Talk: Strategies to protect planet and people

Registration recommended but not essential

2:30 pm, Saturday 7 November, St Andrews Uniting Church, corner of Vernon Street and Chisholm Street, Turramurra

An AGM offers a suitable time to pause and reflect on our strategies for protecting the environment of planet Earth, an entity of huge intrinsic value as well as our life support system. Dr Mark Diesendorf will discuss two strategic approaches. 

The first, which comes from environmental science, considers the three principal drivers of environmental impact to be population, affluence (defined as GDP per person) and technology.

The second, which comes from political science and political economy, considers the immense power of vested interests in influencing government and society, and shaping the economy, to serve their ends.

Both approaches suggest that environmental protection, social justice and the economic system are inseparable and that we must campaign to improve them jointly as well as individually.

Mark was originally a physicist who expanded into interdisciplinary research on energy and sustainability. Previously he was Professor of Environmental Science and Founding Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at University of Technology Sydney. Currently he is Honorary Associate Professor in Environment and Society at UNSW Sydney.

Mark is lead author of The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation: Technological, Socioeconomic and Political Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).