Climate Breakdown: Who Cares? This was the theme for the 5th Conference on Intergenerational Climate Justice Conference that took place online on the morning of the 17th of October. This annual event is organized under the leadership of the OLA and SMA Justice and Communications Offices in collaboration with four Cork based Community Groups (See below). The event was the culmination of a long period of preparation that began last March.
The “Who Cares?” in this year’s event title reflected both the current apathy and fatigue around climate activism and also the very evident failure of those in power, political leaders, governments and big business to care enough and to make the decisions and changes needed to address climate change and the injustice it causes.
As in previous year’s, the Conference aimed to deepen understanding of the climate crisis and to inspire participants to actively engage in addressing the injustice of climate change. However, in addition this year’s Conference emphasised two points; Firstly, that climate change is a current realit
y, not something that will happen in the future – it is here now and already negatively impacting the lives of millions people and the biodiversity upon which all life depends. This was illustrated in the opening section of the Conference through a specially prepared video based on the compilation of recent news reports. These showed floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires in Europe and in other parts of the world. All happened in the last few months and climate change was identified as the immediate cause. This was followed by a presentation delivered by Salome Mumba a Trócaire field officer showing the very real impacts of climate change on the environment and people in her home country, Malawi.
Keeping to the theme of Who Cares? Professor John Barry of Queen’s University Belfast, Professor Aoife Daly of UCC and student Activist Niamh Purcell spoke about why we need to 
care more and about how we can do so. Advocacy, especially the value of youth advocacy was emphasised as a means of bringing about the bigger and systemic changes that need to happen in order to address the injustice of the climate crisis.
Through videos, presentations, a discussion panel and a Question and Answer session the Conference aimed to give participants
– a broader understanding of the injustice of climate change,
– A willingness to engage in advocacy on a level that they had not before.
Another new addition to this year’s conference was the number of teenage speakers. In 
addition to students from Nagle Community College who gave an excellent presentation about the environmental projects they run in their school and local community (see here a video that was part of their presentation), four other young people namely, Ersha Naheed, Niamh Purcell, Akshita Gupta and Katie Sisk-Duggan contributed to the discussions and presentations made.
Attendance at this year’s the event was excellent, eleven School Class groups participated as well as many individual adults and a few adult groups. In all we estimate that at least 320 people attended. Videos of the presentations and inputs during the Conference will shortly be made available on this website. Our thanks to all these speakers, to all who helped plan the event and to all who attended.
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