Listen to the piece. It is about a community group that has had some success in addressing precisely that problem. Stopping those who don’t need to exercise the turbary rights associated with their property while helping those for whom the state offers insufficient support to transition.
In the 25+ years I’ve been making programmes about the need to decarbonise we’ve done a lot of research on audience knowledge. They are very well informed. This piece was about the messy and less than perfect route to getting there rather than just admiring the complexity of the problem.
I think that in this community’s case they felt the use of heavy machinery on a relatively small patch (about 4 fields equivalent) was the lesser evil to allowing uncoordinated drainage and extraction all across 500 acres. The Trust cut the turf so families would take it and not elsewhere.
The programme was about routes to achieving less burning of turf. The audience knows why that has to happen.
Leadership would be nice 😁
We are kinda talking about the same thing here. Carbury Bog Trust is an example of relocation of cutting within a bog. But because it was devised by the community and not imposed from outside the gradual transition to no cutting enjoys widespread local support.
We may have greater exposure to the preaching of St Augustine than you - “Oh lord help me to be chaste, but not yet”
Which nobody is doing anything about at a national level, but this community has identified (an imperfect) way of addressing locally.
We can say “but it’s not perfect” or we can learn from it.
I am guessing that no political party feels they have the capital to impose a hard stop/end of turbary rights. In which case the undesirable status quo remains.
The template this community provides is one that manages an ever dwindling number of cutters to least harmful effect.
Did you listen to the piece?
It’s not about providing subsidised retro-fitting and heat pumps to those homes that burn turf (which would be a public good).
It’s about finding alternative and less destructive ways of allowing turbary rights rather than an outright ban.
Aha. That’s an interesting lost in trans-Atlantic translation moment. Over here I think consensus would be the market might be sincere when its leading lights says they want to stop causing warming. But nobody believes they mean now.
Ah here, didn’t I just make a whole radio programme about it 🤷🏻♂️
Listening to radio on a Saturday morning is the wholesome antidote to late night Bluesky nerdiness
Everything you just said is correct. But (based on this journalist’s observations) those using turf to stave off fuel poverty live close to the bog and mostly foot their own. Those buying illegal turf have other options like home heating oil. Cutting them off is not unjust.
No. The logic is the one the community has devised for itself. It’s not mine. And they have decided that having a contractor confine activity to 80 acres has preserved 400 acres. Proof of the pudding is that portion is one of a handful of pristine midlands raised bogs.
Well if I’m allowed let my imagination run riot I’d like to address the problem first on the supply side. Enforce the law and cut off illegal commercial harvesting. Admittedly much of it’s for hanging baskets in Tunbridge Wells. But there’s lots going up Irish chimneys too.
Especially as Prof Feehan says warming will damage pristine raised bogs. I’d like to see projections on how resilient rewetted sites are in an RCP 4.5 world or worse
An idealist.
Finite political capital. Finite finances. Within those constraints prioritising the greater harm will get much bigger result.
I spend a lot of time traveling the backroads of these counties. Illegal commercial harvesting is rife and enormously destructive.
B) Don’t rewet. Leave drained bog to process of natural ecological succession. More emissions now but more sequestration in 100 years time. Good for nature, not so good for warming.
Assign all your finest PhD candidates in the morning please.
@hannahdaly.ie this is the question I’d prefer to have baited you and your computational acumen on. There’s a trade off here we need to work out.
A) Rewet cutaway bog now. It will most likely never rehabilitate and sequester like pristine bog. But it will cap emissions from degraded bog.
Or …
I’m getting the pic changed tomorrow. The practice you correctly describe is mostly to do with the majority of rights free images in the library being of an older vintage.
But if you listen to the piece you’ll see it is about cutting for personal use.
Which is not to say that what you suggest might not be workable.
Historical quirk. Transfer to this particular community happened under the Wyndham Land Act 1906. The landlord trying to save a few quid on legal and land registry fees assigned the whole bog to a trust rather than drawing plots on a map. The trust decided to harvest only one spot.
In 5-10 years time the new owners of Barney’s home can pay for its retrofitting rather than the taxpayer now just to stop Barney cutting turf for another three or four years
… with minimal impact on the integrity of the bog. Purists would correctly say Barney should stop and the state should buy him a heat pump. Pragmatists would say energy would be better focused on detecting and prosecuting illegal commercial activity.
Barney Leonard, featured in the first report of the programme is 84. He goes to the bog everyday. Harvesting turf is the heartbeat of his life. In five years time he says he knows he won’t be doing it. The community in Carbury has devised a way for men Barney’s age to continue cutting …
If 120 families exercised (still legal) turbary rights on 120 separate plots all over the 500 acres of the bog the whole site would be compromised. This way only 80 acres is cutaway, and within a few years these mostly elderly cutters will have stopped.
I listened to the interview. It didn’t feel remotely contentious in the moment. He was making the fair point that too many people take comfort in renewables being tomorrow’s solution as as a way of avoiding taking action today.
As far as I know there are no peat fired stations burning peat since the last, Edenderry, switched to biomass a year ago. Where did you read that?
Yes, I’m getting that changed
Did we burn Bog Bodies to create electricity?
The gruesome answer seems to be, we did. Albeit not on purpose. #RTECountrywide
Listen: 👉 www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...
