Journal

For more on this post I just did for the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP), see here.

Clear evidence today that Elaine is enjoying herself with Hania in Bordeaux. Left at home, I had a couple of people from the Volans ecosystem across yesterday afternoon, then today had lunch at the Church Road restaurant with an old SustainAbility colleague and friend, Tell Münzing, who these days lives in Berlin. He picked an interesting American wine, Stem Theory, which we both rather enjoyed.

In other news, after quite some time, the three small fish we put into our new garden pond finally made an appearance today, moving around as a tight-knit trio. But then, when we got back from lunch, I discovered that the water level in the pond had fallen by almost a foot, perhaps suggesting a leak in the pump – which I turned on today for the first time to oxygenate the water.

Life, as always, is full of ups and downs : )

Wonderful to do my annual session with Cranfield masters students this afternoon, hosting them at Somerset House. They were guided across town from an earlier visit to Grant Thornton by David Grayson, an Emeritus Professor at Cranfield these days, who I last saw a few days back at Anthropy 2022. As a Visiting Professor at Cranfield, I have been doing these sessions for quite some years, but this was probably the liveliest group yet.

Three extraordinary days in Eden.

Through the recent lockdowns, one of the projects I was working on was Anthropy 2022 – which took over the Eden Project site between 2nd and 4th November. Together with David Williams, CEO of Impact International, I had co-chaired the ‘Place Pillar’, one of four.

The other pillars were People, Prosperity and Britain’s place in the world. In the event, it turned out to be an exceptional convening – and, happily, it looks as if it will go into further iterations.

Louise and I were both chairing sessions, but we also took two colleagues: George Hopkins, who has been developing our video content for some time, and Cami Daeninck, a young Canadian who had joined our team a day or two before, after completing her master’s degree at Imperial College London. The idea was to film our panellists, but we soon extended the net.

My main session, on Wednesday afternoon, featured: David Goodhart, five years after the publication of his book The Road to Somewhere; Jane Davidson, former Minister of Education and Environment, Sustainability and Housing in Wales; and David Williams.

Each day we also filmed a short exchange between Louise and I, summarising the events of the day. The four short videos can be found here. We plan to release edited video content in the coming weeks.

Flew out yesterday from LHR T2 to Dublin, c/o Aer Lingus. Only wrinkle was a 6-hour delay at T2, which meant Josh and I got to our hotel towards 02.00 in the morning. But the session with the top team at ESB (Eire’s Electricity Supply Board) went very well indeed.

Impressed by the ESB HQ building. And an interesting side conversation around the impact of the Ardnacrusha Dam on migrating eels. More on that story here. Then back out to airport for a flight that, happily, behaved itself. Turned on my heel at T2 to take in Slipstream, which captures some of the early excitement of powered flight.