Background: As a recent report by seventeen top scientists alerts us to the 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruption that faces us, it is clear that the public discourse is beginning to move beyond a fixation with techno-fixes and focus on the central challenges of mapping a radically alternative social future. In this talk, hosted by SHEP Earth Aware and the UCC Environmental Research Institute, Prof. Peadar Kirby will argue that our societies are shaped by the interrelationship of state, market and society which constitutes our social model, and that we urgently need to address what kind of social model can get us to a low-carbon future. He maps out key elements of what should constitute such a social model.

Peadar Kirby is Professor Emeritus of International Politics and Public Policy, University of Limerick, and education coordinator of Cloughjordan Ecovillage. His most recent book is Karl Polanyi and the Contemporary Political Crisis: Transforming Market Society in the Era of Climate Change (Foreword by President Michael D. Higgins), Bloomsbury, 2021. Among his many previous books was The Political Economy of the Low-Carbon Transition: Pathways Beyond Techno-Optimism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 (co-authored with Tadhg O’Mahony).

This event will be moderated by Dr Clodagh Harris, senior lecturer in the UCC Department of Government & Politics and affiliate researcher of the Environmental Research Institute.

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