John Elkington

Up early and down to Southampton with Richard on crowded train. Happily he had kept a seat for me on way out from Waterloo to Clapham Junction. Then took Red Jet ferry to Cowes for our meeting with Andrew Morlet, Joss Blèriot and Clare Mucklow of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. delighted to see a seal on the waterfront as we looked for somewhere to have what turned out to be fish and chips.

Great session, after which we headed back towards the ferry. As we walked, I caught a glimpse in a gallery window of a photograph I had seen before in the media or books, and we ducked inside. Proved to be a 1911 Beken photograph of the Susanne – and apparently iconic. Bought a print.

Then was so preoccupied with manoeuvring the print out of the taxi back at the rail station that I left my camera on the back seat. Once home, it wasn’t at first clear where I had left it: on the ferry, in the taxi, in a café at the station, on the train. In any event, several phone calls and an email finally tracked it down via the cab company.

[And, as luck would have it, I was able to pick it up from the delightful driver the following week when in Hampshire on holiday. First time I had been in Southampton for decades. I was first there in the early 1960s to sail from Hamble on the Sperling (yacht appropriated from the Germans at the end of WWII: only facts I can find out about it now are here) with my father, then in the ENDS days am pretty sure I visited Exxon Chemicals at Hythe.]

Just back from first trip to Ivory Coast, courtesy of Nestlé, for their seventh Creating Shared Value Forum, this time in Abidjan. Fascinating opportunity to view shared value and sustainability agendas from an African perspective.

Celebrated my birthday near Yamoussoukro on Friday, but was feeling pretty grim about the prospects of Brexit. Something in my bones. Various people argued that the world’s stock exchanges are the best predictors of outcomes, showing me screens of green histograms based on positive ‘Remain’ outcomes then thought very likely, but I confess I was existentially agitated.

And when we deplaned at Paris this morning, en route to London, the catastrophic news thundered through. One of those moments one will always remmed,her, like hearing of JFK’s assassination.

Have been  stunned for much of the time since I got back, using things like the petition for a second referendum (which passed the 3 million signatures mark today, though there are some questions about whether non-UK citizens have also been signing up) as a way of maintaining some sort of forward momentum.

And have also been working since getting back on the report for the Business & Sustainable Development Commission, with Jacqueline (Lim) and Lorraine (Smith). At least that is going well.

The Brexit result is the result of too many factors for simple discussion here, but the split between old and young has been striking. I sent a note to David Grayson this afternoon, recalling the work we did some years back on ageing, politics and sustainability.

One motivating factor in that project was a concern that the greying of populations would shift the centre of gravity towards conservatism, slowing or stalling progress on sustainable development. And it looks as if we have now arrived in exactly that dystopia.

I talked to my mother, Pat, today. She and Tim, now in their mid-90s, both voted for Brexit. I was trying to understand why. Part of the answer is a lack of faith in experts. But I think that’s camouflage. I did a tweet yesterday about the need, if 90-year-olds are to be allowed to vote in future, for the voting age to be lowered to 16. It got a fair few retweets.

Did Boris Johnson have any idea that this might happen? He looked shell-shocked early on, with some media reports suggesting he is frightened of young people’s reactions, as well he should be. Glib politicking has led to a result which is deadly dangerous for younger people, whatever Johnson may say about a glorious future. (Not just in the loss of opportunities, but the likelihood that a weakened UK and EU will be easier to manipulate by malign forces in the wider world.) For Boris, I suspect, the PM’s job would be a toxic chalice for years to come.

In any event, on the upside, here are some images from a fascinating trip to the Ivory Coast – though it is already beginning to feel a lifetime away:

Lovely evening at the WeWork space on  the South Bank, where I had walked from the office. Lovely evening to be out and about. Visit originally organised so I could meet Charly and Lisa Kleissner of the KL Felicitas Foundation, who are staying at the Mondrian Hotel, next door, but they and and I had talked at Michelin House after the Social Stock Exchange meeting this afternoon. Still, a lovely chance to sit in the setting sun with Sam, Richard and Katie Hill of B Lab UK, over a glass or two of beer.

I didn’t expect to buy anything when we went to the private view of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition today. But this image by Ian Chamberlain caught my eye. (Also love his images of old Thames Estuary flak forts.)

In the early 1970s, I was enthralled by geodesic design and architecture, with our bookshelves still crammed with books by Buckminster Fuller, Stewart Brand and others on the theme. Had breakfast with Bucky himself in Reykjavik 40 years ago and served as a judge for the Buckminster Fuller Institute in recent years.

So, though it’s obvious once you think of it, the idea that his glitteringly high tech work would eventually fall into ruin was something of a provocation. So I bought the original of Dome 1, as a reminder of the perils of technological obsession.

Then this evening, as I was shutting down for the day, I came across an interesting piece on CNN.com about the work of Gerard O’Neill, another major influence on my thinking some 3-4 years after I began working on city planning at UCL in 1972.

O’Neill did his work in Mountain View during 1975, where we were on a mission a couple of months back, visiting Singularity University. His three options at the time for NASA space habitats: the Bernal Sphere, the Toroidal Colony and the Cylindrical Colony. None of them yet built, but they would make fascinating ruins.

And speaking of ruins, we then headed across to the British Museum to see their Sunken Cities exhibition. Spellbinding – can’t wait to go back. And all the mentions of Osiris put me in mind of the first article I ever wrote for New Scientist, also in 1975, which was called ‘Beware The Wrath of Osiris.’