John Elkington

Completely blown away by The Hive in Kew Gardens, which Elaine and I visited on Tuesday, with the same sort of rain falling that swamped Farnborough when I was there the previous day.

Obviously something of a must-see in my new role as Chief Pollinator, but also a chance to walk around and through the latest expression of geodesic architecture – a field I have been fascinated by since the 1960s.

Over the decades, I have closely tracked (and in some cases met) people like Buckminster Fuller, John Todd (back in his New Alchemy Institute days) and Michael Pawlyn, the last of whom did the domes for Tim Smit’s Eden Project. (Wonderfully, Tim has been a member of the Volans Advisory Board since  the outset.)

Also took me back to when I was planning to start beekeeping – and Kerry Effingham had given me a couple of hives and a honey extractor from her late uncle’s estate. Problem was that, even then, I was travelling too much to make sense of it all.

But I am rarely happier than in the  company of bees – something that was once again borne in on my as I sat having a drink in Gaia’s North London garden on Wednesday, with honeybees whizzing all about en route to her intertwined hydrangea and passion flower vine.

The Hive was designed by UK based artist Wolfgang Buttress, originally as the centrepiece of the UK Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. It was inspired by research into the health of bees – which is increasingly precarious.

Made from thousands of pieces of aluminium formed into a cole, swirling lattice, The Hive is fitted with hundreds of LED lights that pulse and fade as the soundtrack hums and buzzes all around. These elements of the installation are responding to the real-time activity of bees in a beehive at Kew.

There were masses of children and young people being shepherded around the gardens in the rain – but I extracted a good deal of pleasure from the thought that at least some of them would be stimulated to explore the intertwined worlds of bees, pollination, ecology, geodesics and engineering.

Oddly, at times it was almost like watching other people wandering around in my own head. Then, later in the week, I read two things, totally unrelated, that put me back in mind of this idea of people walking around my mind.

The first was Ramez Naam’s extraordinary book Nexus, the first in a trilogy, which I have just begun. This is about a psychedelic nanodrug drug of the 2040s, Nexus, that creates ‘hive minds’ in people. Intriguing that the first mention of hive minds, on page 62, comes from a secret agent called Sam, given that Sam (Lakha) gave me both Nexus and Crux for recent my birthday.

Then, yesterday, The Times ran a story on David Bowie (‘A peepshow into the art of Bowie’), recalling one of  Bowie’s songs, Andy Warhol. The lyrics ran as follows: “Put a peephole in my brain, Two new pence to have a go, I’d like to be a gallery, Put you all inside my show.”

I can’t claim to know what was going on in the minds either of Bowie or Buttress, but there was something about The Hive that really did feel like other people buzzing around and through at least part of my brain. Can’t wait to go again.

In a serendipitous, synchronous way, an invitation to an event on the ‘Airport of 2050’ had followed a few days after we had an expression of interest from India in our helping inject sustainability principles into a new airport project. So today I took the train south to Farnborough for a Helios event timed to coincide with the 2016 Air Show.

The event proved extremely helpful – and I met a number of people I’d certainly want to follow up with if the project materialises. But the overall impression left by Farnborough and what is billed as the “World’s Greatest Air Show,” was decidedly mixed.

To begin with, trains from London were standing room only, with many people unable to board the train before the one I finally managed to catch. Then when we arrived at Farnborough main station, there were ever-extending lines of hundreds of people waiting for busses to the Air Show. When we finally managed to board an over-heated double-decker, Americans behind me were commenting how shambolic Britain can be at its worst.

Then the shambolism really got into gear. Traffic went glacial, then froze solid. We sat on the bus for what seemed like a lifetime – and then there was a palace revolt. Growing numbers of us insisted on getting off and walking. Only to find that the yellow jacketed marshals were clueless as to the local geography, so little or no help when asked how to get to Hercules Way, which is where I was headed in the drizzle.

Arriving at Helios, I found the reception table still lined with unclaimed badges. The traffic jam had stopped any further busses getting back to the station. I confess I was already wondering whether Farnborough deserved to host such an event? (The Financial Times said a few days back that the Air Show is one of the residual major events the UK hosts – and a rare opportunity to shine …)

Well, thankfully, the Helios event shone – and I learned a good deal. But after a few flypasts, which we watched from picture windows directly overlooking the airfield, the storm clouds closed in – and virtually monsoon-style rain began to fall.

It struck me as I watched the downpour that this could be seen as an earnest of the impact of climate change on tomorrow’s aviation industry. One participant had noted that a warmer atmosphere would mean that planes will experience less lift on take-off, so runways will have to be extended, increasing airport footprints in several dimensions.

Soon the carpark outside, which sported a surprising number of BMWs, was inundated. Guest marquees were also flooded – and the organisers apparently had to switch off the electrics to avert barbecuing the delegates. No sense here of contingency planning.

The air show was promptly curtailed, then cancelled. I decided to head home. I told the cab driver that it had taken me 90 minutes to do the 10-minutes journey from the station earlier in  the day. He laughed. Then we ran into the same problems on the return leg. This time it still took over an hour, with floods extending across the road in front of a BMW dealership. The driver said this had happened several times before, but nothing was ever done.

I love aircraft and am fascinated by the future potential of technology in this space. It was a privilege to take part in the Helios event. But I did leave wondering whether this post-Brexit downpour potentially heralded a great unravelling in the UK and its key industries.

The people happiest about Brexit are the losers in the modern world, it often seems, or those who are now parasitic on the system via their pensions, whereas those most upset are those who actually have to earn a living in this modern world of ours.

In addition to the growing competitive pressures from other parts of the world in the aerospace and airport sectors, we will also see growing pressures from intensifying climate chaos – of which today was a small taster.

