In the year 2050 Joe
Garland talks to his five year-old boy about birds.
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| Joe on his garden swing at Tigroney when he was four |
The area he lived had been quite
isolated when he was born but it is now in mid-century quite densely populated
by new houses and shacks because of the major shift in population caused by the
disastrous flooding of our low-lying towns and cities and the more than
doubling of the Irish population during the last 50 years. This rapid increase
in population was partly due to the arrival of some of the millions of people
who were dispossessed worldwide from their coastal homes by the rising ocean
and the more frequent and severe storms.
Most of the countryside in Ireland
provides opportunities for people to grow their own food and vegetables so that
by mid-century they are not too greatly affected by the increasing shortage of
commercially produced products. The building of numerous country habitations is
widespread by using old estates, waste land, deserted golf courses, unused
airdromes, old public parks and some divided farms. There is a lot of linear housing built along parts of
the motorways and main roads now that motor traffic is no longer a feature of
the countryside.
Joe seldom leaves the house as his
occupation is entirely conducted by electronic means. Shopping is almost solely
local or by internet, and smart phones and advances in the internet area have
largely eliminated the use of cash and postage. The prohibition of private cars
using unsustainable energy has been effective and anyway it and train travel
are prohibitively expensive. You can travel to Dublin from Avoca by bike on the
old Wexford motorway or by cycling to Rathdrum or Rathnew to catch a train to
Dublin but there are only two trains every week connecting the port of Rosslare
and Dublin, one on Wednesday and the other on Saturday. They are mostly used
for transporting of goods or the rare traveller from abroad.
It was at an international meeting
in New York in September in 2014 that the world’s political leaders and
governmental authorities took the first serious steps to reverse the damage to
the environment and the great loss of wild animal and vegetable life caused by
human greed and behaviour. These
more advanced policies were at last accepted by the world’s leaders as the
basis of the destruction of the flora and fauna of the world. It was realised
that we were faced with the danger of creating a planet which might no longer
be consistent with human habitation.
The advances in the internet have greatly contributed to the virtual
abolition of motor traffic and particularly the private motor car, and to all
unnecessary flying.
There is now an emphasis on human
life based on local and community structures freed from the use of non-sustainable
energy rather than a worldwide community based on the abuse of nature’s limited
resources. There is an increasing emphasis too on the urgency of human
population control which has already reached 9 billion, a level which is at
last widely accepted as unsustainable within the limited resources of the
earth.
Important changes in community life
have now taken place, at least in Ireland and other first level countries. The
old established motorways are now used largely by cyclists and the horse is
again coming into its own for shorter travellers. The bicycle, skaters and
scooters have made great strides in technology and efficiency, and progress in
this area has been remarkable and happily this progress continues. A recent
scooter is believed to have done the trip of 60 kilometres from Arklow to Dún
Laoghaire in Dublin in less than two hours and to have returned on the same
day!
Timber, and particularly ash, has
almost entirely replaced metal for bicycle frames but its use is a further
drain on our vital but inadequate sources of timber, despite the efforts of the
government and the local people to ban all efforts to burn wood for heating
purposes.
The shortage of timber is a reason
why we need a permit to cut trees while small new plantations are encouraged by
government grants. No acorn must be allowed to rot! The use of timber as a
source of heat is being strongly discouraged and domestic heating in now
largely dependent on adequate clothing and house design. We are back to drying
clothes on the line and we are learning again to use the skills of the
seamstress or of our family members to repair all our serviceable clothes. The
collection and storage of water for washing and cleaning is routine since the
use by all habitations of a rainwater butt.
There are still a few bogs but the
use of turf for fires and heating in general has long since passed. The
remaining bogs are still under the control of the Irish Peatland Association
and are strictly preserved as a reminder of our traditional dependence on turf
as fuel and of peatland as part of our countrywide heritage. The widespread
areas of cutaway bog are in increasing use for certain aspects of food
production.
Added to his work, Joe has a great
influence as founder and chairman of the local Tigroney Allotments and Tree
Committee which is concerned with guiding the local people to grow their own
vegetables and fruit. Joe also organises the weekly market to arrange the
distribution of produce among the inhabitants and to ensure that the less abled
are also cared for. By the year
2050 there is little opportunity to eat meat in the form of lamb or beef
because of insufficient land availability but the pig still survives and the
recovery of the horse trade has now popularised the horse as another source of
meat. The big supermarkets Joe
knew as a child are long since gone, at least in the countryside and most of
the towns in Ireland.
The Tigroney Committee is also
concerned with the building of new cottages and country houses. Local trees and
stone must be the main sources for building and other utility purposes. Every
effort is being made to ensure that trees are being planted and cared for in
available sites in the area.
