President Catherine Connolly has warned that the “military industrial complex”, and the wars around the world it facilitates, are major contributors to climate change.
Speaking at Dublin City University (DCU) at a conference on climate change on Tuesday, the President said the “elephant in the room is the normalisation of war, which could not happen without the vast military industrial complex”.
“There are currently approximately 130 armed conflicts worldwide, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Significantly, when we hear of climate change, we rarely hear about the emissions caused by warfare, notwithstanding that they are inextricably linked.”
She said there was a “deafening silence around this issue”, which “speaks volumes and must be called out”.
RM Block
During her election campaign, Connolly’s frequent references to the military industrial complex were questioned by opponents and seen in some quarters as a criticism of supplying arms to Ukraine to fight against Russia.
Speaking at the sixth annual conference of the DCU Institute for Climate and Society this morning, Connolly said that since a “climate and biodiversity emergency” was declared by Ireland seven years ago, “unfortunately we have seen report after report confirming that transformative change is certainly not happening at the scale and speed that is required”.
She said “neither technological solutions nor incremental change on their own will suffice in saving the planet”.
“The positive news is that the solutions are there ... Those solutions of themselves, however, will not be sufficient. There has to be a recognition that we cannot continue to do business as usual,” she said.
