TWICE THE SIZE - DIT Update - Dublin Institute of Technology

SCENARIO 3: Noe’s Children (National scenario: THE FRAGILITY OF MÉ FÉIN)
John Doyle’s oriental passenger settled back comfortably in his seat, placing his offcom
(electronic office and communications unit) and suitcase on the seat beside him as the roof
dome closed and the elegant water-taxi eased away from the pier. Applying power to the semi
solar motor, John took a glance around, and after an additional check of the TP (Traffic
Proximity) screen let the craft move gracefully out into the open waters of Cork Harbour. The
surface of Lough Mahon ahead gleamed goldly in the early morning sun as he navigated past
Blackrock Island, where he had lived before the floods, when it was part of the mainland and a
prosperous Eastern suburb of Cork City. He could never pass this point of his route without
being saddened at the thought of the old hospital and all the houses of Beaumont and Ballinure
that were concealed beneath the beauty of the waters lapping the island bund.
The second decade of the 21 st century had been a black period in Ireland’s history, made all the
worse in Cork by a series of horrendous winters during which the might of the Atlantic ocean
had asserted itself, inexorably eating up the lowland shores of the Harbour, inundating first the
shore-line roads, and then street by street, the houses proudly built by a prosperous populace.
The oil crisis only added to the misery of the thousands evicted by the waves. There had been
little preparedness: the governing political parties dithered, unwilling to dictate the radical
measures that would have been necessary to at least lessen the impact of the rising waters. For
a couple of years before Cork began to feel the effect of global warming many other places in
Europe had already suffered such inundations, but government metaphorically kept its head in
the sand until it was too late.
In Cork three or four children to a bed, and two or three families to a house, which had been a
characteristic of the Ireland of a hundred years before, became the norm again, as did high
unemployment, as large industrial concerns were reduced to a series of cottage industries.
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As the climate deteriorated,
and low-lying lands all over
Ireland were swamped, the
authorities lost control, as
homelessness on a wide
scale, and widespread
public alarm, soon led to a
dark age of riots and
lawlessness. The gradual
disappearance of
economically priced oil led
to chaos in terms of heating
and lighting.