 It's good to be back in the mansion house. It seems like only last month that I was out here at a conference, which turns out to be 27 years ago, when I was on the organization committee for the 1995 Lord Mayor's Agenda 21 conference. Sorry, I just need to unmute this mic here. Sorry, Michael. You're breaking your floor there. The 1995 Lord Mayor's Agenda 21 conference, which was organized by Anpashka, but also by John Gormley, who was Lord Mayor at the time, and Saif. So it's a little bit like the band has got back together again today. Of course, John was Lord Mayor at the time. But it's interesting to look at the themes, and there's some other familiar faces I'm seeing around the place here who are involved in that as well. But it's interesting to look at the themes that would have pertained at that time. It was all the talk was of cross-sectoral roundtables and sustainability and partnership, and we did it in partnership with Anpashka. Anpashka did it with the Department of the Environment and Dublin City Council and some European body. I also then remember about 20 years ago, organizing a conference on environmental taxation or environmental fiscal reform, as we actually called it at the time, with the European commissioner. Then Minister for Finance Charlie McCreavy snubbed it deliberately and quite humiliatingly for us as organizers, and I think it's no harm to remember some of the attitudes going back to that particular year, some of which have probably changed. But the message of that conference was tax goods, not bad, and also make it fiscally neutral, so the worst off don't have to complain about environmental taxation, lessons that we still haven't learned. But I suppose my point is that environmental vows come and go, but I just reading the greenhouse framework paper, I think that's maybe less likely to dissipate than some of the other themes of yesteryear. I remember during my time, but a big concept was the power of one, don't hear too much about that, the smart economy is one that's gone. Sustainability was a buzzword then, and I'm glad to say that it still is, but it seems to have passed from cliche into popular, from cliche to popular. It never became comprehensible or comprehended despite obtaining the status of a cliche in the end. Agenda 21 buzz for a while, but we no longer hear about that. So I'm very pleased to hear that we're now moving to demand management and the circular economy. I think they're a sustainable concept that will pertain for the long term, and I'm pleased to see in that document so much radicalism, and that radicalism seems to be moving towards the mainstream. In fact, it's depressing in some ways to see that it's needed now, not just on an intellectual level, but necessary to safeguard the future of the species. So I think everybody agrees that it's time a sense of, everyone here anyway will agree, that it's time that a sense of emergency was reflected in radical approaches. So we're going to move to discuss energy transition, demand and the circular economy, and the first speaker is John Gibbons. So I've known John for, I think, around 15 years. We both did time on a committee thing called the Dumer's Committee. He's been a contributor to Village, which I added for at least a decade. He's a brilliant debater and a great advocate. And Pasco is never much good at communication, least of all when I was chair, but John is brilliant. It's pity that broadcast environmental debates are always arranged and set up as a row, but thankfully he always seems to win them. And he's been a very generous contributor to Village, including for the current edition, which we're going to put to bed this evening. So I don't really know how he manages to put so much high quality material together so often. John. Thanks very much, Michael. And thank you for the invitation to be here today. Thank you, John, for having me along. Yeah, I read the documents and I know I'm not here to, if you like, to reboot that discussion, but rather I hope to bring it forward. I read the document, Rethinking Energy Demand. And I guess a few things swirled around in my mind about it. First of all, it's great that we're having this discussion. For so long, we've been hung up on things like efficiency and if you like, tweaking around the edges rather than saying, okay, this system is really, really broken. And I guess I spent a lot of my time trying, sometimes failing, to communicate to audiences unlike the people in this room. In other words, trying to preach to the unconverted and in some cases, the unconvertible. So maybe today is a little bit different, so bear with me. But the issue, I suppose, from my point of view, really is where we start from, right? Degrowth. Okay, what do we mean by degrowth? How does an economy predicated on endless, exponential growth? Degrowth. Short answer, it doesn't. It collapses. We're already in an accelerated global ecological, economic, financial collapse. But collapse, don't think of collapse as off a cliff. Think that more is falling down the steps of the stairs. Different people, I guess they say the future arrives at a different pace. Some people, farmers in Central America, for example, they're already living in the collapsed future, where the climate system upon which their entire existence is based, that has existed for hundreds of years, is gone. Their lives are over. Their new lives are as will be for tens, hundreds, and thousands of millions of people. Over the next several decades, their lives will be the life of the climate migrant, of the displaced, of the destroyed, of the ruined. None of this is in the mainstream debate. This is fascinating to me as a journalist, as a human being, that somehow or other, this is fenced off psychologically, emotionally, and put into a box called the environment. Asher, the Greens are looking after the environment, lovely bunch, harmless poor divils, but they're great, and they're looking after the environment, and we give them two or three percent. Asher, we give them a fifth preference. They're grand. Shall I know your man? Do you know that fella? He's grand. Bit soft, but they're grand, right? That's where environmentalism is in the politics of Ireland today. Real people, serious people, the grown-ups in the room, as we call them, have no interest in this discussion. For example, when we talk about, say, the changes that are happening in our ecological system right now, we all know about the 1.2 degree global average surface temperature. That, by the way, on the surface where people live, in other words, the land surface, is already 1.9 degrees on the land surface. Now, we know, of course, where 1.5 average takes us to 2. But I find often it's so difficult to translate that to people and say, well, that's nothing. Sure, it was 14 degrees this morning. It'll be 6 degrees tonight. What's the problem? So again, as a communicator, I try to simplify things, hopefully not too much, but enough. And to say, imagine your kid is sick and your kid is running a temperature of 38, 39, 40 degrees. That's just a couple of degrees off the baseline of 37. So what happens to your kid? You get them some paracetamol, you cool them down, and hopefully they recover. If you don't, if you can't, then they begin to go into organ failure because the core temperature, our own body's core temperature, for all the 7.8 billion humans on the planet, our core temperature is 37, give or take. Once you leave that, basically you're into a bad place. And the reason I use that analogy is that I'm sure you're all familiar with the nine planetary boundaries, this whole concept that's come out of the Stockholm Institute of Resilience. Now, six of those nine planetary boundaries have already been breached. Some of them very, very badly breached. Can we recover these? Who knows? The future is uncertain. But what we do know is, if again, as a communicator, I try to simplify this, this is the equivalent of multiple organ failure. And the problem, of course, as we know, is that you can be the healthiest corpse on the slab if your liver fails. Every other organ in your body may be absolutely flying, but it doesn't matter because that key organ takes all the other systems down with it. We're in a situation globally of multiple organ failure. The problem here is, anyone in this room who thinks that we're going to fix it, look around you, look at each other. We're the same people in the same rooms 10, 15, 20, 30 years later. And by the way, I defer to those long-suffering people who've been at this so much longer than I am. I don't know how you do it. I've only had this blight in my life for 20 years, right? And actually, I'm only 32. You wouldn't think this is what it does to you, right? But look, we can't look away. This is reality. This is what we face. We can't look away. And besides, everybody else is looking away. So we have no choice. Morally, we have to stare into the void. We have to look this thing right in the eye and say, what do we do? Because, as I said about that collapse thing, collapse is already happening in so many different parts of the world, it will continue. But we don't know at what pace. We don't know at what rate. But we do know, like a ripple in a pond, those waves are heading out. At the moment, people in countries far away, who we never hear, never in the news, and we don't really care about all that much, they're already getting washed away by the waves. But those waves are heading faster and faster in our direction. So the notion, the idea that somehow or other, we're going to ride this one out, I'm afraid that's not the case. I suppose I sometimes think of the analogy, if you remember the cartoon of the Road Runner. Remember the coyote in the Road Runner? Yeah, that the coyote invariably ran over the cliff, looked left, looked right, everything was fine, looked down, boom. But I would like to think we're not facing that kind of a cliff. Or even like the coyote, that we can fall, dust ourselves off and continue for the next cartoon. Because there's still absolutely everything to play for. That's the thing. But from my point of view, what's so frustrating is that we're still having, I'll pardon my French, bullshit conversations. The idea that we're somehow going to carry our existing civilization, our consumerist civilization into the future with us, as if that was even a good idea, by the way. I'm going to be doing something later on about Halloween, right? About Halloween has become the new Christmas. It's now become this gigantic festival of one single-use waste. And this is happening, by the way, in the teeth of an ecological emergency. Parents are musing their young kids. And these are parents who you would imagine would have such a strong connection to what's coming down the line. And the question I suppose that leaves me gasping is, how did we end up so completely detached and disconnected from it? And I suppose I remember going to a lecture in Belfast just before lockdown with George Mombio, who I'm sure most of you know very well. And he was describing the rise of neoliberalism. And he basically said that after the oil shocks in the 1970s, societies were displaced and shocked. And they were looking around for a new idea. And luckily, the Neocons have been working away on this for 30 years. And they basically said, here's an idea. And everybody went, oh, okay, we used to think this is completely nuts. But now that you mentioned it, you seem to have thought this out. So we're going to run with that idea. And essentially, that's what we've done for the last 40 years. We've taken neoliberal turbocharged capitalism and blasted ourselves off a cliff at the worst possible time. And the point that he was making when he said that is, those who in times of crisis have the best ideas, they win. We have to be prepared. There's a bunch of fascists out there right now called them eco fascists. I see them online all the time. They're rubbing their hands, by the way, in glee at ecological breakdown. They want to use it to amp up hatred, racism, xenophobia, close our borders, kick the foreigners out, all that kind of stuff that is coming. There is that narrative out there. And you will find a version of green that you really, really wouldn't recognize and certainly would be horrified to be associated with. But we're going to be hearing a lot about environmental fascism. So my point is, we need better ideas, much, much better ideas. Now, I think, by the way, in the document, I think we have some of those ideas. Absolutely. Where I was left struggling a little bit when I was reading that is, it reminds me again of that childhood tale of the troublesome cat, the old mice. And they were constantly being harried by the troublesome cat. So they got together and they came up with a plan. And the plan was when the cat was asleep, they were going to come out and pop a bell around its neck. Be brilliant. Until they decide, well, who is going to bell the cat. And that's where that particular plan ran into the ground. I'm still struggling. And I say this with the greatest of respect people in the room here. I want to know who's going to bell the cat. Who's going to get the alarm bell around the neck of the system that is dragging us over the edge. