Why have eco-warriors gone to war with a rural Irish pub?

One of the stranger developments of recent years has been the speed with which supposedly rational people acquiesced to activists spouting the green agenda.

Senior politicians prostrated themselves at the altar of Greta Thunberg. School teachers actually applauded their pupils whenever the little brats decided to bunk off school in the name of ‘climate strikes’. It often feels that the adults have simply given up, tired of being shouted at by climate cranks.

There are, thankfully, still some stubborn bastions of common sense. One such establishment that deserves a well-earned round of applause is JJ Hough’s Singing Pub in Banagher, County Offaly.

Hough’s is a rural hostelry, but is well-known across Ireland for the quality of its music sessions (as the name implies) and the warmth of its welcome. This is particularly true at this time of the year, when the days get colder, the nights get longer and the rain gets wetter.

Last week, the pub happily posted a picture on Facebook of its first peat-burning turf fire of the autumn, as it does every year. While this tradition is welcomed by most of the locals, it attracted the ire of one local business.

In the smug, passive-aggressive manner that eco-cranks seem to specialise in, a tourism firm called Working Holiday Ireland responded to the image of the turf fire with much tut-tutting. ‘I see you’re burning turf?!’, it wrote beneath the pub’s post, ‘Carbon footprint guys…’

The response from Hough’s was, it must be said, a thing of beauty. Rather than try to justify or defend its use of turf, it went on the offensive:

‘It’s how we heat the pub. Looking at your page you rely on tourists who come to Ireland, correct? How do they get here? They hardly swam. How would you compare and quantify the emissions of a Boeing 747 to a small turf fire? How do your guests get around Ireland when they arrive, do they walk?’

Hough’s went on to ask whether the business checks its guests’ clothing to see if it was sufficiently eco-friendly, or whether its Facebook response was written using a smartphone or laptop, ‘both of which were developed and powered by fossil-fuel technology’. Then, having administered a flurry of rhetorical punches, the pub moved in to deliver the knockout blow: ‘Maybe call in some time and I’ll give you my carbon footprint up your hole.’

Now, anyone who has ever been on the sharp end of an Irish publican’s tongue knows that, if you have any sense, it’s better to stay down and admit defeat. Instead, showing the humourless zeal that makes eco-warriors such a remarkably tedious bunch, Working Holidays Ireland doubled down. In a statement to the Daily Mail, it boasted it was ‘committed to helping Ireland reduce its carbon footprint’ and that the ‘global community’ appreciates every gesture, no matter how small.

Digging deep into the Little Book of Green Clichés, it also claimed that Ireland has a duty to ‘set an example for others to follow’. Invoking the sainted name of Sir David Attenborough, Working Holidays Ireland warned us all that ‘it’s time to make small sacrifices for a greater good’.

In many ways, we should all be strangely grateful to Working Holidays Ireland. Its statement perfectly encapsulates everything that is vainglorious, futile, arrogant, profoundly misanthropic and utterly joyless about the modern green movement. For starters, why is it that we are the ones who are constantly asked to make these ‘small sacrifices’? Meanwhile, green campaigners continue to fly, use fossil fuels and generally give themselves moral licence to ignore their own instructions.

Besides, does anyone seriously think China will stop opening two new coal plants a week because an Irish pub in the back-end of nowhere is forgoing its turf fire? The Irish eco-warriors who dream of being lauded internationally for setting a global example fail to grasp one important fact about this country – nobody cares what we do. We’re a small rock on the edge of the Atlantic with a tiny population responsible for an estimated 0.1 per cent of global emissions. The reality is, we can’t and shouldn’t bother trying to supposedly save the planet. All we will achieve is making ourselves cold, miserable and grumpy.

As it happens, this isn’t turf’s first time in the environmental spotlight. Ireland’s Air Pollution Act 1987 criminalised, among other things, ‘excessive’ turf burning. More recent legislation made it a criminal offence to buy it over the internet or from ‘a retail premises or public place’.

No piece of legislation can erase the cultural and historical significance of turf in Ireland. Apart from its traditional importance as a source of fuel, there are few things more pleasurable than a rural pub with a roaring turf fire. There is no better place to enjoy good conversation, great music and a creamy pint of stout as a gale blows outside. It’s one of those things that just makes life a little bit better.

Indeed, as third-generation proprietor Gerald Hough put it: ‘A turf fire continues to be the centrepiece of the traditional pub where we gather to converse, communicate while sometimes being lewd and lascivious but always good craic. Do not hasten to abandon all tradition just yet.’

Ireland may be a country that is often keen to trumpet its modernity – it wants to be a tech capital and digital hub of Europe, be seen as a trailblazer for ‘trans rights’ and become an overall paradise for woke virtue-signallers. But it would appear there are some traditions the locals aren’t so ready to leave behind. And long may it last.

Ian O’Doherty is a columnist for the Irish Independent.