John Elkington

With police helicopter hovering overhead

Forum 1 Forum 2: me, Sam, Alex (Nick) Forum 3: me, Sam, Alex

Across this evening to the Forum for the Future Christmas party, co-hosted by Interbrand in the Strand. A police helicopter hovered overhead, its spotlight beaming down towards Trafalgar Square, where the student protests were continuing – huge numbers had streamed past our office during the afternoon, down Southampton Row. very much struck by the fact that those who founded and led the environmental movement decades back are now moving into the mainstream, while a new angry generation is surfacing in the streets.

Artistic sit-in

Animated audience Fill our minds Occupied

Spoke at a Royal College of Arts ‘Sustain Talks III’ session, with Michael Pawlyn and John Grant, moderated by Joe Kerr–and with a fascinating opening presentation by James Wignall. Very lively. Toss-up as to whether we spoke in the conference room or in the area that the students were occupying: in the end, we did it in the conference room, but had a drink with the occupying students afterwards.

And of Hyde Park

Hyde Park 1 Hyde Park 2 Hyde Park 3

We went to a private view in Shepherd’s Market of Alan Kingsbury’s paintings. Elaine had bought a painting called Rover on the Riva. Walked back to Hyde Park Corner, stopping to admire the memorials and general statuary.

Companies helping stabilize the climate

Began to get tweets early this morning about the launch of the Gigaton Awards in Cancun, Mexico, for which I had been one of the judges.

The Gigaton Awards, developed by Sir Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, are based on the Gigaton Throwdown project, launched in 2007, at the Clinton Global Initiative by Sunil Paul. The project encourages entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers to grow companies that stabilize the climate.

The Awards recognize individual companies across six major sectors for their leadership in emissions reductions and sustainable practices. A pool of 28 nominees across six major sectors was selected based on quantitative data indicating emissions reductions on an annual basis. The six sectors include consumer discretionary, consumer staples, energy, industrials, telecommunications and utilities.

The 2010 nominees included The Coca-Cola Company, Siemens Wind, Vodafone Group, Anheuser- Busch, Sony Corporation, GDF Suez, and 3M (see the attached appendix for a full list of nominees). Each winner goes home with an elegant Gigaton Award trophy, exclusively designed by renowned artist – Yves Behar. The winner of the top award, the Gigaton Prize, will keep the award until its handed off to next year’s winner.

The Gigaton winners and their sectors are: Suzlon (Energy), Vodafone Group (Telecommunications), Reckitt Benckiser Group (Consumer Staples), Nike (Consumer Discretionary), 3M (Industrials) and GDF Suez (Utilities). For more details, see here.

And Ale’s last day

Poster for Monsters Church Road Richmond Park Stag Elaine Lower lake, still under ice

Strange sense building this week that 2011 is going to take off like a rocket – almost as if Volans is in the process of casting off the booster rockets of its first two-and-a-half years and headed for a new trajectory. The sense of a watershed was in part created by the snow that swept across the country this week, partly by the tempo of requests for our involvement in interesting projects and partly, sadly, by the team’s celebration of Al(jandro Litovsky’s) last day with us. He’s planning to set up a not-for-profit organisation focused on earth security, in effect our first spin-out. More anon.

On Friday, Gaia asked us to go to a viewing of Gareth Edwards’ new film, Monsters, which she had seen ages ago when it was still in production – and had loved. I did, too: quite remarkable, even if you didn’t know that it was made on the proverbial shoe-string. Sadly, I missed a joint get-together of the Volans and SustainAbility teams, but I think/hope there’s another before Christmas.

Picked up a new pair of glasses (spectacles) yesterday, late evening, and walked through a Barnes transformed, with all the snow gone, even if the Pond still sported quite a layer of ice. As we walked through Richmond Park, there was still ice in parts, but the sun was bright and it felt good to be alive. Have been working flat-out on a secret project – and it was wonderful just to be able to stretch my legs and breathe real air.