This talk, given by the Very Revd Gregory Dunstan, was held on Monday 1st October 2021 to mark the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.
In climate change, environmental degradation and species extinction, the contemporary world faces an existential crisis. The roots of the crisis lie in the misapplication, all too often, of the science and technology whose origins are in that movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries broadly known as ‘the enlightenment’.
The talk reflects on those early achievements of science and technology, in the light of the challenges of the present, with examples from the collections of Armagh Robinson Library.
Before his retirement in October 2020, Gregory Dunstan was Dean of Armagh and Keeper of Armagh Robinson Library. Born in England, his first degree was in geography. Before his ordination in 1990, he was a landscape architect, working in Dublin.