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Sean. So we now have three speakers who each can speak for quite briefly for about five minutes each, starting with Claire Downey from the Rediscovery Center based in Ballymun, which focuses on recycling sustainable fashion, education and research. And Claire is a researcher with a focus on reducing energy demand. She has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Queensland and used to work with the endeavor. Great. Thank you very much to Tommy Simpson and John Gormley for the invitation to speak. I'm very pleased to be here to represent the Rediscovery Center as the National Center for Circular Economy, also as a board member of Green Foundation Ireland, and to be part of the conversation about this really far-reaching report. So I'd like to make the connection quickly between the circular economy and reducing energy demand. And I think I'll start by illustrating it with an everyday product that we all have and use, or most of us have and use. If you start to take apart a mobile phone, as we saw Minister Ishim Smith take apart a disposable vape, interestingly on Twitter recently, you'll find 300 components and 85% of the stable elements of the periodic table. So there's an incredible amount of resources just in this really small piece of equipment. And those resources are extracted and processed and shipped and assembled and shipped again, probably, and assembled again somewhere and finally retailed before they reach us. So an average mobile phone costs around 80 kilos of carbon to produce. And there are 3.5 billion of them in use right now, excluding what we've already wasted. And that's just mobile phones, smartphones. It's not other types of phones. It's not your devices. It's not your IT equipment. When we start to think about one simple product, you can see very quickly how much goes into our products. And most of that is around energy. When we talk about carbon emissions, we think about transport emissions. We're transporting products. When we think about agriculture, we're making food. It's not a thing farmers do for the crack. It's an actual production system that leads to food that leads to food waste. And all of this adds up into our energy demand. And so the Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that around 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions are associated with the extraction and production of our goods. And around 90% of biodiversity loss as well is associated with this activity. So we absolutely need to talk about energy demand and reducing energy demand by reducing our consumption. And in Ireland, we have some statistics from Eurostat about what we're consuming here. And they are quite surprising. Our consumption footprint, which measures the impact of the goods that we use here that we import the energy imported through the products we use is the second highest in Europe. We know that we have extremely high textile consumption, where the fourth highest in Europe on that, depending on which figure you look to, we know that we have the highest production of plastic waste and the highest production of plastic packaging is placed on the market here in Ireland. We're not exactly sure why that is. Perhaps it's the type of statistics we're declaring, but I think it tells a story about our habits and our consumption patterns here that we absolutely need to address. There is obviously a lot behind all of this consumption. There's huge budgets behind marketing that's driving it. The linear economy is the economy at the moment that is still the most affordable, the most accessible, the most viable for business as business as usual. And we are locked into this system at the moment. We know there are lots of other benefits to circular economy, not just environmental, of course. There's community resilience. We saw that through the pandemic. There's skills, there's jobs and well-being. So we need to make a shift urgently to this more circular economy and keep our products in circulation and reduce demand for new products where the energy inputs are. We have seen a lot of change in Ireland recently. We've seen huge shift in policy. We have a new minister for circular economy. That was good timing. And a new circular economy unit, two dedicated units in the department, as well as a new strategy, a new program. And soon we'll also see a new national waste management plan for circular economy. So we have seen great momentum there and now we just need to see that policy put into practice. We need to see how we can build on the vision to lead Europe in the circular economy. We need to see real focus on these prevention, the reduction piece on reuse and repair, on the targets that we hope to see come through for reuse. And we need to see all the different ways we can make it as easy, as accessible, and as affordable and viable to be more circular. One area I just wanted to mention in particular that we're very involved in at the Rediscovery Center is in communications and behavioral change. And I know communications is only a small part of the picture, but we do think it's really important. We have done a survey recently that found only 25% of people understand the term circular economy. I know there was a discussion earlier about language and use of language, and we absolutely need to see how do we describe this better and communicate it better. And also, how do we engage citizens in this journey? How do we do more? For example, participatory decision making, which I know is in the report as well. And we've done a little bit of work in that area recently with the food waste roadmap, trying to involve people in how we design our policies and how it impacts them. So I think I suppose in terms of the recommendations in the report, I thought it was really interesting that the same recommendations applicable very much to energy transport, energy consumption also very much applied to circular economies. So how do we avoid excess consumption? That's the very basic principle of circular economy. How do we repurpose and share and keep our goods and circulation for as long as possible? And how do we supplement existing products with better design products that will last for longer, that can be repaired? And I think all of those, as I said, absolutely align with the circular economy principles. So those are my reflections on the report, and I hope that helps to stimulate some further discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much, Claire. Our next speaker is Davy Philip from Cotovate. Davy currently manages the Community Resilience Programme that developed out of the Community Power Down Programme in 2010. He was a founding member of FASTA and of Sustainable Projects Ireland, limited the company behind the Eco Village in Clark Jordan. In 2000, he set up the Sustainable Ireland Cooperative with Ben Whelan, which trades as Cultivate. And with Cultivate, he organizes networking and learning events, including the annual Convergence Sustainable Living Festival and the Global Green Area of the Electric Picnic Ireland's largest music and cultural festival, amongst other things. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, everyone. So I'm switching position now from my usual role of facilitator to maybe just sharing some reflections and insights from the work that I've been doing. I really want to highlight two projects that I did in this energy, what we call the Climate Emergency Economy Project. The GEF has been running. So with Green Foundation Ireland, I did two processes that led to context papers. This one on a question of scale, which was really about imagining a cooperative, a community-led approach to regional resilience, to local resilience. How do we cope in our local places with these cascades that, as John says, we're not going to fix. We're going to have to learn to live with many times. So we explored old ideas like the commons and cooperatives. We've got a rich tradition of cooperatives in this country, mostly still sort of focused on agriculture with creameries and marts. But people like Plunkett and A.Russell, when they were going to run the country, the principles of coming together, the Plunkett Foundation in the UK have taken this much further now with energy co-ops, community ownership, community-owned pubs, community-owned shops. There's a lot going on there that I think can help us reduce our demand, but also increase our resilience. I'm always cautious when we hear that our big challenge is emissions reduction, where, really, we need to rethink a lot of things that we do that sustains us. The process brought together a number of people that contribute to these papers. And then we continued last year with food sovereignty, local resilience, and climate action, taking the same approach. How do citizens engage in this? How do we come together as communities and local places and really put in place the things that will help sustain us, but also help us reduce our emissions, our energy reduction? At the heart of a lot of this, and we've heard a lot about degrowth today, I was mentioned there that I was involved with FASTA, still I'm involved not as much now, but many of you will fondly remember Richard Douthway, who passed away 12, 13 years ago now. But over 25 years ago, he wrote The Growth Illusion, and many of us were informed by that. Richard also with FASTA brought over Herman Daley and other ecological economists that really informed Kate Rayworth's work that's been mentioned here. And it's so important that work now that gives us that common framework to understand, as Orla said, this ecological ceiling or the thresholds that the Stockholm Resilience Center have identified that we cannot afford to cross, we can't afford to overshoot, but at the same time building this social foundation or social floor where we can meet everyone's needs. So I think there's new frameworks that we introduce here in this paper that are becoming more important in thinking about how we move towards a well-being economy, if you like. And with FASTA recently, I was involved in setting up the Well-Being Economy Alliance. These are hubs all over the world now that are really looking at how do we inquire into what the proper function of the economy is, and not right now as we see that we are society and the environment in service of the economy and market. How