On Storm Eowyn.
In a lot of ways, this whole event and the fallout of it, has been very revealing to a lot of people on what state the country is in. It is also the culmination of a number of different issues that have been building up over the past few years, a lot of it I've discussed on the channel before. Here are a list of random points that struck me.
1: Infrastructure. Anyone who has been following the channel knows I've been talking about this for a long time now. While I'm very happy to see more people talk about it for the first time, in light of major electrical and water issues over the past nine days, it has still shocked me in a sense, how in the space of a few hours, 800,000 houses (40% of the entire country) lost power. Just like that.
2: Lack of curiosity/willingness to address the problem. The media response to this whole event has been a strange mix of boredom, whitewashing, and a lack of willingness to engage with the problem on a technical level. For example, for all the hysterics about global warming and climate change. Ok, sure. Lets put aside your opinion on global warning aside for one second.
If you take a look at the documentation from EirGrid and the government, there's very little in terms of protecting the existing grid from adverse weather events. Making us more carbon neutral? Sure. Working out the mathematics of wind pole resistance, or underground cables cost benefit analysis? Not much of that. Where is the ESB work on this issue? No journalist will touch that with a barge pole. Not to mentioned the more serious aspects of this event to be buried. It's a bizarre way to deal with the issue which leads into...
3: A separation of the Dublin 4 people from the rest of the country. I think Dublin 4 is the way that it is for a number of reasons. But as I write this, it's the start of the Six Nations and people are celebrating us beating England, whist a lot of Connacht's energy grid has been crippled and people have been sitting in darkness for more than a week. It's a combination of an inability of Dublin 4 to understand or even care what is going on in the rest of the country, with the more troubling issue of...
4: Bureaucratic/civil service incompetence. Various forces within the Irish public sector, have resulted in this inability to get things done. This is what happens when countries decline. Most of the activity and talent is sucked into the city, and rural communities suffer as a result. So you get these weird stories, like engineers being hired from abroad with no housing or accommodation to stay in. Or low quality electrical poles built beside old, unstable trees. We're struggling to get things done, increasingly,
5: Green policies and luxury beliefs. The world becomes a lot more real, when your house without a chimney doesn't allow you to burn some turf. Or you can't charge your electric car anymore. I think this storm will give more people confidence to talk about this stuff, and not be shouted down by Green bullies.
6: Feeling of the people. Maybe its the time of year, but there's a strange feeling of weariness or exhaustion around the whole thing. I see people making comments along the line of "this will change people's minds." To be honest, I disagree. I think its another mark in the sand, where people to some degree are accepting their quality of life getting worse. But so far, the weariness is from everyone involved.
If there is one bit to take away from this post, it is this. When people and organizations fail, and they get away with it, or the energy is not there, they will do it again. The die has been cast. If you're living in a rural area, you need to be prepared with the main stuff; generator, supplies etc.
Nothing is new under the sun, and that can include responses to weather events from bloated, student union branches of government.
More to discuss, but we're still in it. This is a major event, far more significant to Irish society than the snowy Dublin streets of The Beast from the East.
2018. Seems so long ago.
