Tricycle Showdown: Miliband vs Armstrong (round two) 23/3/2009

Date 23rd Mar 2009
Submitted by Leo Murray on 23 March 2009 - 5:59pm

Tricycle

To his enormous credit, despite being taken by surprise at the People's Premiere by Pete and his giant Pledge, Briatin's Climate Change and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband offered to join Franny to debate further how society should respond to the urgent questions raised by The Age of Stupid, at a screening at the Tricycle cinema in Kilburn yesterday.

Ed and Franny

Ed is explaining why capitalism is the only option for the foreseeable future

Franny had speculated that prioritising short term economic growth over long term survival seems, well, a bit irresponsible, and that perhaps the climate change problem is really a systemic one that arises from the pursuit of a political ideology that imagines infinite growth on a finite planet. 

Ed Capitalism

His favourite flavour of capitalism is Swedish capitalism

Ed explained carefully that there are different flavours of capitalism, and that Swedish is the tastiest one - in his view.

So many questions

So many questions

So little time.

Persuasion

Persuasion

Ed is quite insistent that he has to persuade voters to welcome and encourage climate mitigation policies before they can be enacted. Franny wondered about how the smoking ban fitted in with that analysis. Everyone in the audience wondered how the third runway fitted in with that analysis, given the overwhelming public opposition to that particular high-carbon government policy.

Post chat chat

Post chat chat

Franny and Ed sharing a quiet moment after the melee.

Team Stupid are very grateful for Ed Miliband's time and involvement. He is an affable fellow who seems to be genuinely concerned about climate change, and we suspect Britian is lucky to have him as Energy Secretary, and not someone like his predecessor John Hutton. We have high hopes that Ed might just conceivably decide climate change is worth dealing with properly, and start taking some serious policy steps towards meeting those ambitious emissions reduction targets we have signed into law.