do we turn that around and ensure that the economy is acting in service of society and the protection and regeneration of our ecosystems. So I think there's a lot there that the well-being economy, I think, can sometimes be a healthier frame than degrowth, which says what we don't want. But what do we do? What do we want? And one of the projects, the well-being economy, all Ireland has, has the Dairy Playhouse, is really starting to look at what we need a new ecological social imaginary. How do we imagine what good living is, what the economy is, what a well-being economy might be? And so we're starting a project that's just been funded by Carnegie UK to really employ the power of the artists, the creatives, to help us imagine what this is, to lead social dialogue and new social imaginaries that may help us be clear on what is good living? What are we aiming at? Because right now I think we're floundering around a lot. The core of this is a worldview shift. It's a shift in the way we're thinking, not the reductionist way that we've been educated and cultured into thinking. We'll break it into parts. We're starting to see systemically or an ecological worldview where we see relationships and connections. And I think that's at the heart of the principles of cooperatives, collaboration, connections, mutual aid, self-help coming together. And we're going to need these ideas, ideas like the commons, new cooperatives, platform cooperatives, new ideas of ownership, new ways to engage society in exploring what this economy is for and how do we get there? So I just wanted to introduce that as a way to still the conversation. Thanks. Thank you very much, David. So the last speaker in this session, demanding the circular economy, is Rosalind Skillen. Rosalind joined Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful in February of this year, having studied French and Spanish in Cambridge. She seeks to demonstrate how communication, creativity and storytelling can help address the climate crisis. She campaigns with various charities and businesses in Northern Ireland to advocate for strong environmental policy and to promote climate action. And she communicates on environmental and social issues in her weekly column in the Belfast Telegraph. Thank you, Rosalind. Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me today. Thank you, John. And I'm just going to offer a few reflections on these two things that kind of came through, so reality and opportunity. And I think today we've talked a lot about reality and for a lot of people here, it was really refreshing to see that it was really striking in some ways this idea of disrupting the status quo and we don't hear a lot about that. So when I was reading the report, the report, I was really encouraged by that and this idea that we cannot continue with cultural addiction to consumerism. And I feel like a lot of people have already said this just elevates the conversation and takes us to kind of a new realm of understanding. Like it's going to mean a lot less driving, a lot less flying, lower meat and dairy consumption, more walking and cycling. And in some ways for people who are maybe less familiar with climate, that's a really hard pill to swallow, I think. And that's where the second part of the report for me was so helpful in the sense of opportunity. So trying to move away from this green austerity narrative, which environmentalists are sometimes guilty of in terms of what we have to give up and what we have to lose in this new sustainable future. And instead asking the question about what we have to gain. And I think that's so valuable because the transition to sustainable future is going to entail so many different ways of living. But in my view, this is going to be a better quality of life for most people. It's going to mean clean air, improved health and well-being, enhanced connection to the world around us and to each other. And a more democratised localised production of food and energy, for example. So I think in so many ways, as a lot of people have already mentioned, including Peter earlier, the report challenges us to use values in order to engage different audiences about how to transform this reality into the realm of opportunity and to make the hard pill to swallow in some ways easier to hear, to say, to understand. And a lot of the work that I do, I work with loads of different groups. And I've learned quite a lot about how to change your communication style. I knew Joe was talking about that earlier. But for example, for the environmental charter I work for in community gardens, the people are not there to increase biodiversity or reduced carbon. A lot of them are there because they're really lonely because they've got per levels of mental health and well-being. So a lot of the time we're promoting community gardens and climate action then through the lens of health and well-being or maybe social inclusion or cohesion. And then if I'm talking to a faith group, you're trying to tailor the message, not necessarily to do with the climate science, but more with the values and principles of justice and compassion, talking about stewardship and creation care. And then maybe if you're talking to a business it's about green jobs and the fact that more young people are interested in ASG, environmental, social governance. And I think the report highlights as well the nexus between health and climate, which I think is really interesting. It talks about even the richest people can't say that they don't care about health. And when I was at the climate strike in Dublin a few weeks ago, I found it really interesting that the Irish doctors for the environment were there and they were talking about how the climate crisis is going to impact people's health. No one wants to breathe in dirty air. So again I think there's just so many different lenses through which we can land this message that are really effective. But I think the big challenge for environmentalists and for people in this room is relating the environment to everyday concerns, so like jobs, skills, food in a way that engages more people and it shows us that tackling the climate crisis and tackling inequality aren't mutually exclusive. So it's this challenge in a way to mainstream environmental concerns. And I think when we frame the climate crisis in terms of people's values we start to explore the more emotional aspects of what moves people to take action. So in many ways like the head, the heart and the hands. So the logical out-workings of why we need to take action, the science behind it, that's the head, the heart landing the message more effectively in terms of values like adhering to what they hold in terms of their value systems and their beliefs and then that mobilizes the hands that enables people to take action. So the head, the heart and the hands are so so important. And I just want to conclude by saying what this report makes so obvious and it was highlighted this morning is that all of this is a political choice and I feel like so often it feels like this is happening to us and we don't have a sense of agency but it's really important to remember that none of this is inevitable and it's a result of private interests being privileged over public interest and symptomatic of high vested interests are so so embedded into our political systems and I know we talked about the aviation industry and the fossil fuel industry who like both of which have a really long history of shaping government policy to suit their interests but we need to remember that insufficient solutions to climate change are not solutions and the gap not only as the report highlights between reality and opportunity but between reality and ambition are both getting larger and I think that we can no longer afford to see climate change as a 2030 or a 2050 problem as people highlighted this morning Ireland was the second country in the world to declare a state of emergency in 2019 about the climate crisis and I'm sure a lot of people are asking how their lives have changed in any significant meaningful way it doesn't feel like we're living in a state of emergency so I guess to close I think we really need to respond to the climate and nature crises as our four lives depended on it because they do thank you very much Rasmus so we're now going to have a panel discussion I'm not quite sure what the logistics of this are but David might help me there but with the with the last speakers for 15 minutes I think there's some sort of elevated status to John in this and this process but I was proposing so I think maybe if everyone comes up here is that these is yeah because we've got this uh online participation and there's people from all over Europe engaged in this uh the panel is going to have to be here we don't have a seat so if John Givens and and Claire and Roche want to join us up here and we've only got 10 minutes before we have to introduce the minister so I don't know is there something so I just thought I'd um just put a little bit of structure on it so I did um draft for potential questions that might be helpful given this limited time um so I suppose I was thinking maybe that what's the simple message from the greenhouse framing document and about demand management and the circular economy then how do you communicate it and are we availing of current crises um properly and maybe it's traditional to look for measures about implementation of an agenda like this are the ways that we could be pushing this with the greens and the greens are in government at the moment so I suppose the simple thing the first thing maybe is if we just talk about messages that come from today or from the documentation that is guided today I think John is our leader yep I um I guess to come back to some of the things that that uh we have been touched on over the last couple of hours um we're not where we want to be in this uh we would like to be 20 years maybe 30 years back starting off to manage an off ramp uh to to get to where we need to be unfortunately we we we wasted all that time so we now find ourselves in a in a in a crash scenario and I think so much of the work that's going to have to be done um is for for my for my mind is about preparing people for uh what's coming and as I think I used the analogy earlier about the future happening at in it is here already it's happening at different paces and different rates in different parts of the world so I kind of you know that thing on an aircraft and I'm sure nobody in this room flies but think back to when you used to fly uh they had this sign that said you know in the event of an emergency put your own mask on first right so that you can help others I kind of see the people in this room and maybe hopefully rooms like this as being like that we're kind of getting our own mask on we're protecting ourselves we're we're girding our loins to be able to help other people through the very very difficult times ahead John can I ask how in particular you would suggest communicating messages about demand management and the circular economy particularly because they don't exactly swing off the tongue and they're not entertaining popular sure well I was listening to Morning Ireland this morning as I'm sure many of you were and I was listening to the weather forecast and the weather forecast is sponsored on our national broadcaster two and a half years after the declaration of a national climate emergency by a company that sells oil fired boilers right now you tell me exactly again Michael how we're supposed to communicate the climate emergency right this is cognitive dissonance folks right for every one crumb of messaging they hear from outliers like me there is a avalanche of buy more do more fly more now that's what we're up against and that's why I say put your mask