Start the Week (but not an open thread)

And, yes, there is more to Morecambe than this statue...

Still in the bank holiday spirit...

...and as the clouds briefly clog the skies over reliably-sunny Morecambe (the UK's sunniest and finest seaside resort, at least according to the BBC's infallible Reality Check)...

...I'd like to spread a little more Morecambe sunshine by recommending this morning's Start the Week. 

I very much enjoyed listening to it (in the garden, in the Morecambe sunshine). 

Now, yes, it featured three environmentalists, all long-term activists, and all opposed (in various ways) to "traditional growth economies", but let's not worry our pretty little heads about that today. 

Andrew Marr himself was obviously aware that a charge of bias might be fired in his direction over this, so he tried to get his defence in first: 

By the way, for people listening, I have deliberately not brought in, as it were, a traditional growth economist because I didn't want to get into a Punch and Judy show about this. We want to examine the idea properly.

Of course, a non-Punch and Judy edition discussion involving only supporters of traditional growth economies is bound to be along very soon on Start the Week!

Not guests on today's Start the Week

Still, this was an absolutely fascinating programme. 

It featured what might be called "a traditional anti-growth economist", advocating a global, left-wing, anti-growth strategy to stop wealth being so concentrated in the hands of "the 1%" and make the world more equal and fun. But against her were ranged two (mutually-reinforcing) environmentalists of a very different stripe - people who don't like the far-left drift of the modern environmentalist movement and who, to my ears, think of environmentalism in a much more old-fashioned/conservative way, as being about loving and protecting nature (both wildlife and the landscape) and not wanting it despoiled by monstrous regiments of wind farms, or by equality warriors, or by people obsessed with 'carbon targets'. 

And, yes, this wasn't a Punch and Judy show. Everyone got their say (at length) and was listened to, politely and amicably. And everyone made interesting points and gave me lots of new things to think about. And Andrew Marr largely kept himself out of it (though Wendell Berry did seem to gently protest about having been asked to read his gloomiest, most eco-nightmarish poem). And...

It really is well worth a listen.