The Road to Ecotopia

Alejandro interviewed Cineforum mapping of the Road to Ecotopia 

Spent the day at Cineforum’s ‘Road to Ecotopia’ event at the old St Luke’s office building, 22 Duke’s Road, just across the road from Euston Station – and literally round the corner from where, pretty much exactly 35 years ago, I walked out of the UCL School of Environmental Studies, having completed my M.Phil., and into my first real job, with TEST. Wonderful gathering of tribes – and a strange sense of more great wheels of fortune turning and starting out on new cycles.

With around 150 people, this was one of the most enjoyable events I have been to in a long time, organised by Jobeda Ali and James Parr – and with the backing of organisations like Tomorrow’s Company, IDEO, SustainAbility and Volans. Alejandro (Litovsky) led an all-day session on the biosphere, which I kicked off in – but then flitted from session to session as a ‘Honeybee’, my duty to cross-pollinate. Wonderful to see people like Hunter Lovins again, though kissing her hat is a navigational challenge.

Among the initiatives spotlighted was Hopenhagen, which I joined up with a while back – and whose passport idea was dreamed up by Alejandro’s sister. One of my favourite sessions was up in Nest 3, led by Louis Savy of Sci-Fi-London, which organises the London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film. Also very struck by the visualization work of Jonathan Arnold – and by a session on China led by Andrew Leung.

The day ended with a session in which Hazel Henderson and Fritjof Capra beamed in from the US, with Hazel using the opportunity to launch a new Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard, which tracks private investment in companies growing the green economy globally. “This new, never before reported number, showing $1,248,740,645,993.00 (over $1.248 trillion) in total investment since 2007, indicates how investors and entrepreneurs are leading governments in promoting sustainable growth,” she noted.  

The scoreboard totals investments in solar, wind, geothermal, ocean/hydro, energy efficiency and storage, and agriculture. It purposefully omits nuclear, “clean coal,” carbon capture and sequestration, and biofuels.  It indicates which investments have been publically announced and committed by major companies for 2010 and beyond.

Niels Peter Flint Louis Savy Biosphere session Ideacomb