News filtering through over the weekend – and reported again today – that a number of prominent business leaders have found their voice over the proposed third runway at Heathrow, is proof positive that there is some emergent sanity in an increasingly insane and illogical, re-trenching world.
At a time where there is a real danger, on both sides of the Atlantic, of a retreat towards the polarising politics of vested interest among both employers and employees, it is refreshing to see a number break ranks from those who have otherwise imposed upon them the ‘conventional wisdom’ of business, that is certainly conventional but rarely wise.
I sit on both the London Council of the CBI and the same group’s Climate Change Taskforce. Over the past fifteen months, I have been struck by the number of refreshingly sensible and occasionally radical thinkers among the suits. It is genuinely encouraging to see them (and their peers) now raise their concerns in the public domain. My sense is that they are not alone; that momentum can (and should) be built from here; and that, in time, the incontrovertible logic of environmental need will defeat the lazy economics of more.
Maybe the vacuum of leadership is at last being filled. Green shoots of thinking, maybe, if not yet those of economic recovery? I firmly believe that there is certainly more to come, as confidence breeds confidence and that these sensible sages of business now realise that they really are not alone. They can help catalyze a genuine Citizen Renaissance.
