Esther McCarthy: How do we live a sustainable life without living in a treehouse in the forest?

Irish Examiner

17-05-2025

We have a little game we've been playing since the kids were small. Every time we go to the beach, we each pick up three pieces of rubbish.
It's automatic now. Last weekend we came back to the house with bits of rope, soft drink cans, and an old bleach bottle that we turned into a bit of tree art. Wipe your eye, Tracey Emin.
We do little things to try and reduce our environmental impact. The boys cycle or walk to school. I cycle to work when I can. It serves to get the adrenaline pumping before the editorial meeting.
There's nothing like having a Mazda sedan try to veer you off the road to make you feel ALIVE of a Monday morning.
I'm trying to be more sustainable with the clothes thing. I've bought a couple of pre-loved bits alright, and I regularly sneak off to the Big Dunnes to get a fix.
CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB
I try on clothes in the dressing room, preening like a pre-menopausal peacock, swishing around in front of the perfectly-placed mirrors so I can see exactly how big my arse looks in this, without having to turn my husband into a cliché.
Then I put everything back on the rails with a wistful sigh and return home groceryless, having forgotten I was going to do the big shop. (I'm lying, who does the big shop in Dunnes? Who am I, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers?)
So we try to do our bit. My husband doesn't trust the recycling fairies, so he's got a contraption to de-pod the aluminium: he pushes out the grounds, rinses the capsule, saves the coffee grounds for my homemade body scrub. (I'm lying. Who am I? Charlotte Tilbury? I do sling them around the garden though.) Take that, Big Coffee! And slugs.
But then, we'll be hopping on a plane at some point to go on our holidays. We have a gas guzzler of a car — we moved to a seven-seater when the dog got bigger than the teenagers. In my defence, it was unforeseen. His mother came up to my shin.
I remember looking nervously at his paws when we got him as a puppy — they were like shovels. We signed up for Scrappy-Doo and came home with Scooby.
We stayed in a hotel in Killarney recently. I tried not to think about the laundry, the single-use shampoos, the plastic milk yokes the kids bizarrely associate with luxury. They surreptitiously guzzle them by the coffee machine like they're microdosing some posh dairy drug.
Big guilty milky moustaches on them as I glare darkly, drinking a cup of black tea. Does that make us hypocrites?
How do we live a sustainable life without going and living in a treehouse in the forest? We'd probably muck that up too — dislodging an endangered squirrel colony to
install a composting loo.
I sometimes get despondent, worrying about the world we're passing on. So to cheer myself and yourself up, here's three reasons to have hope for the future.
Billionaire nerdlinger Bill Gates is funding a solution to cow burps
Methane from livestock is a major contributor to global warming, and cows burp out a fair bit of it. I can't find fart-related data. Enter awfully clever scientists who've figured out that feeding our bovine friends a tiny amount of red seaweed reduces methane emissions by up to 90%. The idea is being trialled across farms, and Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures is backing it. It's utterly simple, a bit absurd, and I am here for it.
Great Green Wall of Africa
This is a project so ambitious it sounds fictional. So, the aim is to plant a belt of trees across the continent, from Senegal to Djibouti, to halt desertification and restore native plant life to the landscape.
And, reader, it's working. National Geographic reports that Senegal alone has planted more than 50,000 acres of trees, creating jobs and reviving farmland in the process. A small portion of the trees are also fruit-bearing, which, when mature, will help combat the high levels of malnutrition in the country's rural interior. Even more incredible is the project's potential social impact.
The BBC reckons that the improvements in Mali could help curb terrorism, combating the spike in political and religious extremism caused by famine and poverty. And here we are with robot trees on Pana. Tsk.
The clean energy tipping point
Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels in many places. You can't turn around in Bishopstown for solar panels on semi-Ds. Even oil-rich countries are investing heavily in renewables — think Saudi Arabia's Neom city or the UAE's Masdar City. Now they are nutso , and possibly dystopian — that Neom city gives me a pain in my tummy.
But, maybe we're finally reaching a point where green is good business.
So next time you're standing at the sink, rinsing gross chicken juice out of a plastic container, remember this: Yes, the planet has problems. But it also has people — brilliant, bonkers, stubborn, imaginative people — who are tackling them in unexpected ways. And that should give us all hope. (I'm not even lying this time.)