Jonathon Porritt: Will Today’s ‘Third Industrial Revolution’ Deliver a Sustainable World?
Jonathon Porritt: Will Today’s ‘Third Industrial Revolution’ Deliver a Sustainable World?
Jonathon Porritt
Will Today’s ‘Third Industrial Revolution’ Deliver a Sustainable World?
Tuesday 24 April 2012
Newton building, NTU City site
Lecture abstract:
We’re already in the foothills of an extraordinary period of technological change – embracing renewable energy, cleantech, smartgrids, cloud computing, cradle-to-cradle engineering, low-carbon farming, nano-materials and so on. Much of this is hugely positive from a sustainability perspective.
But is such a mega-technofix all we need to secure a genuinely sustainable world – for nine billion people by 2050? What about social justice, some of today’s dominant world views, contemporary models of progress, human behaviour and all the rest of today’s complex dilemmas? Could it be that techno-fixing on this scale will actually divert us from dealing with these deeper challenges?
Speaker biography:
Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, is an eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development. Established in 1996, Forum for the Future is now the UK’s leading sustainable development charity, with 70 staff and over 100 partner organisations, including some of the world’s leading companies.
In addition, Jonathon is Co-Director of The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme which runs Seminars for senior executives around the world. He is a Non-Executive Director of Wessex Water, and of Willmott Dixon Holdings. He is a Trustee of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, and is involved in the work of many NGOs and charities as Patron, Chair or Special Adviser.
Jonathon was installed as Chancellor of Keele University on 9 February 2012.
Jonathon received a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.
