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Issues in Environmental Research: Politics, Anthropology and Sociology Ecopolitics Series Vol. 3 www.ecopoliticsonline.com Liam Leonard & Michael O'Kane 2008 Galway: © Irish Greenhouse Press www.greenhousepress.blogspot.com & Micromarketing www.micromarketing.ie Cover Art: starseastone By: Brian Brennan www.brianbrennan.net Published in the Republic of Ireland All rights reserved ISSN: 2009-0315 Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank their families, colleagues and friends, as well as the activists and figures interviewed for this book. Particular thanks to Ollie Walsh, Amanda Dolan and ‘Biggs’ Biggley of Micromarketing, Brian Brennan for his cover art, Greenhouse Press and Eileen Leonard for their assistance. Preface: This third edition in the Ecopolitics Series titled Issues in Development and Place: Politics, Anthropology and Sociology will evaluate the relationship between activists and the wider political system as part of the salient political frameworks surrounding environmental issues in Ireland. This is achieved by way of an examination of a series of engaging case studies which are analysed through a range relevant environmental of concepts. While these elements are sometimes competing, they exist within a sub- stratum of intersecting civic and governmental structures where political frameworks and opportunity structures overlap, embracing state agencies, corporate elements and environmental protest movements. With the arrival of the Irish Green Party in government as part of the 2007 coalition government with Fianna Fáil (alongside the Greens taking a seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly), environmental politics can be said to have travelled full circle in Ireland. While the issues of climate change, peak oil, nuclear power, bio-fuels and consumption have come to dominate news coverage and political debate in recent years, this book brings together two studies of green activism across a time span which commences with Irish-Australian anthropologist Michael O’Kane’s research on urban Green Party activists during the 1997 general election, and incorporates the journalism, research and articles of Irish-American political sociologist Liam Leonard from the period 1999 up until the campaign for the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty in May 2008. The fact that such research has been undertaken by two sons of the diaspora is in itself a remarkable reminder of the extent to which issues in Ireland continue to be the concern of a global audience; as the development of this once green and pristine homeland has become something of a paradox, economic growth now competes with traditional values while the Irish public often struggle with a rapidly changing society and environment. The rise of the Irish Greens into power caused many activists to reconsider the direction of the environmental movement after so many campaigns going back to the campaign to save Viking Dublin or the ‘No Nukes’ protests at Carnsore Point in the late 1970s. Indeed, my first book on this subject Green Nation (2006) has been followed by many further studies on this subject. While John Barry has written several books on the philosophical basis of environmentalism, we have witnessed a rising number of academic studies on environmental issues in Ireland including Brendan Flynn’s the Blame Game, Hilary Tovey’s Environmentalism in Ireland: Movements and Activism, Mary Kelly’s Environmental Attitudes in Ireland (all 2007) and Ricca Edmondson and Henrike Rau’s Environmental Argument and Cultural Difference (2008) and my own book the Environmental Movement in Ireland (2008) have all added to a much wider understanding of environmental issues in the Irish case. This book adds to this ongoing process of documenting environmental issues in a changing Ireland. However, this book provides an insight into the realities and methods surrounding green activism and activists over a period when environmentalism has come to be the leading concern of our times. It has consciously and deliberately been published as an E-Book; following on the successful partnership between Irish Greenhouse Press and Micromarketing with the Ecopolitics Online Journal (www.ecopoliticsonline.com), the publication of an online only book seems to be a most natural progression, and perhaps points to a future direction for academic publishing in the future. Liam Leonard, June 2008 Contents: Section I: Considering the Irish Greens: An Ethnographic Approach to Identity and Environmentalism Michael Patrick O’Kane PhD, Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (1993-2003) The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (from 2007) Dedication & Introduction _____________________________________________ 1 Chapter 1: Engaging with Environmentalism _______________________________5 Chapter 2: Being Green _______________________________________________48 Chapter 3: The Kilmeanagh Landfill Dispute _____________________________ 103 Chapter 4: The Party at Work _________________________________________ 112 Chapter 5: The Election ______________________________________________122 Conclusion ________________________________________________________ 160 Bibliography _______________________________________________________166 _____________________________________________________________________ Section II: Understanding Environmentalism in Ireland Liam Leonard PhD, School of Political Science and Sociology, ECI and Social Science Research Centre, National University of Ireland Galway (2001-2008) and Sligo Institute of Technology (from 2008). Senior Editor, Ecopolitics Online Journal Chapter 1: Irish Environmental Policy ___________________________________170 Chapter 2: Environmental Policy Implementation __________________________180 Chapter 3: The Irish Response to Environmental Challenges _________________ 193 Chapter 4: Policy and Practice: An Investigation of the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme (REPS 1) __________________________________________ 202 Chapter 5: Green Activist Methodologies: Journalism ______________________ 210 Chapter 6: Research Methods: Interviews________________________________ 220 Chapter 7: Populism, Place and Protest __________________________________242 Chapter 9: The Galway Water Crisis ____________________________________270 Chapter 10: Tara and the ‘Climate Change Challenge’ ______________________285 Chapter 11: The Rise of the Greens: From Protest to Power _________________ 305 Bibliography ______________________________________________________ 316 Issues in Environmental Research Issues in Environmental Research: Politics, Anthropology and Sociology Liam Leonard & Michael O'Kane Section I: CONSIDERING THE IRISH GREENS: An Ethnographic Approach to Identity and Environmentalism Michael Patrick O’Kane PhD Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia Michael’s Dedication: I dedicate this work to my mother, Mary Elizabeth O’Kane (nee Cooke). As fate would have it, Mum was taken from us on the 7/11/2002 and thus did not live to see the completion of this work. There are no words for the loss felt by myself and my family at her passing and I can find no poem or line of verse that could express how much we all miss her. I would simply like to say that without her love, strength, dedication, devotion and faith I could never have attempted this thesis. Although it is not nearly enough to thank you for all you have given me, this is for you Mum. You taught me to grit my teeth and get on with it. Wish you were here. Acknowledgements If I knew what doing a PhD thesis was going to be like, would I still have taken the scholarship? That is a question I wouldn’t like to think about for too long. A far easier question to answer would be - could I have done this without the extraordinary support that I have received from my family and friends? The answer to that is ‘absolutely not’. Dad, I thank you for being there for me when I really needed your help and at a time when you had more than enough on your plate. You and Mum have given me so much that I could never repay you; all I can do is thank you and tell you I love you. Terry, no-one has a brother like you. Thank you for your loyalty and your friendship. You and Marta have never turned me away when I needed help or someone to talk to and I thank you both. Lisa, thank you for caring, worrying and all the advice big sister. Your wayward little brother would never even have made it through first year without your support and he has not forgotten it. Thanks for your faith in me. To my partner Erin, I love you and I thank you for putting up with me. No-one else in the world knows just how hard this has been to complete because no-one else has had to put up with me worrying and stressing about this thesis day and night. Thank you for loving me and being you. Let’s have adventures and then lots of children. To my supervisor, Dr Michael Stevenson, I thank you for the way in which you have helped and guided me. Without the benefit of your experience and support through what have proven to be some of the hardest years of my life, this thesis just may have killed me. I thank you for supervision and your friendship both. I thank the staff of the School of Political and Social Inquiry for their professionalism and for their understanding. I also thank the School of Political and Social Inquiry in its previous incarnation as the Department of Anthropology and Sociology for granting me the scholarship that allowed me to perform the research upon which this thesis is based. I thank my friend (soon to be Dr) John Martino for