on first can I build on that just can I build on that just what you said there John about the weather what an opportunity with the weather forecast for us to say well look at the potential for solar look at the potential for wind today or that we've made this much because the wind was that way so just as a as a thing to really connect and I suppose things like circular economy are difficult to conceive if we're still thinking linearly if we're just thinking they take make waste the sort of a linear economy a debt based a growth based it's difficult to imagine circular economies and resilience and sustainability and still we start thinking ecologically so I think the narrative aspect of the report and what we've heard from the other speakers is so important that we've got to shift the world view shift the narrative into thinking systemically even the sustainable development goals quite flat 17 platitudes we've had all our life but when you see the work the Stockholm resilience have done to look at it in nested systems where you've got four goals for the ecosystem you've got four goals for the society the eight goals for society that's nested in that ecosystem and nested within society is the economy with four goals then we start to see the function of the economy in service of society environment not as we currently have it that we are in service of the market and the economy and what do speakers think about the virtues of telling the unvarnished truth or do we need to pull our punches on these things not to scare the horses Rosalind yeah no I think it's really important I think it's really difficult to frame your message sometimes and I think it just really depends on reading your audience that's what I always come back to because I think that's who you're speaking to really depends how you tailor your audience and especially in terms of making language more accessible because I think a lot of the climate movement and a lot of the vocabulary that people use is like acronyms abbreviations and even words like carbon and net zero I don't think people realize how far they need to break it down like how do you visualize tons of carbon and like again that's where the creative and cultural sector comes in being able to communicate that message more effectively but I guess there's a real communications and education piece when it comes to a lot of the language that we mainstream in rooms like this but actually aren't obvious to people and I think that helps to break it down a lot more. Yeah absolutely agree Ruth Rosalind that it's about framing and thinking about the audience and what they want to hear I suppose and yeah we're just completely forgot my point sorry. I remember in my time you weren't allowed to criticize on capitalism and at the moment you get into trouble if you suggest car sharing and it's perceived that you can't speak the truth about food because of the rural lobby and John would have a real experience of that so how do you deal with that? With difficulty it was mentioned in the report the vested interests have the seat at the table they're the ghost at every banquet in Ireland every time you hear somebody in authority somebody some politician speaking you're also in many cases you're hearing a reflection of the people who have the best and closest access to them present company excluded of course I should but it's a serious point the lobbyists have undue influence on all our public life in Ireland and we know that it's so obvious and I know you're what you set me up for there Michael thank you like we have an agricultural lobby that is almost untouchable in this country that is driving our emissions and our water pollution our air pollution all our measures going in exactly the opposite direction effectively scoppering any chance of us meeting our 2030 goals they're gone because of the power of one lobby to basically torpedo a meaningful public discussion on this and to turn it into a culture war where when you want to address scientific reality it becomes you're attacking us and this we've seen this played out in the US if you like in a more extreme way but where people won't engage with reality instead want to turn it into something about wokeness and all that other nonsense so that's the challenge right just came back to me there and a little bit building on what John just said I suppose in terms of communications obviously we need to be making these messages clearer and more understandable but also need to make the solutions more accessible to people so it's all very well to say you need to be you know always bringing your refilling a coffee cup where you need to always be buying second hand or you need to always be doing you know repair but how accessible and how easy is that and how affordable is it so in terms of this disconnect between where we want to be which is very much highlighted in this report and the big system change that we need to go through to get there I think that's the big challenge can I just a touch that I think just building on what Claire's saying there that we need to illuminate these responses in these solutions we don't see enough of the stories of the community actions and the things that people are are doing I often working with communities talk about housing co-ops food co-ops energy co-ops car clubs and and these things people I don't know much about that but it sounds interesting and I think to give people a sense of hope and something they can engage in these are the stories that we need to tell us Claire saying I was always in favor of telling the the truth I guess as unvarnished as possible because it leaves the best legacy for the next generation of environmental people rather than pulling your punches so they have to deal with issues that haven't maybe been as resolved as they might have been just does anyone have any ideas about how we might avail of some of the crises that are ruining all of our lives at the moment to to make progress particularly on energy I suppose I've not much to say but never like a good crisis go waste I think there's an opportunity here to build momentum for new ideas for new ways of thinking just again on the same vein I'm sure you've all seen this famous cartoon and it's it's one of these eco conferences and the guy Dan doing the presentation has you know clean air healthier children clean water etc and the cynic up the back says yeah yeah what what if it's a hoax and we build a better world for nothing back to me really strikes right to the core of this almost everything that we can do to address the ecological crisis actually improves our lives it may not increase our consumption it may not mean that we get to fly as much as we like but by by every indication of human welfare and wider ecological welfare all the changes that those disruptive greens are threatening will actually lead to a better world and we really need to keep that in mind because the the narrative of doom present company included we need to be super careful to remember that under that narrative is the possibility if we don't screw this up of a better world on the other side a different world but maybe a better world okay I'm afraid I'm under under pressure to wrap up this session so thank you very much to all of our speakers thank you and the next session is the circular economy and demand reduction and a keynote speeches from usheen smith who is a green party politician who served as minister of state since july 2020 he's been a td for dun leary since 2020 he was appointed minister of state of the department of public expenditure and reform with responsibility for public procurement and e-government and minister of state at the department of the environment with responsibility for the for communications and which of course is most important for us here today the circular economy thank you ashen okay hello everybody thank you very much michael and nice to see so many familiar faces the circular economy there's a problem with it problem with the the naming I suppose the branding because it's too abstract ideas as you know that something being circular which is too many syllables to get across and being an economy and I think it really helps if you can quickly to the examples of what it really means in in the real world so it circular economy means that instead of going to a cheap shop to buy to buy clothing that you're going to the charity shop and that when you get shoes in the charity shop and they wear out that instead of buying new ones made in a sweatshop on the other side of the world that you go around to your local shoemaker and you get them fixed and then you get your clothes altered and that you get your bike fixed and that everything is that you try to renovate and that you reach for an idea that there is that one of the pleasures of of get things and looking after things and buying things can doesn't have to be about brand something being brand new it doesn't have to be about unboxing and it doesn't have to be about taking home a whole of goods out of new new bags with brands with the name of the shop that you can also have an immense pleasure from taking your old goods and fixing them up the ones that have that have that have worn in to fit you and that have some heritage and some emotional connection for you or that you've got it from your family and now you're giving it a new lease of life and that that can be a way that you can that you can signal to other people your your your your taste and your eclecticism rather than appearing and saying look I've got something brand new from that from that brand so I think there is a cultural challenge to shift people's shift people's idea of what it means to to provide for themselves and their family in a way which is which is which is not wasteful so I think we're kind of pushing an open door here for a long time there was a general consensus that our our prosperity and our wealth in the world were about the success of capitalism and that what we had to do was we had to consume as much as possible you need to remember George Bush telling people that we to avoid the recession we all had to go shopping and there was an idea that if anybody like Michael or me said hold on a second maybe GDP is not a good measure of wealth that you are a crazy hippie and that you should be shunned for your silly ideas and then eventually the whole the whole edifice of GDP sort of collapsed and you know what I remember you know there was this idea every quarter well GDP's gone up half percent we're half percent better or it's gone down half percent we should be worried and then one day I think our GDP went up 25 percent and the CSO and everybody had to say oh this this this is all rubbish isn't this and it doesn't actually it doesn't it doesn't work at all and we've got to find another way of measuring whether we're prosperous and that that this idea that we can measure our prosperity based on how fast we are consuming our finite resources is a stupid idea and that that is it it doesn't make sense to say the faster you eat the food in your cupboards in your kitchen the the the richer your family is that that's that's just not true so we've won the kind we've won that kind of argument and there's a general consensus from people that consumerism is not the root to happiness that if you have two of something you're not twice as happy as you were that when you when you had one it's in fact it's more rubbish to look after and even that even Ikea eventually said that we'd reach peak stuff and everybody knows you know stuff isn't stuff is not going to make you not going to make you happy and so we're we're there in the abstract but we're obviously not there at the individual level and still still it's very hard to get past you know to to make those individual changes and say okay I accept that I