Travelling to COP was a worthwhile experience. Participating in the different aspects of it, the pilgrimage to Glasgow, the climate justice march and the Blue Zone offered different experiences and I come away with a slightly better knowledge of the mechanisms behind these international dialogues.

I don’t think the importance of bogs for climate action, especially in Ireland, can be overestimated.

Discussions at times got slightly heated and a little salty but I came away from the discussion with an appreciation of the hard work that must be done on a one-to-one level and by the drafters of the text, while simultaneously being very grateful not to have to do it. The meeting closed with an expectation that a ‘landing zone’ (a set of compromises that will allow a deal to be concluded) could be found.

Yesterday, armed with a blue lanyard and a ‘terrible’ photo Ciara Murphy was ready to take on the Blue Zone.

Loss and Adaptation day at COP26 was marked by an Ecojesuit webinar about climate change impacts in Oceania and Asia, and a JCFJ school talk about the interrelationships between climate change effects

Undertaking a pilgrimage is not usually done solely to satisfy the need to be surrounded by nature or to exercise but can result from deeply personal, spiritual and faithful decision. While the destination is important, the journey is equally so.

It’s so cold I can’t feel my hands well enough to even tweet, but being at the Glasgow climate march is worth it.

  A gallery of photos from yesterday’s COP26 Global Day of Climate Justice in Glasgow. Exact numbers are hard to estimate – some reports say up to 100,000 people attended – and bystanders said it was the biggest march they had seen in Glasgow since the protests against the Iraq War in 2003. The weather… Read more »

  Today [5th November], the theme of COP26 negotiations in the Blue Zone is ‘Youth and public empowerment – Elevating the voice of young people and demonstrating the critical role of public empowerment and education in climate action’. Whether by coincidence or design, it also happens to be a Friday, and there is a massive… Read more »

“When leaders call us amazing they are handing over responsibility to us” adding that “I hand the responsibility right back to them”.

  On arriving in Glasgow, I met someone for lunch and then made my way to the train station in Argyle Street where I attempt to buy a ticket to the COP26 site on the quays of the Clyde. But as Robert Burns would say “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang… Read more »

The pilgrims will walk along the Union Canal between the two cities and are expected to arrive in Glasgow on the morning of Saturday 6th November, in time to merge with the Rally for Climate Action – the biggest gathering of the 12 days, predicted to attract up to 100,000 people.

It is necessary to consider what squatting reveals to us about the Irish housing system. While the communal squat at Prussia Street seemed very much in its infancy and may have been exploring new social forms, it is impossible to ignore the backdrop of Ireland’s worsening housing affordability crisis.

The property market has perpetually distorted Irish economic development for generations.  A large-scale, popular movement may be required to nudge our leaders out of their complacent and mis-placed deference to those who want to make a profit out of our homes.

Peter McVerry SJ was on the Whitaker Committee in 1984 which reported to government the following year that communities are made safer not when we imprison more people for longer, but when those we imprison are released as better people, with more skills, more opportunities open to them and more hope that their future can be different from their past.

  On October 4th, to mark the end of the Season of Creation and coinciding with National Tree Day, communities, schools and works across the Irish Jesuit Province were planting trees. We harbour no illusion that planting trees absolves us from the necessary, hard work of reducing our overall ecological impact. But this simple act… Read more »

For anyone who missed our ‘Cop On’ webinar with speakers Sean McDonagh and Jerry Mac Evilly about the COP26 climate summit, you can now watch a recording of the event.

Policy papers and strategies should not just be taken at face value. They must be read with a critical eye to reveal their hidden meanings or obscured agendas. Their true meaning will emerge via an interpretation in which suspicion plays a crucial role.

Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Eastern Orthodoxy represent well over 1.6 billion people. Christians working together to combat climate change are an immense and therefore powerful demographic.

Hope that things will change for the better is part and parcel of events like COP. If change was not possible, if the situation was truly hopeless, these meetings would not happen. What we need now alongside our hope is the will to take action.

The truth is good. And sometimes we have to sit and wait and study and listen to discover the truth. Faced with human anguish on the scale of Afghanistan this week, lament is an act that pays respect to the suffering endured by those people.

Early in the book, I read the sentence that has stayed with me longest: “Is it not time for some prison walls to come down and for society to have the courage and foresight to explore other options to address the issues of crime and punishment?”

The recommendations in the Kenny Report from 1973 could have prevented, or at least mitigated our current housing and homelessness crisis. So why were those recommendations ignored? asks Peter McVerry.

Whether they wanted it or not, this Government’s fortunes are inextricably linked with housing.

It was just a few ducklings at the start. I mean, everyone likes ducklings don’t they? During lockdown there was little else to do but go to the local park for interminable walks. So I took a few photos on my iPhone of some ducklings in the pond, posted them to Instagram and watched the ‘likes’ roll in.