Climate Action and the Role of Engineers

[PETRUS]

This is a speech given last October by the President of Ireland (Michael Higgins), which I only discovered just now.

A couple of quotes:

The neoliberal model of economics that has dominated policy for almost 40 years has been shown from the perspective of its social outcomes, empirically researched, to have deepened inequality, impacted negatively on the poorest, but also, from an ecological perspective, it makes achieving sustainability near impossible. It is built on an assumption of exponential growth – and leaves existing consumption models unrevised.

I am not alone in arguing this thesis. Scholars such as Paul Burkett, John Bellamy Foster and James O’Connor have examined the nature, variability, flexibility and reformability of capitalism in the context of transitioning to sustainable wellbeing, and all have concluded that the mere placing of a new ‘green’ lens on the existing orthodox growth model will not suffice: paradigm shift, not reform, is urgently required.

...

However, we cannot continue with the mere placing of a green lens on economic policies any longer, policies that have failed manifestly and are continuing to cause damaging ecological impacts. A post-capitalist, eco-social future that I, and others like Professors Peadar Kirby and Ian Gough advocate, will entail difficult choices and pursuing policies of, potentially, de-globalisation, de-commodification, even de-growth should the required resource decoupling not be achieved, if we are serious about achieving the carbon mitigation that is required for a sustainable, equitable life on the planet.

Read the speech here: https://president.ie/en/media-library/speeches/climate-action-and-the-role-of-engineers