Environmentalism is a shared responsibility, Graham Hill says.

Question: Whose responsibility is the environment?

Graham Hill: I think all three of those legs of the stool, business, consumer and government; are lagging. There’s no question. This is the issue of our times.

Thousands of scientists are saying we have ten years to make major advances in this. And so all of those three groups need to push really hard forward, and I think the government’s one. Consumers and businesses probably move quicker than government in general.

It’s a long process, and part of that’s a good thing because there is a process and we try to get to a right solution. All of us need to do more, and the government can absolutely do more. They can absolutely have a big impact. On a simple level, I don’t spend a lot of time focusing on policy, but basically; the good and the bad. It’s that simple.

I believe in market economics, but I don’t believe that the market just figures it out all by itself. I think that you need to set some base rules. And I think that’s the government’s job. And so hopefully they can move quicker and quicker; the good and the bad. And that should help, and business can just follow along. And they’ll work within the rules, and consumers will do their part.

Question: Can environmentalism be more integrated into our system?

Graham Hill: Absolutely. Yeah, I think it’s not recognized. We haven’t valued it monetarily or otherwise, frankly. So I think it absolutely can be better integrated.

We just didn’t know that it mattered. Like that’s the thing. We just didn’t know that it mattered. For the last 30 or 40 years, we figured out that it does matter. And so now we’re readjusting, and we just need to push hard to adjust quickly.

Recorded on: Oct 16, 2007