Climate crisis: "The battle must go on. The alternative is unthinkable"

The last decade has seen plenty of signs of the existential crisis we face. Every indicator points the wrong way. The extremes are getting ever more extreme. Storms are getting stormier, rains rainier, droughts droughtier, forest fires fierier, winds windier, snow and ice snowier and icier. In one shape or another, it’s everywhere.

We all remember the massive damage done by Storm Eowyn, so bad that we needed EU generators to get power back in some areas and a cohort of technicians from various EU Member States. That’s the new normal. Oceans are dying, coral is disappearing, fish are in major decline. Jellyfish and algae prosper, and that’s not good.

The seaweed Sargassum now stretches across the Atlantic more or less from the Caribbean to Africa. Lough Neagh is green, and dead. As glaciers melt, the earth’s crust rebounds and seismic activity increases. Meanwhile, there’s the clear air paradox. The more dust and smoke that’s removed from the atmosphere, the warmer the earth gets. We’re screwed either way.

And yet, this was the year when the pullback from climate commitments took off. In Ireland, our commitment to the necessary changes is hamstrung by a host of planning and infrastructural issues. And, perhaps also by a wholly unwarranted and ideologically inspired and deluded optimism. How else to explain the presumption that we could be the Saudi Arabia of green power based on offshore wind?

Water depths in the four sites identified in our grand plan would be world records for fixed bottom offshore wind. Are they viable at all? It should be a wake-up call that Statkraft, one of the successful phase one project owners, decided not to bother bidding on the Tonn Nua (New Wave) auction. Which isn’t to say that wind won’t be a big part of our future energy infrastructure.

But we need some serious rebooting to make that happen. Part of which should be an embrace of the most up-to-date technology in turbines, much of which is intended for deployment at greater depths and higher, and lower, wind-speeds than the old turbines currently in use and which, if we’re not careful, will be offloaded on us because those who should know better may not pay due attention.

The growing resistance to climate goals may also be a kickback against the pieties, the sense that we’re hectored by urban, middle class missionaries with no sense of how tough it is away from their beloved bus and bike corridors. Which it is. Not only that, but some of the biggest CO2 emitters are doubling down.

Trump promised “drill, baby, drill” and, as far as we can see, he’s serious. He’s hostile to wind and solar. He likes American gas and oil exports. Understandably then, there was an air of despondency at COP30 in Brazil. But some there still hope, indeed still think, that maybe we can make it. If we don’t. It’s a disaster. Beyond climate scientists and activists in those countries most likely to go under first, there’s little consideration of what might actually happen.

It’s a gloomy picture. And yet, hope still surges. and four things in particular: first, as mentioned earlier, there’s an incredible surge in green technology, new solar technologies, many varieties of turbine, including a Norwegian flying kite version, various small turbines for local applications and domestic power supply. And they all look scaleable.

Second, the EU is increasingly efficient in its use of energy. It’s doing more with less and renewables now supply almost 20% of energy. No surprise that Nordic countries are leading the transition. We should be too, but we’re not, though we’re certainly making progress. Wind generation is gathering pace and we’re also starting to embrace ideas like district heating using data centre heat.

Third, there’s China. Last year its solar, batteries and EV industries expanded three times faster than China’s economy and, apparently, contributed $1.9tn to GDP, equal to Australia’s annual economic output. The energy generated by new solar panels and wind turbines built and installed in China In the first six months of 2025 generated the equivalent of the UK’s annual energy demand.

China makes a large proportion of the world’s solar panels and wind turbines, half the world’s heat pumps and over two-thirds of EVs. Their view is that this is no longer about emissions reduction, it’s about economic prosperity. Fourth, South Africa’s Vaal Dam reached record high levels in 2025.

This has increased water security, brought relief to communities and ecosystems and stabilised water supplies for drinking, agriculture and industry. It shows that it’s possible to build sustainable infrastructure. That it’s in Africa makes it all the sweeter.

Nobody said this would be an easy struggle. But the battle must go on. The alternative is unthinkable.

Read The Whole Hog Round-Up of 2025 in the Hot Press Annual – out now: