President Higgins: All of us must act now on climate catastrophe

We are at the precipice of a global ecological catastrophe and the window of opportunity to act is closing worryingly fast, the President has warned.

Michael D Higgins also told climate crisis activists who range in age from 18 to 80 that if they want to make a significant impact in the battle to save the planet and life on it, they will have to address the issue of power and face down powerful interests.

“Like the poor of the world, all you have are your numbers. You will have to be ahead of the posse in all of the information but also in the clever uses of information in a media that will so frequently ignore you,” he said.

He made his comments during a wideranging address to an intergenerational conference on climate justice in Cork yesterday which brought some 200 adults and school students together to share ideas of climate justice.

His address was informed by the findings of the Rethinking the Role of the State seminar he hosted on Monday which discussed how to promote what he has called a new “ecological-social paradigm” combining ecology, economy, and the ethics of equality — with the State playing a central role — which recognises the limits of the world’s natural resources and the role that “unrestrained greed” has played in the climate crisis.

He criticised the “prevailing neo-liberal economic paradigm” which he said has been with us “like a dark cloud for almost four decades”, and the culture of “short-termism” which he said pervades modern political life.

And he praised environmental activist Greta Thunberg for spearheading a new movement which is leading towards this new paradigm and which is being advocated by scholars including Professor Ian Gough of the London School of Economics and Dr Kate Raworth of Oxford University.

But he said there were “other Gretas” and many male activists over the years who were ignored or dismissed.

“Where have they been, the philosophers? Where have they been, the scholars who should have supported those brave people in their day. Why are they silent?

“What has happened the institutions that say we have to keep our head down in order to get the money to go on, and we won’t address these issues and we can get an income from taking the richest children of the richest families from all over the world to come and pay us extraordinary fees.”

He called for the new paradigm, rooted in the concept of human need over greed, to be taught across the social sciences in all third-level institutions and places of education.

President Michael D Higgins, speaking at the Cork Conference on Intergenerational Climate Justice at City Hall, Cork. Picture: David Keane.

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“The onus, the moral imperative, is on us all now to make the necessary changes to our lifestyles — some may be costly and difficult, others relatively painless — if we have any sense of intergenerational climate justice, and if we are to have any hope of avoiding the bequeathment to the next generation of a hostile and volatile Planet Earth.

“We must urgently do everything we can as a gesture towards intergenerational solidarity to safeguard a benign future existence on this planet,” said the President.

“I encourage you to try what you can.

“Every measure has the potential to influence change and protect our environment, our biodiversity, and mitigate climate change,” h e said.

Conference organiser Frank Dorr thanked the President for attending and said that he hopes the event will identify practical ways for people of all ages to help address the climate emergency.

You can listen to President Michael D Higgins' speech at the Cork Conference on Intergenerational Climate Justice below