I’m just back from a few days family reunion in Belfast. On Monday, my sister took us to lunch at Stormont, home of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It was really something to finally wander around this impressive building which I gazed at from my distant bedroom window as a child, a building that symbolises both the divisions of the past and the hopes for a brighter future.

After an excellent meal, being a political geek, I stayed behind to check out the proceedings of the Assembly from the public gallery in order to get the full Stormont experience. Imagine my joy that they were talking about… CBAM. Yep, the carbon border adjustment mechanism. In Northern Ireland this is a moot issue as the EU’s CBAM and the impending UK version meet on the Irish border with implications for cross border trade. The Agriculture and Environment Minister Andrew Muir deftly responded to some really quite pertinent and informed questions from all sides.

The questions moved on to the pollution in Lough Neagh (that huge blue blob in the middle of the Northern Ireland map). I thought we might get the “do you not want to eat?” attitude from those representing rural constituencies, but the questions and answers were much more nuanced, maybe because the pollution wiped out the local eel fisheries last year. That shows how pollution is not an esoteric middle class concern, but a very real economic one too.

The last section I watched was related and about a ‘just transition’ for the agriculture industry. Again the debate was informed and measured, a stark contrast to the angry farmers’ protests against environmental legislation elsewhere in the UK and Europe.

Having grown up in a Northern Irish political environment where obstinance (aka being ‘thran’ in the local parlance) was seen as a virtue, the debate I witnessed was uplifting and hopeful. The MLAs were generally younger, more progressive and much better informed than the crusty old guard of the Troubles era. I left with a real glow in my heart for the future, both political and environmental.