E3G

Address to Green Alliance 25th Anniversary

By Tom Burke

I do not believe that the world is fundamentally short of the resources, capital or technology to offer a decent life to all of the eight billion inhabitants it will soon have. I do believe we are short of the capacity to put those resources capital and technology together in ways that are sustainable. And we are increasingly short of time.

Building that capacity, aligning our choices so that they add up to something we can all live with, is politics. By politics I do not mean the degraded, and increasingly, degrading, battle for the headlines that currently passes for politics in our age of celebrity. I mean the art of making collective choices, of harnessing what Abraham Lincoln called ‘ the better angels of our nature’, to a profoundly important purpose.

I do not doubt that the ‘better angels’ are there, nor that they can be reached and mobilised to pursue the purpose we all share. Nor do I doubt that in this room are the people with the energy, foresight and commitment to drive that mobilisation. It is the Green Alliance’s task to help us make those efforts add up to more than their parts.

I wish it well for the next twenty-five years.