Will Ireland survive 2050? Climate crisis in the spotlight
Posted on: 11 November 2019
This evening [9:35 pm, Monday 11thNovember 2019] extreme weather and the global climate crisis is in the spotlight when RTÉ One shows a thought-provoking (and sometimes sobering) documentary, Will Ireland Survive 2050?
Climate activists, meteorologists and scientists all feature as viewers learn what things may look like if we don’t take serious action to mitigate the crisis.
Among those featured is Yvonne Buckley, Professor of Zoology at Trinity, who is co-director of the research cluster Nature+, which discovers and applies nature-based solutions to national and global challenges like climate change.
Her research focuses on determining the future of how we can live well on the planet, making better environmental decisions, and enhancing our knowledge and application of quantitative ecology principles.
Yvonne leads a team of post-doctoral, PhD, and undergraduate researchers seeking to understand the fundamental drivers of animal and plant population processes in what is now a rapidly changing world. She uses these discoveries to provide support for environmental decisions in the areas of biodiversity conservation.
In Will Ireland Survive 2050? Professor Buckley shines a light on some of the extreme measures 21stcentury civilisation has already adopted in the fight against the climate crisis and hopes the documentary will serve as a call to action.
Professor Buckley said:
We are at a stage now where we have seed banks like the seed vault in Svalbard up in the Arctic, which has collections of seeds from all over the world. And then we have tissue banks for animals – these are either frozen samples or live cultures of animal cells that are kept in laboratories.
It’s really sad that we’ve got to a stage where we are actually seriously thinking about using these as Arks – the idea of trying to recreate a whole ecosystem from a few seeds and a few tissue samples is terrifying!