Robin McAlpine, former director of Commonweal, talks to us about “Our Common Home – a Green Deal for Scotland”. 

This is the first of our 2020 Climate Emergency Series of Interviews on the IndyLive Morning Show. The background to this is of course the global climate emergency. How we can adapt and mitigate its likely effects in Scotland. And how we need to take responsibility for our environmental impact elsewhere in the world.

Robin talks about the understandable ecological grief that climate campaigners and researchers experience but also describes how engaging with how we can fix it has turned that emotionally around for him. 

We talk about how the plan came about and who has been involved. One of Robin’s main emphases is that what we do to fulfil the plan needs done well. We can’t just do it piecemeal. We need Clyde-Built standards again.

We get into a bit reminiscing about improvements in washing machines over the past 50 years. Robin can remember twin tubs but hosts Val and Marlene can remember helping our grannies with her mangle. But the point is that there is no such thing as waste, just bad use of resources. We become accustomed to built-in obsolescence and that needs to end.

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