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Jonathon Porritt talks about developing a sustainable economy

I got to see a very engaging, very funny and massively clever Jonathon Porritt give a talk yesterday on how we can develop a sustainable economy. It was organised by Minister Eamon Ryan and the DCENR who gave a very nice intro to Jonathon and the topic and he spoke unscripted, something you rarely see from a Minister. Hopefully the video will go up on his YouTube channel in a bit. I’d have live blogged it but there wasn’t any wireless broadband in the building…


Photo owned by bfick (cc)

Not that there was room to whip out my Macbook Air, the place was packed. Note: The Macbook Air is a green machine, sure it’s called the Air because that’s what it runs on, right? The room in No. 8 Stephen’s Green was full of people from many industries, Liz McManus from Labour was there too, ComReg were present too as well as the Energy Regulator. You’d have seen less suits at a funeral actually. Most of the Greens were there too including my fav blogging politician and the founder of the Eamon Ryan Facebook group too. No dinosaur though.

Overall Jonathon’s talk was eye-opening and you can tell he could talk for days on the subject without getting monotonous. I learned a good deal too. Only place in the world with a real Carbon Tax? British Columbia, money from it replaces lost revenue from corporation tax which they reduced and money from it also goes into health insurance I believe. People directly see where the carbon tax money goes. Clever. Very clever. Hopefully the slide deck for the talk will be made available too. Capitalism: As if the world matters is Jonathon’s latest book.

Green Indeed
Photo owned by Orin Optiglot (cc)

I didn’t have time to stay and mingle and enjoy the carbon neutral elderberry wine as I had to leg it back to the hotel and change and head to the awesome SoundCheck but next time if I’m accidently invited to another event like this I’ll definitely have to say hello to Ciarán and others.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 9:07 am and is filed under Eamon Ryan, irishblogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Jonathon Porritt talks about developing a sustainable economy”

  1. John Handelaar says:
    May 30, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    Remind me to tell you my favourite Porritt story next time I see you.

    (CND, where I worked, was next door to Friends of the Earth in London for about 6 years. *Everybody* had a Porritt story.)