six day hunger strike which she hopes will lead to Ireland becoming more aware that it needs to do more to stop climate change.
Deirdre Lane announced her fast on Vincent Browne’s Peoples Debate from Newbridge which was broadcast on TV3 last Wednesday night.
Deirdre explained to the Kildare Nationalist why she took the decision to go on hunger strike.
“I have been six days on water and herbal teas so I think I am going to stop today,” she said on Wednesday.
“I grew up in Newbridge in a completely sustainable household where we recycled and upcycled everything and I worked abroad in places such as Scandanavia, Italy and Paris as a commodities banker. I came home to Ireland expecting the country to be as green as I am but we are not. There is litter everywhere, people are driven by the extremes of consumerism. We should be recycling more, upcycling more, driving smaller cars, putting in cycle routes, encouraging public transport and eating better to reduce our carbon footprint. But we are not; we are idiots when it comes to climate change.”
Prior to Christmas Deirdre was at the COP 21 Climate Change talks in Paris. “I am a member of People’s Climate Ireland and I was one of 35 people from Ireland who attended the talks and spoke with climate leaders. I was also one of 15,000 people who formed a human chain around the Eifel Tower as the talks were going on to highlight the climate change issue. Because many French events were cancelled due to the atrocities people were encouraged to organise events in their own country. I am part of the Kildare Environment Network and on 28 and 29 November we held a talk at the Riverbanks Arts Centre which was the first such event in Europe. The talk focussed on what we can do about climate change and how we can transition to a green economy.”
Deirdre feels that diet modification is an important part of tackling climate change. “Diet has a lot to do with it. Agriculture in Ireland is a large cause of emissions. Farmers are getting subsidies to produce cattle to export produce abroad when they should be encouraged to grow vegetables. If more people were encouraged to breast feed we wouldn’t have to produce milk powder for export to the Chinese market. I’m not a vegetarian myself so I eat meat but I would be very conscious on our over reliance on meat in this country.”
The decision to go on a hunger strike came from the COP 21 Climate Change conference according to Deirdre. “A decision was taken to collectively fast for 261 days, that’s the total number of days that leaders have spent at Climate Change conferences since the first one in 1995. I began my hunger strike on 1 January, 20 days after the COP 21 talks ended, because that is when we make resolutions to eat better and to live healthier. We can do that and also address the problems that Ireland is causing today by our actions. At the moment we are experiencing flooding in this country and yet we continue to export vast amount of agricultural produce from methane producing cattle. We need to transition to a green economy now and it needs to happen sooner rather than later.”