shouldn't that buying a lot of stuff isn't going to make me happy but I'm you know I'm still doing it I'm still borrowing money to buy stuff so so we're at that point we're at the point where the general idea is agreed and the goals but we've got to do the we've got to do the action plan how do we persuade people for this circular economy stuff so and I see this in the report you know when you're trying to persuade people about things you've got different groups of people and you need to address their values so it's easy for me I suppose it's with a group of people who are young and progressive you might speak to them about circular economy in terms of the environment and the future and time and action but maybe with a with a more conservative group of people you might be appealing to the values of their parents and grandparents and using that approach that went throughout the circular economy and bill to the Doyle I was able to get people from every party including the rural independence who generally will oppose anything that I do even if the even if the opposition are on side but it got them to agree to it because they said oh yeah that's the way things used to happen where we used to get our shoes fixed and whatever else so so so being able to appeal to that those values meant to get meant that we got a very broad consensus and so on an individual basis though and when we're looking at the getting people to agree to projects in their local area and there is a real there is real problem it's really heartbreaking when you're trying to get things done in your area and people are coming up and opposing them so if you can think of something as simple as closing off the street outside the local school during school start the start of the school day and the of the school pick up in the drop off so you just say well why can we close the hundred yards from under the school and I guess the problem that we're having is that we put out an idea and we say let's have a public consultation about it and then people start to imagine all kinds of terrible things in the future and they discuss it for years and sometimes literally two years three years of discussion about something that you just really wanted to try for a few months so I think we what we really need to do is move towards a different emergency governance to you know to take it into account that we're that this is an emergency and there's a climate crisis and that we say look if we're going to try something out like close the road in front of the school we should just do it and we'll just announce it that we're going to do it next week and we'll try it out for we'll try it out for six months and then we'll put it back the way it was and then you can have your consultation so we're consulting about something that we tried not something that we're imagining for the future because what I found is that in my local area when I surveyed people and like a professional firm to survey us they were actually very very much in favor of a lot of the projects I was trying to do but the people who were against the projects had louder voices they were more intense they were more on social media and they gave the impression and also to the broadcast media that they were a majority so I have a kind of a silent majority supporting and I have a minority who are kind of acting in a tyrannical way so that's that's my that's my challenge to get past that and so I want to move towards thinking about what's emergency governance which is covered in this I think something where we can we can do something and have the have the consultation afterwards a couple of things happening in Europe that are encouraging one is the idea of durability ratings so you go to buy a washing machine and you see an array of machines and you're picking based on brand or you're picking based on super features that it's going to wash using AI or whatever and really you're not really making an informed choice and you don't know whether the product is going to last a long time or whether it's got built-in obsolescence so one of the ideas from the EU is that they are going to have an independent body testing all the consumer equipment and giving it a rating for how many years it's going to last so you go in and you see this washing machine lasts for five years this one lasts for 10 years and now as a consumer you can make so I shouldn't say the word consumer as a citizen you can you can make an informed choice as this is this is that I'm going to buy this one which lasts twice which lasts twice as long and you know when I discuss that with business people one of them said well what if I own a washing machine factory and I only get to sell half as many washing machines as I did before and that's the vested interest angle is you know this thing you're trying to bring in it's going to it's going to lower it's going to lower my business or businesses overall but of course it creates a new opportunity which is the opportunity for the whole business of renovation and repair and a lot of that work is local rather than being globalized we're also kind of got a fair wind on the whole globalization thing because globalization is obviously falling apart thank you very much Donald Trump for imposing trade tariffs on loads of different countries all at the same time which made companies say okay we've got to put our own factories in each continent then the pandemic just destroying trade lines in China and everything else and now the war in Ukraine and really we got to a point where if you just can't rely on very or it looks like that the business world can't rely on fragile complex long-distance supply chains and they're thinking we've got to make things more locally and create things locally so this is a challenge to the whole idea of globalization I think is really starting to shatter and I think that so what's going to happen instead I think is a lot more local stuff a lot more services a lot more fixing things in your local area and a lot less waiting for a container of stuff to arrive from the other side of the world how are we doing on circularity in Ireland really badly so I think we're second last in Ireland in Europe on your stock circularity index I don't say that very much but we are and when I look to the details of it because we don't mind we don't really have much minds we have like tar or something but what we do is we scrape a lot of aggregate and we take you know we we scrape off drumlands and until recently of course we were stripping the bogs and everything but we strip we so our construction industry involves a lot of a lot more raw materials than in other countries in Europe even on a comparative basis we ship all our waste or most of our waste although it gets sorted here most of it ends up being sent abroad a lot of burnt abroad and and so you know we we have a lot we've a long way to go I've put in the law that we need to reach above European average in eight years time and when I look at what the big bits are to do it's not coffee cups that's the bit that you know obviously that the media we're interested in but the biggest one is construction so if we're going to build loads and loads of houses for people are we going to build them in a green way are we going to renovate the existing stock are we going to are we going to have low and body carbon are we going to reuse materials when we knock down old things are we are we taking all the rubble and throwing it in a field or are we recycling concrete and so on so that's going that's that's the largest opportunity area is construction and development for improving our our circularity those little things like coffee cups and vapes they're things that people can relate to and I suppose you know they do on their own each one of them is so tiny you know plastic bags whatever but it is worth doing each one of them because they are something that you can you can relate to in your own life and people do want to have a sense of a sense that they have a role in all this and that they have some kind of control I'm very heartened by what I saw in California where when they were reaching their electricity network looked like it was reaching peak and that they that they might have blackouts and they sent texts out to people and said in your area we might we might be reaching a blackout can you find things to turn off around your house and the response was phenomenal and I think you know you see a huge drop very quickly but and you could see that people then felt that they had managed to avert a problem that they had some agency in it that they were given the information and also the message was sent to everybody whether you're a child or an elderly person and everybody can can kind of have an act in that because everybody can look around and turn something off or do something so I'm looking at how we can do that here as well so there you go that's my unprepared words on this and if you ever want to talk to me about circular economy and you have ideas about how it should be running better and I love to hear them because mostly everything that I've ever done is any good it's always been a suggestion from someone else so thank you very much thank you very much for being so we now have a 20 minute question and answer session I'm not quite sure how we're going to well you did it earlier we have a challenge where anyone who wants to make and at this stage probably not a question would be good a response or an insight a reflection would be useful the questions there's a number of questions that came in online but the physical persons have to come up here and okay so again an invitation if you'd like to make a reflection or an insight if you want to come up we've only 10 minutes for this then we're passing on to Saif for a final final reflection no but last 15 seconds anyone so let's start with the green jumper just as you're coming up we'll just read some from the online participants Paul Leach Rosalind is right on the head heart and hands leaping into action at all stations to the flourishing positive motivation countering the pushers of addictive consumerist behavior in late stage metastasized capitalism on our public service broadcasting is no easy challenge has to be called out Paul Leach you're very well thanks very much to all the speakers today it's been really interesting and you know I was speaking to the gentleman I was sitting beside saying you know it's great to be in a room where people agree with you and then you go outside into the real world and most people are complacent or they're ignorant of of what's ahead of us so I just in relation to what the minister had to say in relation to the circular economy I think an important part of that jigsaw is universal basic income because part of the difficulty is with our money system in order to get access to money people have to get a job often they're bullshit jobs and people are doing really important work they don't actually get any money for it so rearing children being at home as a carer all of these jobs that actually don't attract money and are a problem and then we have jobs that do attract money like you know excessive and chief executive pay and stuff like that so just in relation to the money system I don't know if anyone has any comments in relation to how we can look at progressing the idea that actually people should be actually getting a certain amount of money because in order to exist in the society the circular economy won't work if they can't get access to money thank you thank you obviously universal basic income the experiments with artists that Catherine Martin has in place so it shows the potential of that and again Richard Douthway his other book was called a short circuit which was all about a local exchange trading systems and ways that we might and move forward