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Feeling exhausted, after several pretty intense weeks. They included a trip to Lisbon, for a BCSD (Business Council for Sustainable Development) Portugal event in the Universidad Nova and then a session at the new HQ of the energy utility EDP (24-26 November).

The night I arrived, I was taken out by Fernanda Pargana (General secretary of BCSD Portgal) for a wonderful dinner at the extraordinary Pharmacia restaurant. Spoke alongside Maria Mendiluce (WBCSD Climate & Energy Manager) at both the BCSD Portugal and EDP events, at the first after her, at the second before, so we mixed it up a little.

The theme of the BSCD event was the low carbon economy, particularly appropriate given the imminence of the COP21 climate conference in Paris, which is in full swing as I write this.

Once back from Lisbon, a series of meetings and events followed, including a trip to Hill House to see the family on 28 November, the latest session of the admissions panel of the Social Stock Exchange, great sessions with Sophia Tickle and Becky Buell of Meteos and with Lisa Goldapple and Cathy Runciman of the Atlas of the Future, an evening salon hosted at Volans with some 15 people to hear Jeanne-Marie Gescher read from her new book, All Under Heaven, a fascinating meeting with Peter Wheeler of The Nature Conservancy, a key call with Lise Kingo of the UN Global Compact and a lunch with Jeremy Oppenheim of McKinsey.

Unusually, have slept for perhaps four hours today, as the wind beat about the house. Flew in last night, eventually spending a total of 8 hours travelling from St Moritz to London.

Yesterday morning, I had kicked off the 2015 UBS Global Philanthropy Forum in St Moritz, whose theme this year was ‘Daring to Innovate.’ In the opening session I was directly followed by two wonderful speakers: Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen and Ashish Thakkar of the Mara Group and Mara Foundation. Then the three of us did a delightful panel session, chaired by Caroline Anstey of UBS.

One of my slides had featured two wide angle pictures, the first of an early Wright Brothers aircraft wobbling into the skies above Kittyhawk, the second an Earthrise picture shot from the Moon. (It had seemed appropriate, given that the conference documentation started off by saying: “Some laughed when Columbus said the world was round. Others said airplanes wouldn’t get off the ground.”)

Then, on Thursday night, I had suddenly woken up to the fact that the time between that image of the Wright Stuff and the first landing on the Moon (represented here by the image of Earthrise, taken by the Anders, Borman and Lovell mission a year earlier, in 1968) was 66 years (1903 through to 1969), so in my speech I linked that to my age, noting that unimaginable, seemingly impossible things can happen inside today’s human lifespan.

I also used three slides featuring Pilar Puig of the Puig perfume and fragrances group, who I had asked a number of questions around how a 22-year-old Millennial sees the sustainability agenda.

But for me, the highlight of the St Moritz trip was one of the parallel events that followed our opening session. It was run by David Begbie of the Crossroads Foundation, based in Hong Kong.

He divided some 40 participants into two groups, the ‘Alphas’ and ‘Betas’. Each was schooled separately in their particular cultures, languages and customs. When they came back together, mutual incomprehension was pretty much guaranteed. Disorienting, at times very funny, and deeply educational.

I was allocated to the Beta group, which was mercantile, with intense trading of different coloured cards, and assiduous keeping of scores. The other group turned out to be more touchy-feely – and constantly asked how one’s father or grandfather was. (A reference to the source of much of the wealth for philanthropists.)

Uniquely in the group, I discovered that I couldn’t play the game. I found my brain totally refusing to learn the trading rules or the linguistic code. Instead, I sat to one side, outside the process, observing the groups form and interact.

Talking it through with David afterwards, I mused that I had often felt an outsider in life and in work, though I was generally comfortable with that. And this has often helped me move between communities of interest without getting totally seduced by the ideologies of any particular group.

I had suspected that this experiential session would be taxing, which is why I signed up for it, but I had no idea of just how challenging I would find it. That said, David described some of the other sessions that they have done, which sound a lot more taxing.

In one, they had UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (and his bodyguard) take part in a particularly intense immersion simulation, where they were in a setting designed to resemble an Afghan house, where participants were welcomed by a local; headman in Afghan.

This man warned that they would have to leave soon, because of impending threats. Promptly there was the sound of helicopters, stun grenades were thrown into the house and uniformed soldiers broke in with guns. Everyone, including the Secretary-General, ended up on the floor. The bodyguard’s hand was not far from his own gun.