On the train back to London, which seemed to tiptoe between stations, like something out of an old Flanders & Swann song, The Slow Train, missing several stations that were scheduled, many people were again standing all the way.

David Cameron was in Farnborough today, too, talking about the British economy. “It’s great to be back here,” he said, “because this is the right place to talk about the future for the British economy. Why? Because in the new situation we face, we are going to need to play to our strengths. And the British aerospace industry is clearly one of those greatest strengths.”

If we want the rest of the world to see and believe that, we – and Farnborough in particular – really are going to have to pull up our collective flying socks.

 

On the way home from Buckler’s Hard, we stopped off in Fordingbridge, then drove on to Hale to see Phil Agland and his family. I worked with him and Nigel Tuersely at the Earthlife Foundation in the 1980s – an astonishingly innovative and entrepreneurial organisation, whose ambitions ultimately, sadly, outran its resources. But think of it as like a neutron star, seeding the universe the universe with the building blocks of future life.

But one of the great learning experiences of my life – and a precursor to SustainAbility, where Julia Hailes and I (with help from Tom Burke) took a couple of projects we had been working on while with Earthlife, Green Pages and The Green Consumer Guide.

Earlier in the summer, we had gone to the BAFTA-hosted premiere of Phil’s new TV series, China: Between Clouds and Dreams, the subject of a blog on 7 June. The series, ominously if accurately, is sub-titled ‘China’s Silent Spring’.

A lovely lunch with Phil, Ana and Lara, then a long ramble with Phil alongside the River Avon, the Hampshire one. At one point we stood in the same place by the river for perhaps half an hour, watching schools of large trout and clouds of small fry. What a pleasure to see such a healthy river.

We were shadowed by a herd of white cattle whose muzzles seemed to have been dipped into squid ink. They became rather raucous at moments, but nothing that a firm voice and raised hands couldn’t stall.

An afternoon of buzzards, warblers, kestrels, sandpipers, swans and the like, though in some cases only one of the kind. One of the most heartwarming afternoons I’ve had in a long time.

Then, as we were driving back to London along the M3, I spotted a set of Iron Age fortifications to the left. Heart soared. Sadly, I knew, the area was also the locus of the battles to stop motorway building in the UK, in this case the battle of Twyford Down. Gaia was involved in later battles around the Newbury Bypass and the M77 in Scotland, and was briefly imprisoned for her pains.

But what a joy to see St Catherine’s Hill, even if there are nearby Plague Pits. Would love to walk over the fortifications at some point, to see the wildlife and contemplate what our motorways will look like 1,000 years or so from today.

Will that landscape be bright with insect life and birdsong, or will Rachel Carson‘s projections have finally come home to roost? Phil asked me whether I am optimistic or pessimistic?

The only answer has to be both, with the (mythical) ostrich-like reflexes of British voters recently giving little assurance that this country (or the wider world) can raise its eyes from the immediate moment to distant horizons. Which raises the question what the next generation’s equivalent of the Canary Girls will find themselves doing.

But extraordinary times can call forth extraordinary leaders – and extraordinary leadership. So, as Churchill engagingly put it, we must K.B.O. Keep Buggering On.

After a somewhat uneven time at the Mill at Gordleton, we drove across to Buckler’s Hard for several days, staying at the Master Builder’s Hotel. The extraordinary history of the Hard left me slightly dizzy.

The fact that among many other ships built on the slipways here were HMS Euryalus, HMS Switftsure and HMS Agamemnon, all of which fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, is remarkable.

As often seems to be the way of such things, the master builder, Henry Adams, died shortly before news of Admiral Nelson’s victory came in. Intriguingly, the foreshore is now to be the subject of an archaeological dig. Would love to have watched, even mucked in.

Enjoyed the Museum. Moved again by the story of the SS Persia, sunk without warning by the U-38 in 1915, which I had read about years ago. Particularly captivated, again, by the story of Eleanor Thornton. She was thought to have been the model for the Rolls-Royce emblem, the Spirit of Ecstasy.

But another object that will live on in my memory is the replica of a Puckle Gun. This primitive machine gun came in two editions. The first firing round bullets, designed to kill Christians, the other firing square bullets, designed to kill Muslims. The patent claimed that the effect would be to “convince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilization”.

Good luck there.

In the context of the Chilcot Inquiry report into the Bush/Blair adventure in Iraq, published while we were staying at Buckler’s Hard, this extraordinary weapon – never used in anger, apparently – had particular resonance.

Drove to New Forest yesterday, to escape at least some of the post-Brexit madness. But can’t keep from buying papers and tracking BBC and CNN coverage to see what latest crazinesses have happened.

Came to a place called the Mill at Hordleton, only to find it full of people with tattoos and, this morning, suffering a sewage leak somewhere at the back of the ground floor.

Escaped later to Keyhaven and walked along the shingle spit to Hurst Castle, which was interesting, if profoundly ugly and deeply utilitarian. The original Tudor construction is almost totally swamped by the 19th century battery extensions. As we walked towards the structure, I commented that it looked like a prison – a role it served in the 1700s, we found out later.

Nice chat with a John Churchill from Banbury area as we walked the shingle, an angler who had been after black bream, bass and mackerel (though they haven’t yet arrived, he said).

Fascinated to see the sea cabbage, which I tasted and found delicious. Picked up one of scores of cuttlefish bones (or cuttlebones) scattered along the foreshore, struck by the complex layering – as if the thing had been 3-D printed.

The car-park back at Keyhaven was full of vintage cars, which had me wondering whether the British Isles, post-Brexit, will settle back into its dotage as an open-air museum.

Can’t help myself tweeting on the subject. Seeing Boris Johnson carping on today on  the front page of the Daily Telegraph about the need for the Government to spell out the good sides of Brexit, I tweeted an invitation to him to start the short-list – on the back of a business card.