Journal

Elaine and I walked around the Oslo Opera House twice today, once in full sunlight, once in the twilight.  What an astounding building it is.  Photos will follow when I have a certain cable to hand.

BI, interior Blurred shot of Elaine and Joel (Bakan), en route to our session

Met Bill McKibben today, after being blown away by his presentation on the 350 campaign. Resolved to get both Volans and SustainAbility involved, if it kills me. Then did the session at BI, the management school, with Joel Bakan, who I first met some time ago when I chaired a discussion panel at the London premiere of his film, The Corporation. Great fun.

Introducing my session, I spotlighted Jorgen Randers, who had kicked off the event, as a “dinosaur”, in the sense that 1972’s Limits to Growth study had been seminal in my evolution, a mere 37 years ago. He got an ovation. Then, to spread the insults around, I noted that Elaine and I just realised that today was our wedding anniversary – another ovation.

Last night, Joel and his wife Rebecca played guitar (him) and sang (her) at the US Embassy, where many of us had repaired for dinner. They hugely endeared themselves to me by doing one of my favourite Grace Slick/Jefferson Airplane songs.

After our Summit debate, Joel and I did a session with students. Then on to the British Embassy for a reception, where we were treated – among other things – to a rap band and a duet playing Tchaikovsky. 

Jan-Olaf at the wheel Elderly couple cut across our bow Andreas takes the wheel A sight that would once have struck terror Vikings

A second yachting venture, this time in the opposite direction, to retrieve two anchors that Jan-Olaf had lost on a previous voyage. He had called in heavy-duty help, in the shape of Odd Fellow II and a diver, who soon found the first anchor, in nine metres of water, but discovered that the second had gone at least 50 metres down, and could well be irretrievable. Later, when we got back, Elaine spotted a yacht called Volans: then she and I headed across to the Hotel Bristol, ahead of the Sustainability Summit tomorrow.

Odd Fellow II Wave on the waves Volans

Windowsill Breakfast Implements Deck of the Inspired Elaine Oslo Opera House

Elaine and I arrived yesterday in Oslo, to stay with Jan-Olaf Williums and, a few days later, to attend the Oslo Sustainability Summit – where I was was due to speak on the second day. Today, Jan-Olaf took us out on his yacht, Inspired, sailing around Oslo Fjord. Our first glimpse of the extraordinarily beautiful Oslo Opera House. Afterwards, we visited the Folk Museum, which was fascinating. Rain played across the landscape, cross-cut by sunshine. During one downpour, we sampled pancakes made by a couple of young women, later we sampled fresh-made soup in a small cottage: only when Jan-Olaf had seconds and the pot was stirred did I realised that this wasn’t entirely vegetarian. The girl cooking and entertaining mentioned that she was studying architecture – and deeply embroiled in … sustainable development.

Inspired’s bottom, or stern Stave church Stave church, 2 Pancake baking Scarecrow Window and churns It’s got legs Early variant of the horse Still life Window display Study in black Old gas station They’re everywhere: the Buddy electric car

I first met Teddy Goldsmith, who died on August 21 and whose obituary appeared on the 26th in the Times, over 30 years ago – in 1977 – when he and I shared a bedroom in Reykjavik during Nicholas Polunin’s ‘Growth Without Ecodisasters’ conference. First met and, I should say, pretty much fell in love with. We got on like a house on fire. 

Then a few months later, Elaine, Gaia (who was just a few weeks old) and I drove down to Cornwall in John Roberts’ huge Transit van, painted in TEST’s livery, to see Teddy and his family.  Another excuse was that I was doing a piece for New Scientist on the efforts at nearby English China Clays to restore the landscapes ravaged by china clay extraction, a story which took me to the giant pit which is now home to the Eden Project. During the visit, Teddy took me into his library and asked me to join The Ecologist, but I demurred, saying that I was more positively disposed to the role business could potentially play – and, indeed, co-founded Environmental Data Services the following year, becoming founder-Editor of The ENDS Report.

Among other things I remember most vividly about the visit to Teddy’s was the fact that among those also staying at the time were Lawrence D. and Hilda Cherry Hills, who was a longstanding champion of the use of comfrey as liquid manure and up to his neck in the Henry Doubleday Research Institute, plus, of all things, a journalist from Honey magazine.  I also recall Gaia becoming very ill because we gave her water from the tap, which Teddy had forgotten to tell us came from a nearby reservoir into which a sheep had recently fallen, drowning and decomposing.  

Later, we were digging in a new greenhouse with Teddy’s second wife, Kathy, when he appeared – and perhaps feeling that as a leading light in the back-to-the-land movement he should muck in – picked up a mattock, took a swing, and narrowly missed taking off his foot.

Later still, after he had seemed to welcome the efforts of the Khmer Rouge to end the rule of cities in Cambodia, Teddy asked me to write a riposte in The Ecologist, although all I can remember now about the piece was that I started with something from a sci-fi novel in which an urban civilization was collapsing but everyone was sticking to the rules, driving out on the out lanes – when our hero jumped the central reservation and sped away on the in lanes.

A Blueprint for Survival, the special issue of The Ecologist that appeared in January 1972, had had a huge impact on my in the year I began my M.Phil at UCL, alongside The Limits to Growth, published the same year.  As it happens, I should be seeing one of the authors of the Limits study, Jorgen Randers, here in Norway in a day or two, when he and I take part in a sustainability summit.

One of the nicer things in my working life was having Teddy coming to a session I was involved in, perhaps 15 years ago, and say that he had woken up to the relevance of the sort of things we were doing with business – although it was clear that this wasn’t where his heart and inclinations lay. I also remember him pulling open a drawer in 1977 and showing me an early typescript of what would become his book The Way, which I bought but confess I haven’t yet got around to reading. 

In retrospect, although we were on different paths at times, Teddy helped me find my own way and continued to serve as a navigational reference point for decades – and I shall always be profoundly grateful to him for that.