Reducing the working week would not just tackle inequality, it would give us the time to think about what we do with our lives.
In his Guardian column this week, Aditya Chakrabortty wrote how workers are becoming slaves to routine, with only a lucky few still possessing any real autonomy. It's time that we changed the way we work.
Ruth Potts
2 September 2010
First Name:
Ruth
Surname:
Potts
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Campaign Co-ordinator, The Great Transition
The world's biggest banks are starting to realise that dirty investments make very bad press.
The Camp for Climate Action outside the headquarters of Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh
does not so far seem to have shifted the subsidised bank in a more greener
direction.
They
are still subsidising the polluting business of extracting oil from tar sands,
just as they are financing the oil and gas extraction that is accelerating
global warming – and just as they were before the bank nosedived.
Quarter of the way in, we are perhaps further from holding back the warming tide than when we began. But there is still time.
Twenty five months ago, working with my colleague, a climate
scientist, Dr Victoria Johnson, and others, I decided to find out how
long it would take before, on the best data available, we would begin
to cross red lines where climatic instability and extremes were
concerned. A quarter of that time has now passed.
My experience at TEDGlobal reminded me that our prospects for making a Great Transition to a just and sustainable economy will depend upon us become better storytellers.