Mary Robinson Speaks at LSE

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and an Obama-era recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (among many other honors, including years of service as a UN Special Envoy) recently delivered a lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science as a part of the institution’s annual Ralph Milibrand Program. Her talk addressed the program’s 2018 theme, “Turbulent Times” and is titled “Turbulent Climate Change Shows the Need to Address Injustice”.

Here’s an audio recording of the program.

The theme for this year’s LSE lecture series attempts to address some of the concerns that are defining the age in which we live, including the existential threat of climate change and a growing awareness of our global interdependence. In her lecture, Mary Robinson discusses policies that ensure sustainable development and talks about the strong link between fairness and equality and our chances of securing a safer world for future generations. She discusses the two simultaneous tasks we face at this point in history: protecting the planet that sustains us all and working to preserve the dignity and safety of populations that are poised to fall behind as history, industry, and technology accelerate all around us.

Mary Robinson represents one of the most highly respected voices in the world on these issues, and here at Just Atonement, we follow the work of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice, a think tank and research organization that works in pursuit of goals that align with our own.

Please listen to the podcast if you can! This recording was produced on January 18, 2018, immediately following months of turbulent climate-related incidents around the world, including hurricanes, wildfires and severe monsoons in disparate regions from Southeast Asia to California and Portugal. At this time, the displacement and recovery processes following many of these events have only begun. If you’d like to learn more about the issues discussed in this lecture, or you’d like to take action based on what you hear, please contact our office.