 is not about what you think should happen but what you think will happen and I want to know if you're an optimist or a pessimist when it comes to climate change and coronavirus so I think the optimistic take is that coronavirus one has shown you know the limits of neoliberalism we've really seen the damage that it does to have a state with no capacity to respond to crises. It also has you know brought about I would hope an awareness that we as a society need to look at future risks and deal with them in the present instead of putting them up because I think many people will come to recognise that we could have foreseen a pandemic and the government didn't prepare because you know our politics is structured to only really consider short-term problems. The pessimist though says that we're going to have a massive recession what often happens in times of economic crises is that governments say we can't afford the luxury of discussing green economies and climate change what we need to do is get the economy moving as quickly as possible jobs jobs jobs and that means that we can't afford to you know tax heavily emissions we can't afford to have a green transition at this point in time because the short-term requirements which are more urgent more electorally urgent again it is is growth so I mean where do you sit on those two on the end of that spectrum? Well I think both of those are plausible positions I don't think they need necessarily evolve passively we have a role in this in determining what happens politically that is what we're supposed to do that is that is in a way what democracies live off is people's willingness to step up and say this is what we want and we don't want that so you know let's not just sit back and see what happens let's mobilise for the change we want but of course there's a real danger there's a real danger that you know they'll just try to reinvent the bad old dirty economy as quickly as they possibly can but you know I think this could be a real moment of change where we that whole story oh we can't act you know governments are really weak and powerless there's very little we can do people would never take it that story is just completely fallen apart you know just to take one example you know for years now we've been told oh what a pity about homelessness you know we would love everyone to have a home but it just can't be done you know it's a real shame and you know we the government are trying really hard but you know the homeless will always be with us suddenly pandemic hits bang everyone everyone should be housed instantly we need to find homes for everybody because otherwise they'll spread disease oh so it can be done so all those years when you were telling us it couldn't be done you were lying to us it was complete bollocks and we see that with issue after issue a whole series of issues where they say it couldn't be done we can't break austerity there's no alternative this is the only way to do governments can't borrow beyond a certain point you know we just can't do it it's impossible suddenly it's possible they think okay if it's possible for the pandemic it is possible for all the other issues that we face and we must use that knowledge again and again and again and we must constantly confront governments with it saying you said it couldn't be done but when you needed to you did it it's not a question of economics it's not a question of physics it's a question of political will and and it's us through mobilizing who must put the government in a position where it has no choice but to exercise that political will to change society for the better i'm going to bring in jay sol now who has tweeted on the hashtag tiskey sour george speaks so much sense and is incredibly eloquent thank you very much for getting him on what books would he recommend to read during lockdown oh thanks yeah um well i've been reading i've actually been reading about soil ecology i've i've my lockdown project is to learn as much as i possibly can so i've been reading some very boring textbooks on soil ecology but you know relevant to this debate um kate rayworth's donut economics you know there's a really key text i'm sure many many of your viewers have already read it um i um i mean i think there's you know a huge very interesting online literature developing very rapidly in response to the pandemic and every day now i'm coming across really fascinating stuff you know on various websites whether it's the conversation or or whether it's the forum here you know there's there's a huge amount of stuff which is tracking our evolving conversation and in a way it makes a lot of what we were discussing before almost irrelevant i mean obviously it's an underpinning but it it gives us a the sort of chance to really rethink things in an even more radical way than we were doing before i mean i'm looking at what i was writing before this and it was all sort of hopeful well i don't think we need to be hopeful anymore we can see that actually massive change can just happen just like that we can turn economies around in the six months if we need to so it's almost as if we now need a completely new literature to say we're past the age of hope we're now in the hope in in the era of of just doing it and here's what we can just do let's just do it because governments have proven that it can be done when it needs to be