The economic crisis is good for green politics Severn Suzuki suggested at a talk to promote sustainability.
Green was a word used for everything in the time preceding the October financial crisis. It ranged from talk of a green economy to being one of the main issues for the candidates’ debate during the last Canadian federal election Suzuki stated at a talk held at the University of British Columbia as a part of the national Students for Sustainability Campus Tour.
“I couldn’t open a newspaper or magazine without reading some headline about climate change” said Suzuki. “There seemed to be a real momentum about attention and awareness and concern [for the environment].” This “recognition is really significant,” she added.
“All of a sudden, a crisis hits the other kind of green, the green of Wall Street, the bastion of 20th Century economics” Suzuki said.
Now with the economy as the main topic of conversation, Suzuki said she was “afraid and shocked” at how the language used in the media would be very “capitalist” and would be “very focused on the economy”
“I was worried that this new crisis would be subverted from the sustainable path we seem to be interested in heading towards.” Suzuki said.
However, at the same time the media is concentrated on the economy, “light is being shone on a faulty economic system,” Suzuki added. The media is talking about “[the economy’s] evolution through deregulation, through globalization which all of our current unsustainable systems are completely linked to.”
Suzuki suggested that there was a change in the language of media’s portrayal of the economy. “We’re actually seeing [the media] talk about the economy and using words like greed, and immoral and fallible, this is a new dialogue,” Suzuki said. “We are realizing that this aged economic system is out of date and is crumbling,” she added.
Suzuki believes the current economic turmoil presents a turning point in the way the economy is perceived. “Are we going to assess whether the economy is serving us and our values as a society?”
“We have to seize this opportunity when the cracks in the economic system are clear, to demand a new paradigm.” A paradigm, which she described as a system which values what we value and acts as “a better measure of wealth to actually measure and promote our quality of life.”
“The 21st Century economy absolutely must serve a sustainable way of life.”
