Transition on BBC Radio4’s “In Business” programme
By Ben Brangwyn 26th November 2010
Economic Growth – can’t we think of something better?
Peter Day – if you don’t recognise the name, you’ll certainly recognise his melifluous tones – visited Totnes a couple of weeks ago to probe into community level efforts towards something less daft than economic growth as a measure of our progress.
For UK folks, the programme is available on i-player here: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00w228b/In_Business_Growing_Pains/.
For international listeners, here’s a lower quality audio file that you can listen to: www.sendspace.com/pro/f3j5c6.
You can also catch it at 9.30pm (GMT) on Sunday 28-Nov-2010 on BBC Radio4.
On his visit, Peter talked to me about growth, discussed Transition Town Totnes with Hal Gillmore, took a ride in one of the used veg oil powered rickshaw, chatted with Totnesians and generally ambled his genial way through this town and through this thorny subject.
The programme itself features the rather wonderful Tim Jackson, the equally wonderful Andrew Simms of nef, a guy who wrote a book “Ferraris for All” (yeah, right!), the exuberant Hal Gillmore of TTT, and a few others.
I was surprised it was such a balanced programme, mainly because Peter Day appeared totally convinced that we were entering a time when either we’d move away from economic growth or we’d drive ourselves into a climate that would deliver levels of chaos that we would not be able to handle.
Interestingly, climate change only raised it’s brooding head once, and that was only in a passing comment by Andrew Simms. Which is kinda stupid, because to discuss “economic growth” without looking at the costs is like promoting fast food on an international basis without discussing the impacts on human health and the wider ecological wellbeing of the planet.
And that’d be insane, right?