IENE 2024 - Keynote Speech Gaya Herrington

End of the road, or changing course away from a cliff? Sustainable futures in transportation
Herrington, G.

Gaya Herrington’s research gained international acclaim in 2021 when her study, “Update to Limits to Growth” went viral. With this empirical data comparison to scenarios created with a global model by MIT scientists in the 1970s, Gaya revealed that humanity is closely on track for a sharp decline in societal wellbeing starting to set in around present time.
Since then, Gaya has been shaping conversations at local and global levels with her message that true sustainability will not be achieved without transforming our economic system away from an obsession with perpetual growth to one that centers around human and ecological wellbeing. In her keynote speech for IENE, Gaya will discuss why we need to move to a “wellbeing economy”, and what this could mean for transportation. Why is switching to electric cars not enough? What would a “wellbeing” transportation sector look like? How exactly would our country get there? Implications will be discussed, with active participation from the audience, from the practical design level to the spiritual level of shifting cultural values.