Dr Mike Ryan Covid 19 is a wake up call to how we live our lives Trócaire Romero Award

Thanks to Greta Thunberg and Eogan Rice for sharing.

Dr Mike Ryan Covid 19 is a wake up call to how we live our lives Trócaire Romero Award

On Wednesday, he received Trócaire’s Romero Award. Here are five key takeaways from his acceptance speech that you need to know.

1. Covid-19 is a wake-up call to how we live our lives

“We are pushing nature to its limit. We are pushing population to its limit. We’re pushing communities to their limits. We’re stressing the environment. We are creating the conditions in which epidemics flourish. We’re forcing and pushing people to migrate away from their homes because of climate stress.

We’re doing so much and we’re doing it in the name of globalisation and some sense of chasing that wonderful thing that people call economic growth. In my view, that’s becoming a malignancy, not growth, because what it’s doing is driving unsustainable practices in terms of how we manage communities, how we manage development, how we manage prosperity.

We are writing cheques that we cannot cash as a civilisation and they’re going to bounce. My fear is that our children are going to pay that price. That someday when we’re not here, our children will wake up in a world where there is a pandemic that has a much higher case fatality rate, and that could bring our civilisation to its very knees.

We need a world that is more sustainable, where profit is not put before communities. Where the slavery to economic growth is taken out of the equation. We need sustainable growth in our communities. We need sustainable livelihoods for our people. And we’re taking huge risks – massive risks – with our future if we don’t manage the planet in which we live. And we’re being extremely irresponsible right now.”