this session as well we can have questions for the minister as well here if there is any and two here three here let's be as concise as we can because we've only yeah looking at the minister right now so I had a question for him as well the government has allowed basically to for certain companies to invest actively on fossil fuels and also the government is also provided a substance to to the fossil fuel industry so in what sense you know the government is you know willing to start you know looking at banks watch your phones that are making the money of the life you know with the with the work that's happening right now and Ireland being one of the countries that attracts you know high tech companies and all these investment companies is amazed to me then the government is just so soft and how they deal with these corporations that are basically you know killing our environment is killing us all of us I will treat them like the Russian of you know invading Ukraine so they are inviting invading our environment as well and they should be punished I'm not entirely sure what you're saying like I know that corporations can they're they are naturally psychopathic they they're very much focused on making money and if you let them they will just they will just keep going and eat everything and destroy everything until they can get to to the other side there so that that's what that's what it is and unless they're regulated and unless you control them in some way then then you know that that's what they do they're they're sort of machines for making money and if they can externalize their costs in some way and put all their pollution in the river and put it in put it in the sea they really can and I suppose for a long time in Ireland there was a view that we had to let companies we could give them we could let them do whatever they wanted if they're going to make jobs because the greatest thing we could ever have in poor country was it that we we could have jobs in particularly foreign jobs and foreign money and we bring that in and if you complained about the river you know you were an enemy of the people really and so so now we're we're at a position where um it where there's a lot more material wealth and that people care more about protecting the environment and I think that there needs to be very strict regulation of companies and that's what that's what everybody wants to see so I I would agree okay and we'll have Karin and here so Karin Dubskie if you want to come up and there's just I'll maybe read another one from the online participants there's quite a number of online participants today and thank you for engaging and asking some questions. Caroline White from FASTA oh hi thanks for this very interesting event I'd echo Davies point earlier about the powerful role of narratives and on the well-being economy being a useful term because it focuses on what we want in the future de-growth and post-growth are useful concepts too but their means rather than ends also well it's true that a lot of people recognize now that we've reached peak stuff governments generally haven't you might sometimes hear them say nice things about other values being important besides growth but you'll never hear them say that growth is unnecessary there's a structural reason why governments are still so fixated on economic growth they're afraid they'll be unable to sustain their debts if their economies don't grow and that this will scare investors off leading to currency collapse and bank runs it's entirely possible to bell this particular cat it's been done before but we need to recognize the cat is there first to reference you Karen Dobsky thank you very much and really inspiring but just something very small concrete which I'd love to see if the minister would invite RTE to a meeting with the thoughts which are here on how to actually what is their role why have we got so much on sports and so little on environment why when I have had something they say but we dealt with environment two days ago environment should be there every single day like the weather forecast is there every single day so an invitation to RTE to review their terms of reference the space given to environment and climate in this time of emergency would be just wonderful and then maybe just one other thing we need a product impact assessment yesterday I met a new water pistol on the shore but I didn't recognize it because it was made of three different types of plastic and didn't even look like a pistol I met it again in a shop today and it costs three euro it's new he said the kids will love it this is crazy so either a tax or a ban because people don't like bans maybe a good tax thank you do you want to come up again and I know pardon yeah come on up I'll just read one out to Sean from Sean O'Farrell come on up though well I'm gonna know Sean O'Farrell says will we see the re-establishment of a platform such as Smile the resource exchange a national industrial symbiosis program providing a platform for organizations to identify synergies with an unwanted resource waste in modern organization can be utilized at a resource in another I don't know if it's a direct question to you minister but I think that idea of industrial symbiosis again is systemic thinking is circular thinking and definitely waste equals food you know so there's no waste in nature we could design an economy to reflect the way nature works okay this has been a very inspiring meeting I must say I just want to make three quick points having agreed with almost everything else has been said the first one is that we always talk about the minimum wage the universal basic income I think there should be a maximum wage because we live in plutocracies where the rich rule the billionaires get to decide what happens not the people so redistribution and maximum incomes my first point the second point is GBH which for some reason didn't come up which is the gross um gross happiness indicator as opposed to GNP, GNH gross national happiness it was set up by the king of Bhutan in 1970s and they've got now something like 33 indicators that could be integrated with well-being because well-being would obviously be you know an overall thing which happiness is a big part of and the third point is when I so heard about the rediscovery center in Belly Munn I immediately looked it up and thought fantastic I have every furniture in my house every piece could be sent and then I looked it up and said not accepting donations and not redoing your furniture right now now that to me is a great useful business opportunity if anybody knows anyone who's already doing that let me know and I think it's something that would be a very useful addition to the economy and then the economy could be a useful addition to life thank you. Thank you so just checking again anyone in the room want to make a final reflection Michelle Eric or Brendon and Michelle let's be as brief as we can. So minister I want to ask you I want to talk about the kind of communications gap that I feel exists between our government and citizens in this country about the the need speaking to the heart of people you know about our children's future whatever audio whatever message you message for different audiences it seems to be completely lacking you know I mean I see ads for how to sort of go around around about whatever on our national broadcaster but there's nothing there that's speaking to people's hearts saying this is really how bad it is this is what you have to do you know speaking to people on an emotional level we have all the head stuff that's everywhere so as well as speaking to the national broadcaster in terms of their remit on the environment why is our government why are we not speaking to people that's the gap you know we're all here great we're all in a bubble you know everyone I work with everyone I know don't really care their hearts are engaged and until we do that we'll all just remain in a bubble talking. Thanks Michelle. Eric we'll take you winning hearts and minds definitely essential what we do Eric if we can be as concise. The one-use cup since COVID it's just unbelievable it's taken off the amount of one-use cups I see is just incredible people just don't seem to understand people now hold that which call it um compatible I think they're doing the right thing but that has to go in a brown bin but still actually one-use use of the earth's resources so as the minister we need to have a cafe latte levy can't come in quick enough and the positive return scheme for bottles needs to come in very quickly that's certainly a circular economy I think that we need to go for thanks. Thank you very much everyone Eileen McDermott Green Foundation Ireland and I just want to highlight that the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment are currently looking for submissions on the proposals for a new subject at leaving third level at this late stage and it's called climate action and sustainable development and I would urge everyone here who can who is part of an organization or is an individual to make a submission on this important subject and it has been mentioned in this excellent paper also thank you. We're just checking again so Phil and then Gavin. Three foot no two that has been a fantastic seminar subject that wasn't mentioned civil disobedience non-violence direct action it's interesting that it didn't get referred to at all and it occurred to me it's a there are people in this room who take part in that kind of action but didn't mention so it occurred to me that if we really want to under the circumstances of urgency that we now face we're going to have to take those kind of actions and half the group in this room were to occupy either RTE or the offices of a fossil fuel company we could very dramatically change things but it will take that kind of action and we will have to be prepared to take the consequences. Just one point around the circular economy that I think we really need to be cognizant of is a whole issue of status I think that as a species status is a huge motivator for behavior and it's clear that you know a high status lifestyle is an attractive lifestyle and I think you know just classic cultural messages love island you know nobody wants to go to love English man it's it's about it's about how we actually frame this in a way that people who are status motivated can actually receive status by engaging in such things as circular economy because unless there's something in it for people who are motivated by that kind of worldview I think we will continue to preach to a certain type of people who are looking for the kind of stuff we're talking about which is more ethically motivated perhaps or that has a personal growth aspect to it which doesn't satisfy somebody who wants you know a high-speed performance motor car or SUVs which are still outselling electric vehicles so I think that's an important part to consider. Nula Herron is going to make a statement and I'm just checking if there's any please put up link to the front okay sorry I'll leave that Nula. Just to say that when I was first elected to Wicklow County Council as a Green in the early 90s and I tried to initiate a conversation about waste I was soon responsible for all the unemployment in the state since 1922 according according to my political colleagues so we I would say don't say should ever I would say how certainly why and how please let us not let your people who still feel they need basic stuff because there are a lot of people out there who do feel that and who deserve to have electricity etc done in a different way but in a way that is sustainable so that those are also part of our world those people so we mustn't just be talking to Europeans even just northern Europeans let me say but there is a lot that we