SOPHOCLES, THE FAMED writer of ancient Greek tragedy, once said “no one loves the messenger who brings bad news”.
And so it was 25 years ago when a rag-tag gang of “eco-warriors” stood up to Wicklow County Council and its planned expansion of the N11 through the Glen of the Downs.
If you’re old enough to remember 1997, one generation ago, Ireland was a very different place. Back then, the country was in the throes of a colossal transformation.
The tiger’s roar
In 1997, Ireland’s economic growth was a heady 11.7% per annum, the IRA had called a second ceasefire in the bloody Northern Ireland conflict, Bertie Ahern became Taoiseach, the Simpsons first aired on RTÉ and thousands of people signed three books of condolences to honour the death of Princess Diana outside the British embassy.
In 1997 Ireland was bracing itself for an extraordinary period of economic growth that would transform this country from one of Europe’s poorest into one of its wealthiest nations in just 10 years.
There was a state of economic intoxication brewing in the land. People were fighting to get both their feet onto the property ladder. The ”Breakfast Roll Man” symbolised a property-fuelled economy that was frothing with growth excitement.
And we were way too busy for the solitudes of nature and a bunch of dirty ‘hippies’, ‘slackers’ and ‘blow-ins’ who were wasting taxpayers’ money and slowing down “progress” with their three-year road protest in the Glen!
Before the Glen of the Downs, in 1996 I travelled to Fairmile in Devon in the UK to visit a direct action protest against the new £50 million A30 road being built from Exeter to Honiton. Fairmile was one of three encampments, consisting of occupied treehouses and a network of underground tunnels and bunkers dug nearly 40 foot below to defend the woods.
Nature reserve
So it was 1997 when news that Ireland’s first nature reserve, the Glen of the Downs in County Wicklow was threatened with an €18.5 million expansion of the N11. I was not a bit surprised to meet with a group of people gathering in the Glen, who shared the view that this place was worth defending.
The Glen of the Downs is a 2km long, glacial valley with magnificent steep slopes of oak, ash and hazel woodland. It is an ancient, unplanted forest that is ecologically connected to the prehistoric “wildwoods” of Ireland. To the ‘Guardians of the Glen’, this place was a unique jewel of Irish natural and cultural heritage and worthy of protection from the voracious appetite of the Celtic Tiger.
But even then I knew we would lose the Glen! I knew the road would be built. Just as we were establishing our camp in the Glen of the Downs the Fairmile camp was obliterated by chainsaws. At the time, a Conservative MP had said that the protesters should be “buried in concrete” and I judged the mindset here to be not much different at the time.
Ireland in 1997 was at full throttle. The Glen of the Downs protest was an impediment, standing in the way of the Celtic Tiger progress. It was obvious to me from the outset who was going to win this fight. In Celtic Tiger Ireland there was no room for the sober message of sustainable development, so instead, we just shot the messengers.
It is said that hindsight is gained through experience. The turmoil of the 2007 economic crash still reverberates. The victims of the bursting property bubble were the same families that so heavily invested in the boom. Private developer ghost estates haunted the country with the four green fields of Ireland held in unfathomable debt bondage to the IMF, German Banks and international hedge funds. With hindsight, was it worth it?
Modern Ireland
In 2019 Ireland was just the second country to declare a climate and biodiversity emergency. Then one year later in 2020 we were struck by the Covid-19 emergency.
So here is the new message: These three emergencies are connected. Climate change, biodiversity loss and the rise in zoonotic pandemics. They are the collateral damage of our war with nature.
Humanity is still waging a ruthless war on the natural world. Ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes. One million species are now at risk of extinction. Our climate system is changing so rapidly it is approaching serious breakdown, presenting a future to our children that will likely be catastrophic and irreversible.
It’s not like all this bad news is a surprise to us. The writing has been on the wall for a long, long time. But we continue to blame the messengers. The Glen of the Downs is an echo of the destruction we are still wreaking upon our natural world.
Our messengers today are the young women and men who are pushing for immediate and far-reaching climate action throughout society and the economy. Are you listening?
So what can we do? Well first, we need to put down the breakfast rolls, take a deep breath and prepare ourselves for an essential transformation. Because making our peace with nature could well be the defining task for our species in the 21st century.
Gavin Harte, sustainability consultant, climate action coach and environmental activist features in Confessions of an Eco Warrior, episode 3, Finné at 9.30pm on TG4 on Wednesday 16 February. He was a founder of the Cloughjordan eco-village in Tipperary. He served as national director of An Taisce and worked as a CSR consultant with Business in the Community Ireland. Gavin now runs ESD Training, his consultancy for education in sustainable development.
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