Four days ago I read a post by @brisby and @calluna which introduced a poetry contest, Poetry Bounty - Jökull, under the banner of @bananafish. In the spirit of fellowship I wanted to participate, so I penned a short 'poem'. The subject of my piece was Ireland, and a recently imposed ban on peat harvesting. I posted this as a comment. The hope was that few besides @brisby and @calluna would ever read my humble verse.

Since posting that poem/comment, however, I've learned a bit about peat. This new information made me review my perspective. Peat harvesting is a more complicated issue than I at first appreciated. So, for the sake of balance, I'm sharing some of what I discovered.

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PEAT

Peat bogs developed over a period of thousands of years. They are the result of slowly decaying organic material. According to the website irelandstory.com, there are two types of peat bog in Ireland: blanket bogs and raised bogs. The irelandstory website asserts that more bogs exist in Ireland than in any other European country, except Finland.

Pressure to curtail peat harvesting comes from the science community, and from environmentalists. This subject also concerns, obviously, commercial peat harvesters and individual consumers.

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Science

Peat bogs are rich fossil troves. Secrets of the prehistoric past are locked in these reservoirs of time. A rather dramatic display of this was the recent discovery of a two-thousand-year-old block of butter. Apparently, Stone Age humans understood the preservative qualities of a peat bog. They used the bog as a sort of refrigerator.

This same preservative quality allowed animals and humans buried in the bog to remain virtually intact for centuries, so that these specimens might be examined by contemporary researchers. Such was the case with the so-called Tollund Man. More than two thousand years ago, this man suffered a violent death. And yet, he appears to us today very much as he appeared at the moment of his demise.

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Environment

Peat bogs are excellent carbon sinks. That means, they absorb more CO2 than they emit. They share this quality with other well-known sinks, such as undisturbed rainforests. Rainforests that have been heavily logged and stripped, however, produce more CO2 than they absorb.

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While many people consider peat to be a 'green fuel', unfortunately, it is not. According to Science Magazine, producing electricity by burning peat releases more CO2 than does the burning of coal. Plus, it seems that by merely clearing bogs of peat, the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere increases, even before the peat is burned. That is because when oxygen is introduced into the peat debris (collected from the bog), decomposition is 'jump started' and this results in CO2 emissions.

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Health

When it comes to burning peat indoors, the few sources I found seem to lump open fireplaces that burn wood, coal and peat all in the same risk category. One of these sources was WHO, and another was an organization called Global Nest. The latter source looked specifically at indoor pollution in Irish homes. It considered the combined contribution of open fire places with other polluters, such as smoking and gas heat.

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Economic

Burning peat, also referred to as turf, is a traditional practice in rural Ireland. I remember my mother-in-law, who grew up in Ireland, describing the harvesting and burning of turf. It was considered, and is still considered by many, a natural right.

Recent rulings that limit peat harvesting have been vigorously resisted. It turns out, though, that much of the peat harvesting is done not by individuals, but by large commercial enterprises. The peat harvesting industry has been touted as a way to create badly needed jobs and to render Ireland energy independent. Nonetheless, the last large commercial peat harvester, Bord na Móna, announced in 2018 that it was suspending operations under pressure from environmentalists.

My Poem

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When I wrote this brief poem, I didn't know anything about peat, except that it was used as a cheap and ready fuel by farmers. Many of these people still hold that they have a right to harvest what nature has provided them. But I see now that the issue of peat is complicated.

As for the Big House, and Potato Famine referenced in my poem: I stand firm on those two. Hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens died because resources were directed away from them. And the Big Houses, well... they are the legacy of a colonial policy that exploited the poor and created stark economic and class contrast. So I do not apologize for the sentiment of my poem, although it may lack some legitimacy on the issue of peat.

Without further ado, here's the poem I wrote for the poetry contest created by @brisby and @calluna. If I can offer a bit of verse, anyone can. Please, join in. Listen to the wonderful music prompt and let it move you. We all have a muse. We just have to open our hearts and listen.

An Example of a 'Big House'

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The Big House

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Well, you know,
Those fellows in the Big House,
They say we can't
Cut peat.

I remember the time
When we couldn't
Keep our own potatoes,
They said.

Can't have heat.
Weren't allowed to eat.
How does the Big House expect us
To live?

Dedicated to my Irish mother-in-law, who used to cut peat for fuel in County Roscommon, Ireland