can do and I just like to ask the minister do we have a role for 3d printing in the circular economy because I got very excited a few years ago about that and its potential for local use and I'd like to hear what you think thank you thank you Nula the the the role for 3d printing I think is in parts you know parts that you can't get anymore and there is this is now one of the EU rules is that you is that manufacturers have to provide parts I don't know if that needs to be strengthened but you know you're missing some little piece of plastic in your whole machine or your car whatever is is is obsolete so I think that's the role for 3d printing and so thank you and I'm going to pass back to Michael and for a bit of a close to this session and then we'll have our final reflections thank you very much everybody for their contributions I'm just going to synopsis infused with my own prejudices so from from from the from the document and some of the discussion and some of the questions etc so just very quickly I'm going to race through I think 10 important principles that we're beginning to learn first is the power of one isn't enough we have to change the structures and we have to change the government and we have to somehow work out how to deal with vested interests and second point is that the precautionary approach is important and that suggests that we rethink demand rather than gamble on future technologies as our way out of all of this the third point is we need to change indicators away from GDP to quality of life and sustainability and we need to monitor those indicators very stringently and in particular it looks for example like we're way off with our with our carbon emissions targets I think that document suggests that it's certainly in Britain that they need to be reduced by 17 to 27 percent year on year the fourth point is that there will be disruption in other words some reductions in standards is living and I think we have to face up to that but on the other hand this is likely to mean a lot less driving and flying lower meat and dairy consumption more walking and cycling more public transport etc more democracy more localized revision of food and energy and reasonably warm homes so 1.5 percent increase is completely in limiting to 1.5 degrees is completely compatible with lifestyles that involve improvements in people's quality of life for most people fifth point is a particular issue for me is the power of litigation if environmental targets aren't reached sixth point is the importance of centralizing notions of frugality and self-sufficiency which have been unfashionable in all of our generations seventh point is a particular one for the magazine that I'm involved with we we're driven by a few precepts but one of them is environmentalism and another is fairness or equality and I think environmentalism actually flows from that it's about ensuring that the next generation has an equal right to participate in the fruits of the earth as we had so it's important to be to to make sure this transition is fair eighth point is to avail of prices of which there are a good number unfortunately in ways in many ways at the moment ninth point is to work with human psychology it's important to work out what people can take and to and to be realistic about it and I think an interesting point that Phil made was about the power of direct action and and and and affecting that um tenth point is that we need to accept that taxation should be not just for equity but also for other purposes including if we believe in environmentalism it's legitimate to tax across the range for environmental purposes not just for the plastic bag or or or or on carbon but ultimately for sustainability and for quality of life a radical new view of taxation not about not just about equity about redistribution but about pursuing environmental agendas through taxation then my final final overall point which is borderline of fetish for me is to emphasize the importance of numerical targets enforceable through just disability measure everything uh who otherwise how do we know how do we know at the moment how we're doing for biodiversity we haven't monitored the property we don't know whether we're actually reversing a decline we assume we're not but it needs to be monitored much more stringently so we need to allow people to go to court if they're not getting their rights to sustain and they are rights to sustainability and to um to quality of life so so set targets make them enforceable and allow people to pursue them in the courts if they're not we're serious about changing some of these um these agendas so thank you very much everybody I'm now going to find your pass over to um sorry for some final thoughts well like uh Michael I'm going to uh give a few reflections infused with my prejudices and thank you Michael for reminding me of how old I am um the most important thing I heard today I think and I think it really speaks to the kind of audience that we are this little community here and we're subset of a bigger community of green activists and thinkers and practitioners and politicians we have to have the best ideas uh that just really rang out for me and that is why I think we spend so much of this afternoon without maybe thinking we would talking about communicating about how to communicate effectively what messages for different audience the importance of winning the argument where would we be without you John Gibbons because I engage in these arguments but I don't win them it is really hard to win the argument because it feels like you're in the heat of battle and the battle itself feels like a sign of failure but in fact of course it has to be that truth telling that speaking truth to power is so important so we need to mind the people who do that for us we need to mind the people who speak the truth to power because they're actually very vulnerable a lot of the time to attack and to being abused or manipulated or taken out of context or you know the usual slagging on social media and all of that so winning the argument we should never take anything for granted it's not easy and the other thing is reversals happen all the time so you win an argument and then you find two years later you have to do the whole thing all over again change of government new parties look what happened in the UK we won't need to discuss that but you can see the possibility of reversals happening because some ideologue gets into a position of power and can just through the stroke of a pen do mad stuff absolutely mad stuff the messages as Rosalind was so eloquently telling us that relate to people's lives if we are talking in these highly complex vocabulary around emissions and concepts and mandates and all these very abstract ideas just don't relate to people's kind of bread and butter concerns and that's a challenge for every single one of us who's engaging in any kind of communication guilty of it myself in academia we always default to the most complicated version of anything that there is because there is such a focus a fetish a novelty of argument and that is a distraction anything that does not communicate effectively is a distraction and we need to think in terms of not so much the kind of complexity of definitions of degrowth or the different ways of approaching it we're actually at the point now as many people have highlighted like of triage of like who do we say first it is literally that bad the kind of choices we're facing are profound in terms of their ethical consequences but if we don't confront them if we don't stare into the void these choices will be made by others or they won't be made at all and we just have that kind of cascading effect with the attendant loss of you know agency that we spoke about earlier so I wanted to say a couple of things about leadership because I don't think it's an accident that you know it's the Green Economic Foundation and the Green European Foundation and the Green House and so on and the Green Party that has been behind this particular document and the conversation today as we spoke earlier it's practically taboo no political party can put a chapter called the solution is degrowth into their manifesto in fact I checked the Green Party's manifesto for the 2020 election and there's no reference to degrowth anywhere in the manifesto and I don't blame anybody for that that's not a criticism but it's revealing of how difficult it is to put certain words into the public domain so if degrowth is not the word well forget it let's find something else Jonathan had a great suggestion that I didn't write down the other thing that I so yeah but I'm sure you'll tell us whatever it was that you had used post growth wasn't it was post growth right so let's let's talk about that if that makes it easier let's not get dogmatic by language because we're in a place that's going to be full of innovation and experimentation in any case the thing I wanted to say about leadership is so important we need to not be afraid to lead nobody else is going to do this work nobody else where would we be without you know Usheen and the other members here who have stood up put themselves before the electorate or stood like Manuel up against his own employer to highlight their climate in action that takes great guts and courage and we need to support the people in whatever walk of life in whatever way is appropriate for them whether it's the tomato soup brigade or the standing behind the people who throw tomato soup and defending them and supporting them with fundraising or with legal advice so Bill I was going to mention direct action and it is one of those perennial dilemmas that many of us who are now in our middle age it's like well what have I actually accomplished what have I actually done we've been doing this for so long and what have we actually accomplished now okay we can talk about public awareness we can talk about column inches coverage on the radio but what have we actually accomplished it's so depressing it's so depressing so I can understand the impulse to just get out there and be seen to take some kind of radical action however symbolic that drives the message home that we're failing because actually that's what what's happening so hats off to those people I just think they're heroes and it speaks to me again about the need to find better ways to involve and communicate and engage with young people and I was thinking of you Roslyn particularly because Michael having pointed out how old we all are make me you know realize I used to always be the youngest person in the room and as the years have gone by with many exceptions here today but that's sometimes still true that that's not funny that's really not funny so what I mean is where's that intergenerational transfer of leadership roles and I think we have a lot to learn from you with your amazing communication skills about how to speak in a way that not just hands things over but then creates the space for young people to step up and take the mic I'm very conscious of the space that I personally occupy sometimes in the media and I don't know why that happens I think the media is lazy it keeps coming back to the same voices we need to find ways of making that kind of transfer happen and I'd love to hear at some point what you think we should be doing about that because it's not right there's something desperately wrong about the exclusion of young people from these conversations and let's be troublesome mice for a change I have a few suggestions and one of them is for you Davey I was just really alarmed when I kind of realized the demographic issue here Michael he's gone now I think you should facilitate a band reunion I think you should pull together people who've been doing this for a long time particularly around the climate communication