In ecological experimentation, one of the ways to examine how systems work is to disturb the system, by, for example, adding, removing, or changing the behaviour of a particular species and looking at how the system responds. These experiments are used to see how resilient or vulnerable a system is. The fuel protests last week… Read more »

Spoiler alert! Hot Fuzz The 2007 film Hot Fuzz is set in a town which regularly wins the tidy towns competition; there is no graffiti, living statues or underage drinkers. A secret cabal, sinister hooded tidy-town zealous residents, decides what action needs to be taken – usually involving murder – ‘for the greater good’. This… Read more »

In Manchán Magans’ book “99 words for rain (and only one for sun)” he effortlessly evoked the prevailing weather system in Ireland. Rain is one of Irelands defining features and it is responsible for our description as the Emerald Isle. All this to say that we are used to rain in Ireland – but not… Read more »

Colm Fahy was part of the Jesuits for Climate Justice campaign at COP 30 in Brazil. He was impressed by the ethos and commitment of the Irish delegation he met there.

The “veto culture” is often motivated by the desire to seek an easy payout. There is something fundamentally tawdry about this and we should not be ashamed to comment on it. An attitude prevails that if you can extract a little compensation bundle from the government, you would be a fool not to take it.

The turning of the year prompts us to look back and look forward. In JCFJ in 2025 we were delighted to deliver a special issue of Working Notes dedicated to marking the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ groundbreaking Laudato Si’ and to follow that up with an issue focusing on the ethical and policy dimensions… Read more »

There are many ways of making the connection between environmentalism and Jesus. An important one, I believe, is his humility.

Naming the Assumptions Let us start by stating two common assumptions: The first position used to be extended often by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and their ilk. I have heard it myself: that religion is a sort of psychological crutch for people who can’t quite cope. While it seems like it might have some… Read more »

A rallying cry heard throughout the 20th century was “Bread, not bombs.” The original phrase captured the moral demand to prioritise human need over militarism, often in Cold War and anti-poverty contexts. But in the face of climate collapse, biodiversity breakdown, ecological injustice, and environmental racism, a reframing is badly needed. The drums of war… Read more »

It’s been almost six months since I’ve been welcomed onto the JCFJ team, so I thought I would report on some of the highlights in what has been an intense time of learning, reflection, challenge, and connection.   As well as helping the team with environment-related submissions, assisting with our publication Working Notes, and promoting my… Read more »

If a more populist right Government, than the incumbent coalition, were to emerge in Ireland, then they have an arsenal of tools to further suppress peaceful democratic protest and respond punitively to protestors.

The JCFJ is a member of Coalition 2030, an alliance of over 70 civil society and trade union organisations in Ireland who collaborate for the domestic and global achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 17 SDGs, which are all equally important and should be treated equally, were adopted by all UN member… Read more »

There’s a common trope that we have a name for an entity that seeks to grow without limit (as our variety of capitalism demands) and it is cancer. There’s a deeper, fundamental critique that even anticipating the wonderful gains of efficiency that can come from market competition, infinite growth with finite resources is bound to… Read more »

The year draws to a close and the Irish people anticipate that when the Dáil sits again in January, a new government will form. It will mostly be the same as the old one, albeit lacking a strong environmental concern after the electoral wipe-out suffered by the Green party. The results of the General Election… Read more »

A Long-Standing Crisis Earlier this week, RTE organised a televised debate about the different positions on housing ahead of the General Election. While we might have qualms about importing televised debates as a means to discuss such important societal factors, it is certainly the case that housing should be near the centre of our thinking… Read more »

If you trace the lines of longitude on a map of the world, you discover something counter-intuitive about Ireland. Dublin is at 53.3498° N, which means it is further north than Winnipeg. The daily mean temperature in Winnipeg in January is -16.3°C. Introducing the AMOC Every Junior Cert student in the country can explain why… Read more »

The reason we gathered was to demand the full implementation of the Dublin Transport Plan, that has been developed over years by expert engineers and city officials. It has been subject to extensive public consultation. It has been voted on twice by the elected representatives of the city. And it is being held up because the CEO of the Council has capitulated to a small group of business leaders, who have the backing of a junior minister who, new to the job, is quickly exploring just how far she can reach.

Becoming Someone’s “Hate-Watch” Many of us are familiar with the habit we can fall into of spending time on things that we hate. For whatever evolutionary reason, we are drawn to things that generate a strong reaction in us and so while there is nothing better than sitting down to read the new book from… Read more »

A little after 2am – hours after the end of the final official day (Tuesday 12th November) of COP28, delegates were told to go to bed and await a new draft text in the morning. The initial draft was roundly rejected on Monday as being too weak on action on fossil fuels. Sultan Al Jaber,… Read more »

At COP28 they rested on the 7th day and today restarts with a focus on ‘Youth, Children, Education and Skills’ alongside the continuous negotiations on the final text. COP28 has, so far, been a mixed bag with some incredibly promising agreements tempered by compromises and mixed messages. The Loss and Damage Agreement, which was rubberstamped… Read more »

What is loss and damage and why is it important? The causes and impacts of climate change are widely accepted. We know that more carbon pollution in the atmosphere, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels releasing carbon dioxide, leads to an overall increase in global temperatures. This causes a wide variety of impacts including… Read more »

“If we are confident in the capacity of human beings to transcend their petty interests and to think in bigger terms, we can keep hoping that COP28 will allow for a decisive acceleration of energy transition, with effective commitments subject to ongoing monitoring. This Conference can represent a change of direction, showing that everything done… Read more »

We are not yet feeling the worst impacts of climate change. However, this summer’s wetter than normal weather has already played havoc with the agricultural industry, reducing growth and impacting harvesting. Imagine the impact of more widespread flooding, or the compounding impact of several years of climate induced poor yields. Our reliance on a very narrow range of environmental conditions and our failure to build up our environmental resilience is incredibly risky.

The shift to electric cars is an essential element of our climate mitigation strategy. But to repeat a cliché that is fundamentally true: electric cars are not a plan to save the world; they are a plan to save the car industry.

The fact that we have to take everything about SMR technology on trust is important because for almost a century, the unfulfilled promise of the nuclear energy industry has left a trail of destruction in its wake. While carbon-neutral from a certain perspective, any claim that nuclear energy has been good for the environment can only be financially motivated. Apart from the obvious catastrophic impact of the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters, in the ten years from 2006-2016, Greenpeace found 166 “near misses” at nuclear power plants in the USA alone.