John Elkington

Brilliant Noise (still) Black Noise (still)

Thanks to Gaia’s invitation, Elaine, she and I enjoyed the BFI ‘In the Shadow of the Sun’ panel discussion this evening, focusing on our brilliant neighbouring star. Among those taking part in the panel was Danny Boyle, who Gaia works for, and whose 2007 film Sunshine – in which the modest challenge is to re-ignite the Sun – was due to be shown later in the evening.

Others taking part in the panel, chaired by Dr Adam Rutherford of Nature, were Professor Brian Cox (whose recent BBC series ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ we loved), Honor Harger (Director of the Lighthouse in Brighton and one one half of the duo Radioqualia) and Dr Lucie Green of UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, who works with NASA and the Japanese Space Agency. 

Among the highlights were brief showings of two films, Brilliant Noise and Black Rain, the second of which I had seen recently a glimpse of in a London museum. I still have in my study the Global transistor radio, made in Japan, which I used to listen to at night under my pillow at Bryanston, tuning into Radio Luxembourg to hear the likes of the Spencer Davis Group with Keep on Running and the Mamas & the Papas with California Dreamin’ – which must make it 1965-66.

I well remember the hiss and static when you switched between stations, particularly in short-wave, and now found that some of the noise I was listening to was the radio roar of the Sun. Some amazing sounds of space from Honor and imagery of the sun from Lucie, including this sequence of a giant charged cloud the Sun sent hurtling our way earlier in the month, taken from the Hinode mission.

A couple of things that stick in my memory: Lucie Green saying that she was getting to know the Sun in all its wavelengths, and Honor Harger talking about an attempt to make a perfume that spoke of the Sun, one that was slightly metallic, smelled of ozone, and made the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, like an oncoming storm.

Oh, and the passion with which Danny Boyle spoke of the Humphrey Jennings book Pandaemonium, in which scientists (before the age of electricity) tried to understand what had happened when a shepherd was struck by a bolt of lightning, that killed many of his sheep but left him apparently intact.

 

Although what was meant to be a week of holiday has been gobbled up by a project for WWF International, I have managed to sneak in some other reading around the edges – and yesterday finished Philip Kerr‘s wonderful Bernie Gunther novel, If the Dead Rise Not. First time I can recollect reading a book that was both a prequel to earlier novels in a series – and that then goes on to extend the story. Have read all the Gunthers to date – and love the style and atmospheres conjured, be it in Germany, Argentina or Cuba. Saw this morning that he’s speaking at the Edinburgh Festival – wish I was going to be there.

Seem to have been quiet for a while, though have been doing a little on Twitter (@Volandia), Facebook and LinkedIn. Main reason has been that late last week, just as I was about to start a long-planned break this week, with Sam also away in Rio, a request came in from WWF International for a quick survey of where the NGO world seems to be headed. Quite a challenge, but have been consulting with a range of people around the world and getting some wonderful personal assessments of where things are–and where they may be headed. Should have an advanced draft ready late today to send to WWF this evening, with the final version due late Friday. More anon, I’m sure.

President Piñera has the Power

Nice to see Chilean President Sebastián Piñera brandishing our book The Power of Unreasonable People, though he has a complicated history, it seems. This was an event organised by our favourite Chilean social enterprise, Recycla, who feature in the book.

Source: Met Office

Often, the future asks the past why it couldn’t see what was in front of its nose? After a rather frantic time week, I have been working at home today, focusing on a challenge we face in Singapore and on the follow-up to our Biosphere Economy project. In the process, it kept being borne in on me that apparently disconnected events in today’s world would look very different through tomorrow’s lenses.  

Take the devastating drought and fires currently impacting Russia. Many people will think that this is something solely for the Russians, while others may feel that there is a measure of poetic justice for a country that has been pretty recalcitrant on climate change – believing that it will be advantaged as the warming trend opens up northern areas to farming and minerals extraction.

But the evidence is that what is happening in Russia is going to have a pretty immediate impact on the lives of millions of people living elsewhere, not least through food prices. As the Financial Times reports today on its front page, wheat prices have risen faster than at any time since 1973 as the implications of the lost grain production in Russia are factored into markets.

And then there is what is happening in Pakistan, with devastating floods – all of which may look disconnected from what is happening in Russia and from what will happen in the future. The BBC reports that 2.5 million people have already been affected in Pakistan. While all of this may seem a long way off for those of us on the other side of the world, the implications for our security and for future would look a great deal clearer from the perspective of someone looking back from, say, 2030.

I don’t know whether the sort of mapping that Google Earth is now offering – or the mapping developed by agencies like the UK Met Office – will help people see what is increasingly before their eyes, but somehow I doubt it. Too much else is before our eyes in the same moment – and the sorts of trajectories our climate may now be on are totally outside our experience. 

Someone asked me yesterday whether I was an optimist – and, truth be told, I am, but in the context of the sort of analysis offered by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse. Whereas Adolf Hitler thought that the Third Reich would last 1,000 years, and the architects of the British Empire probably dreamed of something for similar for the pink-painted areas of the globe, my sense is that we will get increasingly used to seeing images of the globe with swelling yellow, orange and red zones showing the areas where global warming – or heating, as some suggest it should not be called – is steadily bringing our planet to the boil.

I shared a platform earlier late last week with Lord Giddens, at an event held in the National Liberal Club, and his odyssey into climate science in recent years (as an open-minded non-scientist) made me wish every business and political leader could spend a day with him. There were still one or two climate skeptics in the room, which made me wonder whether in a decade or two such people will have converted or gone underground, for fear of meeting with rough justice? One question that has been in my mind for some time is whether there could be some form of retrospective justice, perhaps an Ecological Crimes Tribunal, with the criminalisation – even demonisation – of today’s climate-deniers?