… and now back to bed.

 

 

I can’t even begin to describe the acceleration of events in 2016. Have described it to people coming through the office as a bit like being strapped to a rocket.

A key part of this has been our new 2-year program with the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), but it has also coincided with a range of other projects, including the beginning of a relationship with the new Global Commission on Business and Sustainable Development (GCBSD).

Among  milestone moments in recent weeks was a visit with Elaine to the British Museum to see the Celts exhibition, subtitled Art and Identity. Stunning. On the way out, we wandered across to the Rosetta Stone, by far my favourite object in the BM.

With change in the air, we have been transforming bits of 1 Cambridge Road, creating a new study for Elaine in Gaia’s old bedroom. So we trekked across to John Lewis on the 26th to get a desk, chair and light. On the way there, or perhaps back, we passed the Fine Art Society in Bond Street, and on the spur of the moment ducked in to see an exhibition by Bartholomew Beal.

It was love at first sight, at least when it came to an enormous painting of his, The Eldest Have Borne the Most. Couldn’t help myself – bought it, though waited until Gaia and Hania had been to see it, too.

The image, part of a series of paintings based on King Lear, has endless elements that chime with aspects of my life: a eucalyptus-like forest background, very much like stained glass (a long-standing fetish of mine); a central figure very much like John St John, who Elaine worked with at Heinemann decades ago; the Green Man-like crown; the swirling elements being orchestrated (the story of my working life); the magic carpet; the sense of nature being ‘started’ by science and technology, symbolised by the two birds; and so on.

The next day, the 27th, kicked off with a breakfast meeting at Veolia’s HQ, where I chaired a debate for Outstanding (they work with the LGBT community and allies) featuring Unilever chairman Paul Polman. He really is a phenomenon, stunningly impressive. The invitation came via Ori Chandler, who worked with me at SustainAbility, back in the day.

On February 1st, Gaia, Hania, Jake, Pul and I helped celebrate Elaine’s 69th birthday at the Soho restaurant, Quo Vadis. A glorious evening. We were sitting right by the stained glass windows. And it was quiet enough that my tinnitus/hyperacusis problem wasn’t an issue.

Then, among a blizzard of other meetings with people like Cathy Runciman and Oriol Soler of the Atlas of the Future, Solitaire Townsend (to whom I owe the ‘Meerkat Moment’ phrase in a caption above, by which she meant we are at a juncture where a raft of opportunities seem to be coming our way) and Matt Sexton of Futerra, and Thomas Ermacora of Machines Room, it was time for me to take the train south to Folkestone, where Julie Hirigoyen of the UK Green Building Council and I were picked up by a car and driven through Dover to the amazing Pines Calyx conference centre. My session seemed to go very well.

On the way back to the station, the taxi driver (Simon) took me to see the Battle of Britain memorial at Capel-le-Ferne, which I had wanted to see ever since it was opened. Walked around it more of less on my own, and was moved to see Tim’s name on the scroll of honour. Simon’s father, it soon turned out, was a former navigator in a Wellington bomber, so inevitably we talked about Barnes Wallis and geodesic design.

Out of the melée of events in recent days, another that stands out was a breakfast meeting (there seem to be a fair few of these, these days) with UBS’s wealth management people. This followed on from a session I did for them in St Moritz late last year. it looks as thought the conversation will continue.

Then, earlier this evening, and the proximate trigger for this blog, we watched a quite remarkable pair of TV programmes. The first was the second part of Iain Stewart’s How Earth Made Us on BBC4. The first episode had been on seismic fault lines and how civilisation often sprang up alongside them, sometimes with disastrous consequences, as with Thera and Crete.

Interesting to see why Cyprus was an island of copper, and of other mineral resources. This latest episode was on water. All of which put me in mind of learning about hydraulic civilisations while doing Sociology at the University of Essex, back in the 1960s.

The second programme this evening, on Channel 4, was by Tori Herridge – entitled Walking Through Time. Unbelievably interesting – on the science that shows that the White Cliffs of Dover were created by a mega-flood some 450,000 years ago, when a massive glacial lake breached a chalk land-bridge that once connected Britain to the continent.

Uncomfortably topical in the light of the impending vote on whether the UK should stay in the European Union  …