I listened to a very interesting short interview on Radio 5 Live breakfast yesterday. Nicky Campbell was speaking with Linda Yueh from the London School of Economics about the results of a recent economic survey. The survey showed a third of respondents think the economic climate will get worse (so two thirds don’t – yippee!), 12% already think things are getting better, and the biggest fear is unemployment. Four out of ten fear for losing their job.
Linda came across brightly and spoke with enthusiasm. Nicky Campbell tends towards flowery language a bit too much for my liking and this interview was no exception. I nearly choked on my toast when he hit us with “…merely bits of flotsam tossed on the oceans of economic trends…” Linda laughed and said she couldn’t match that and Campbell expressed a wish to withdraw the statement, but the flowers had been flung.
Apologies, I digress. What really drew me in was Linda’s response to Nicky Campbell’s double barrelled question, “Will we ever be the way we were? Will we ever get back to how it was?” She said that previous levels of consumption based on credit are not sustainable. My ears pricked up. There will likely be a push not to return to the way we were. The financial sectors excess will need regulation to ensure it doesn’t stray off course again. That will mean we need a new sector to sustain growth and our standard of living. Linda suggested green industry as a replacement.
This age of change could potentially be a very good one as we seek to rely less on financial services and more on sustainability. We can change the way we live and the things we do. Very good…but something was missing. I was urging Linda to get stuck into what kind of behaviour she felt was needed from politicians, business leaders, everyone, to make this change. It didn’t come, the harsh reality of radio deadlines cut things cruelly short.
I’m interested in what you think about Linda’s opinions. More importantly, I’d love to hear what you think about the behaviour required to make the shift from consume to sustain?
You can listen to the radio interview here. It’s at 1:12.58 into the programme and 4 min 30 sec in duration.