there's a huge amount of amazing work that's been done in the UK around how to communicate with different audiences climate outreach many of you'll be familiar with but we don't really have a similar thing here and the audiences are different we have different kind of electoral system with different political parties and we've different kind of civil society messaging that's going on so I'd love I don't know I'm just going to hand that to you and see what you think I also loved hearing from Jonathan a story about how he got the avoid shift improved concept into the policy domain and then how it worked its way through the system that's kind of a bit nerdy policy process tough but those kind of working examples whether it's an eco village whether it's a kind of a nerdy policy process in a local authority we need working examples of how to do that and we need to skill up people who are willing to stand in local elections and do the same thing in their area because it's not easy you stand in front of people and you say I want degrowth and cycle lanes forget it but if you maybe deploy some of these things we've talked about today perhaps we might make a new generation of green and green like candidates more electable and that should be our focus because we cannot avoid politics in any of this all of these issues are so deeply political so let's go and be troublesome mice thank you thank you Saib we've come to the end today and for the closing remarks from GFI and the former minister for the environment John Gormley well thank you very much Davey it's been stimulating afternoon I have to say and it now falls to me to thank a lot of people and the wonderful Anna Conran has given me a list so I hope you'll bear with me the Lord Mayor for the use of the Oak Room Deputy Lord Mayor Darcy Lonegan Jonathan Essex and Peter Sims for your great presentation thank you very much greenhouse think tank Saib O'Neill and Saib you are not middle age first Saib Saib Saib you're not middle age because you see the problem with that is it makes the the rest of us look absolutely ancient so I'm not going to tolerate or the Kelly Michael Smith Claire Downey Rosalind Skillon and Minister Oshin Smith and I just want to say two things here I mean I was so it's so wonderful you know that we have young women coming forward making contributions and when we put together this program I was very conscious of that to get new people in because sometimes it's the same old same old right to get new people in making a contribution so I'm very pleased about that and I'm very pleased that Oshin took the time out because I know what it's like to be a minister to be under huge time pressures and to take the time out and to answer the questions Oshin thank you very much indeed thank you I've I've thanked Nula her and I well I've thanked Anne Conron um but I want to thank Nula and seen Husker seen was wonderful yesterday she put us right on all the technology and if she's listening in seen thank you uh Davey of course great facilitator uh Tommy Simpson um you know the redoubtable Tommy where would be where the house thank you Tommy and I've also been asked again Anne is very very thorough as you all know I have to mention this right and if any of you have taken photos and are happy for the Green Foundation Ireland to use them please send to Anne okay send to Anne at info at greenfoundation.ie okay if you've taken any photos but greenfoundationireland.ie is that all right this is I've been told a free event but there is a donation box on the registration desk and please give generously and Anne is pointing to it right now the GFI's next event is believe it or not and in the context of biodiversity it's very important earthworms see the flyer it's on Thursday evening 10th of November 2022 at 7 30 p.m and it's online and it's talked by Mark Hudson professor at the University of York and you can book now on the website so as I said it has been an intriguing afternoon um at the break there where you were eating the wonderful cakes and now you'll you'll be indulging in alcohol now pretty soon but um I asked a friend of mine Joe Byrne and I said to Joe what do you think and he said yeah it's good he said but it's not hard enough on the Green Party so I says well look I'll do that at the end so it falls to me now and I have to at this stage do a mayor culpa because I was 20 years as a Green Party representative 40 years campaigning total John you'll be glad to know and during those 20 years I did not mention aside you're absolutely right I didn't mention the concept of deep growth enough or I didn't mention post-growth I didn't probably because of the stigma almost attached to it in that you are immediately branded as an economic illiterate and the argument is over before it even begins so maybe that is why I don't know but I suspect that is why it wasn't in the Green Party manifesto but I do recall that when the EPA was set up I was in a studio with Mary Hardy out in Ortee about 1990 and I did say if you enshrine the concept of economic growth in this legislation the EPA will never work and it has never worked we have put in huge resources into the EPA we have talented people in the EPA but as long as we're growing growing growing every indicator is going to fail whether it comes to our emissions or biodiversity it's impossible and that is why I personally feel that for the rest of my life on this planet I want to talk about post-growth and deep growth and talk through communications talk through films and all of this event has been filmed because it's the only way and I'll tell you I got married believe it or not my reception my wedding reception was in this very room 28 years ago when I was Lord Mayor of Dublin and on that day it was unseasonably warm beautiful day and it was believe it or not 15 degrees this week you know this it's been 17 degrees consistently so it's happening and it's happening now and you know and you know John you've spoken about the frustrations when I was Lord Mayor I spoke at the very first conference of the parties in Berlin I gave a keynote address there believe it or not along with the president of the Maldives and we got an amazing reception standing ovation and we said at that particular this is the very first conference of the parties that we had 10 years to fix this problem and you know what it was actually true we did have 10 years back in 1995 we don't have 10 years anymore right and one of the most depressing things and there have been depressing moments there's no question about it 2009 Copenhagen I was there as minister and it was a washout it was a failure it was disaster we had such high hopes going into that and then we had the so-called breakthrough of Paris and you know I think about Paris and say yeah god is this the is this the breakthrough because you all know this even if we implement everything in Paris we're still going to 3.2 degrees our chances of hitting 1.5 you know the ceiling the 1.5 degrees they rate you know it's 99% 99% against right right now where does that leave us well it leave us fighting and fighting and fighting and it's complex you know when we're talking here about communication and the narrative and I hear this and I know a lot of science colleagues out in DCU and a great one of them Pat Birkin can't be here today and I say look you know and thesis many thesis have been done on this how best to communicate this you know do you frighten people no you paralyze them apparently but you see I don't necessarily go along with that anymore you know this softly softly approach the sugar coating Adam McKay who did don't look up recently said you know and he's into this how do we communicate better this whole issue he said like would we make a fire alarm sound like a Brahms symphony we wouldn't because it serves a purpose it's there to frighten the life out of you to get out of there quick and so we're treating people like oversensitive consumers the whole time and it doesn't work in my view it simply doesn't work because right now I'm telling you if you go just down the road here and I'm very familiar because it is my old constituency and there are two parts of the constituency there's sandy mount and there's rings end I live in rings end rings end is the working class part and then there's sandy mount and the sandy mount people are very wealthy and they're feeling very good and very virtuous at the moment because the road around in their electric cars no electric cars in rings end but they're driving around in their electric cars and many of them are getting huge grants from the government to they're actually insulating the homes and its ground but as soon as soon as you ask them to do anything which inconvenience them they're not on foot we want to take one you know row of traffic off from the strand road and I had the misfortune during the general election to actually knock on a few doors there on behalf of the Green Party and Guy comes out to the door he says do you realize this is how they speak in Simon he says you realize he says that if you take away that lane of traffic it's going to take me 15 more minutes to get to the airport and I do a lot of international I do a lot of international travel and you know obviously he didn't say but he was going to say I'm a very important that but he didn't say that the fact of matter is that they don't still don't get it they still don't get it you know during here and I would just say to my our British guests during the war here we didn't call it the war we call it the emergency and it was an emergency and it was treated as such so there was rationing we had cars put up on there still no cars were allowed only if you were a doctor and that if this is an existential threat and me hallmark and I have a lot of respect for me of all has said this this is an existential threat then we should be treating it as an emergency and the softly softly approach has to go right during covid there was no softly softly approach in terms of communication I mean what we had was and I remember this distinctly in the first few days we had you know these images of people all dressed up in masks and people spraying down and everyone was frightened I remember actually going down in in rings and and pressing the you know the pedestrian you know the for the lights and then my wife saying to me you've just touched the bloody light you've got to be contaminated you know that's how frightened that's how frightened we all were but it worked it got people it got people motivated we're going to have to say to people this is an existential threat and this is what's going to have to happen and you know eventually I believe myself that when we cross the 1.5 threshold 1.5 degrees maybe that's when the penny is going to drop I don't know um but I'll just finish on on this one maybe a hopeful note um I think you know Gavin mentioned um Love Island Inish Man and we both know Inish Man and I love Inish Man by the way you know that but the phrase they have there on Inish Man is always kunig yurt you know keep going keep going and that's all we can do in Wing Foundation Ireland you know you you have these moments where people say well you know are you being overly pessimistic the very fact that you're gathered in this room means that you haven't given up it means that you are going on and that you are persisting and that is the most important thing that sort of persistence so thank you for your persistence thank you for for your participation and let's go out now and have a nice drink thank you and thanks to the online participants I will close this there's still quite a few of you online so thanks for joining us it's interesting having these blended events sorry if I didn't get to your comments if you've made some but thanks again we'll see you next time all the best