Green Party Conference, May 2005

It is May 2015:

How have your eating habits changed in the last 10 years? What did you have for dinner yesterday and where did it come from?

Business As Usual

• Farmed salmon increase in price due to transport costs.
• Scenario is implausible
• Same menu, different sources
• More restricted choice

Enlightened Transition

• Fish from ponds on farms
• Organic turnkey from an integrated farm
• Food eaten is more seasonal
• Eating Irish beef and lamb, less is exported.
• Shift from mass production products to locally produced products
• Food is more expensive.
• Tea and Coffee is available but twice the price
• Less imported products - discount stores such as Lidl
• We have less choice of what we eat
• Increased population
• Diet more like 1950s
• Sugar beet factories re-opened

Localisation

• Eating local meat and veg.
• Less variety, imported, processed

Fair Shares

• Semi-organic growing - little artificial fertilisers/pesticides.
• Irish produce as imports very expensive
• Seasonal food as out of season very expensive
• More processed and frozen or dried food.
• GMO's are widely grown.

Menu:

Starter

• Mixed local salad
• Potatoe and leek soup

Main course:

• Freshwater farmed fish
• Rabbit stroganoff
• Irish stew
• Quorn stew
• Nettle
• Onions
• Spring Cabbage

Dessert:

• Rubard Crumble
• Apple pie

with Sloe wine and herb tea.

What energy saving changes have you made to your home in the last 10 years?

Business As Usual

• Insulation
• Solar Panels
• Energy efficient light bulbs
• Wood fired stoves
• Increased awareness of cost of energy and waste in the home
• Use of showers of instead of baths

Enlightened Transition

• Insulation in all areas - windows, walls, roof
• Economic machism helped us to adopt passive solar construction methods - make homes more affordable.
• Solar panels, wind generators and heat pumps all in common use.
• Underground tanks used to store warm water from solar panels
• Houses are generally colder, we have more blankets on the bed and wear warm clothes inside.
• Wood pellet stoves have become popular

Localisation

• More insulation
• Fireplaces replaced by wood stoves.
• Wooly jumpers

Fair Shares

• Two new subterranean rooms lit from the sky
• Solar panels on the roof
• Biomass boiler using woodchips
• Geothermal heat pump to heat underfloor
• Small wind turbine/community turbines
• Insulate walls - retrofit
• Mechanical ventilation and heat recovery
• Triple glazing, pilkington K
• Smaller windows
• Shutters

Credits