The Kindle and the internet approach
to reading have left us with millions of books which are no longer of common
use and hardback publishers have largely gone out of business. These books are
now becoming useful as the inner contents of the cottage walls to retain heat
loss in the absence of artificial heating. Some day a few of our prestigious
libraries may end up as the contents of our walls rather than our shelves!
Important sustainable development is
proceeding gradually through the production of solar and wind
energy. This is one of the most promising aspects of progress in protecting all
sustainable energy sources and already much has been achieved in this area and
more is expected. Using more advanced design and cheaper materials are promising
in the utilisation of wind and solar energy in the future.
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| Joe's cottage in Tigroney |
Like many other people, by the
mid-century Joe’s house has become the repository of many portraits and figures
of animals and particularly of birds, reminders of our depleted wildlife. He
has one elaborate figure in bronze of six birds close together in flight. One
day recently his young boy was looking at the bronze figure and said to his dad "and used they be able to fly like that?"
"Yes," said his dad with a note of
sadness, "all these birds used to fly like the big pigeon which you saw over
the river a few weeks back when we were walking near Avoca, and the couple of
white birds we saw near Arklow which I said were sea-gulls."
"Some birds used to spend most of
their waking hours flying, seeking the company of other birds and seeking food
and shelter. They used to shelter and sleep in nests in the trees and bushes
and sometimes in the roofs of houses. There were many different birds from tiny
sparrows to the large swans, two of which you see in that picture. When your
grandfather was alive and young they had a lot of birds around the house,
flying all over the place and all with different cries and sounds which were
easy to recognise among the different species. One bird which used to come to
Ireland during the early summer was called the cuckoo because it made this
cuckoo sound which I am copying exactly when I say ‘cuckoo’’.
"It was possible for most people to
recognise the different birds by their well-known sounds. The birds laid eggs
in their nests and after looking after the eggs and keeping them warm for some
time a young bird was born when the egg cracked."
"And what happened to the birds and
why are they not still here?" said Joe
"It was already happening about the
time I was a boy and the reasons are not easy to explain, but my granddad once
told my dad that when he was young the air in the atmosphere was full of flies,
bees, wasps, lady birds and other insects. A hundred years ago it was necessary
to use sticky hangers in the kitchen to catch the flies in the house and when
you were driving a car in the countryside you had to stop at times to clean the
car window from all the insects which stuck to the glass. Because people began
to use all kinds of newly invented and newly arrived chemicals in gardens and
farms and other places to encourage growth and prevent new plant diseases,
nearly all the insects disappeared. The flies and insects were the most
important source of food for the birds, so they were eventually starved and
could not survive."
"There were other causes too such
as the loss of nests because of so many new buildings and the more intensive
usage of the newly built up areas. Because all the flying and foreign travel
which developed in the past, a lot of foreign animals and insects which arrived
in Ireland from America, Australia, and Africa had no natural enemies to
control them and started to compete with the birds and our own native animals,
such as the red squirrels which did no harm to birds or trees. For example, the grey squirrel arrived
in Ireland from America more than a hundred years ago and they used to attack
the harmless red squirrels and eat the bird’s eggs which they find in the
trees. "
"There may be other causes which we
do not understand. For instance, in the old days we had total darkness at night
in most places but artificial light may have upset the habits of birds, insects
and other wild life. But the main cause was probably the chemicals which we
were using in our houses, farms, towns and countryside, and the loss of
suitable areas for birds to nest in."
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| A Bee in Joe's garden in 2014 |
"There were other common birds who visited Ireland at certain times of the year. Some of these came in huge numbers but they too have almost disappeared because of serious changes in the world weather like heat waves and severe storms and because of water shortage caused by drying up of rivers and lakes in other countries where the water was overused by too many farmers and industry. The migrant birds depended on these rivers and lakes to survive on their journeys to or back from Ireland. These foreign birds were mostly found near the coast here. Your grandfather was telling me that when they arrived from Greenland to winter in Ireland they could be found in thousands and thousands on golf courses, fields and on the farms close to the sea."
"We used to have many sorts of sea
birds. They were called seagulls and they were seen in great numbers by the
sea. They lived mostly on fish. They used to nest on rocks and islands all over
the country beside the sea and only came into the land when the weather was
very bad, The Saltee islands not far from here in Wexford used to have
thousands of birds nests on their cliffs and rocks but most of these nests were
destroyed by the storms and hurricanes which started to happen when I was
growing up. You can see a few of these birds yet but they are much less common
than they were when I was born. They were also affected by the shortage of the
fish on which they depended and, in the Saltees at least, by hungry wild cats."
His father stopped talking and as the little boy looked up towards the empty sky he too looked sad.
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