Is there a future for English booths?

I agree that if interpreting is what you really want to pursue, you should go for it. As an EN booth interpreter with experience in several markets, I would say that a lot depends on where you live. I have found that the EN booth can be more in demand in non- English speaking countries as many conferences and seminars have a heavy local component, i.e. a few keynote speakers may address the gathering in English, but other talks will be in the local language. And there are organizations that do not rely on English, e.g. the OAS is based in Washington, but many delegates and employees are Spanish speakers and the EN booth works a lot. And today we hear much about there being a scarcity of EN booth interpreters, so the future may not be as bleak as some would paint it.

As far as I know there's a great deal of demand (or at least there used to be) in the EU for English mother tongue interpreters. It's mainly due to the fact the EU are facing a massive wave of retirement among their English interpreting staff

These days, no matter what career you start, you should be prepared to re-train at some point of your career. So if you're interested in interpreting, just go for it!

:-) you may want to consider doing what to most other free market booths is well nigh a must, ie develop a B language, at least retour, and man bi-active EN+whatever booths; even all-EN floor requires questions to be interpreted back into EN and everywhere the winning combination seems to be active national language+active English, so why not?

I spoke to various people in the EU English interpreting/translation departments over the past couple of weeks at conferences and they are all crying out for English native speakers - you just need to have French/German as well.