Sir, – While it was welcome to see the World Meteorological Organisation report taking prominence on the front page of The Irish Times (“Alarming new records for climate change set last year, says WMO”, November 3rd), I took no great pleasure in reading its content.
It’s another in a series of recent reports highlighting the acceleration of the impacts of climate change, and the significance of the challenge facing humanity. When taken with the continued degradation of the globe’s natural systems, through pollution and destructive extraction, we are truly at an existential crossroads.
Yet, despite all the grandiose plans and rhetoric, data since the Covid lockdowns indicates we are nowhere near laying the groundwork for future environmental stability.
We continue to ignore the elephant in the room, the delusion that capitalism and a consumption-based economy are compatible with sustainability. We listen to the talking heads of high-tech companies telling us that 3 per cent growth targets are still possible in a 1.5 degree limited rise scenario, and that technology will save us.
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Aside from the climate impact of humanity’s apparently insatiable consumption, natural systems, which could help mitigate the worst impacts of higher emissions, continue to be degraded and polluted.
Common sense says we should have an economy of needs rather than wants; an economy that ensures that all have equal opportunities to live a full life, and an economy measured in metrics associated with the quality of people’s lives not GDP. This approach leads us to a sustainable and equitable shared future. Our current path is ominous and leads us down a path of civil disorder in which accumulated wealth won’t provide much protection.
Unfortunately in today’s increasingly polarised political climate it’s hard to see who might stand up and shake us from our sleepwalk.
– Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Blackrock,
Cork.