Festival of Idea: Andrew Simms: We Want More Than This: Why a Better World in in Our Grasp

Andrew Simms: We Want More Than This

Festival of Ideas 2016

Talk

Please note: This event took place in May 2016

We Want More Than This: Why a Better World is in Our Grasp

We are in the grip of accelerating climatic upheaval and divisive global inequality. Rapid transition to a new economic system is urgently needed. But the message seems to be that there is no alternative. Is that true? Around the world, people of all political persuasions are departing from the old orthodoxies, creating radical working examples of a new economic system. A great moment of global despair is being turned into an opportunity to re-imagine how we can organise our lives and economic affairs. Where reactionary, short term interests apply the ‘shock doctrine’, others are using the hope principle to lay the foundations for a rapid transition to a better world in which people can thrive within planetary boundaries. Andrew Simms presents field notes of hope, not from imaginary lands but from practical utopias. These are places where things may not be perfect, but where real people are proving that better worlds are possible.

Speaker Biography

Andrew Simms is an author, analyst and campaigner. His books include Ecological Debt, The New Economics, Tescopoly and Cancel the Apocalypse: the New Path to Prosperity. He is the chief analyst on the environment at Global Witness and is a fellow of the New Economics Foundation (NEF). He was NEF’s policy director for over a decade, founding its work programme on climate change, energy and interdependence. The Independent listed him as one of the UK’s top 100 environmentalists and London’s Evening Standard included him in the Power 1000 as one of the capital’s most influential people. He co-founded the New Weather Institute and the climate campaign onehundredmonths.org


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