Journal

Catania And Syracuse

Hound

Washing line

Flight of stairs

Knocker

Seascape

Graffito on Ortigia peninsula

Nightscape, around the corner from our hotel, the Hotel Principe

Syracuse skyline, with Christo-like feature

Ear of Dionysius 

Solid forms in the Archimedes Museum

Found object, outside the Museum

En route back from Syracuse

Ditto

Ditto 2

Flew in from Gatwick yesterday to Catania. Travelling with Jules Verne for the first time. Slightly stunned by the size of the group, perhaps because they have recently been taken over any a more commercial group, though we sort of got used to it.

Then across today to Syracuse, founded in 733 BC, where Elaine, I and another woman managed to become separated from the group inside the Ear of Dionysius. Missed key parts of the tour of the ruins, but I suspect it’s because I am a natural outliers.

Fascinated by an independent visit to the Archimedes Museum, small but with some intriguing exhibits. Had long wanted to see his haunts, but interest was spurred when reading about the Antikythera mechanism. Surprised by the amount of graffiti here, though some to it quite creative.

A Month of Speeches in Holland, Switzerland and UK

Internal window in the old Stock Exchange, Zurich, 4 September: says AURA

Robert Ruttmann introduces

Panel discussion on business as a tool for solving big problems, facilitated by Robert and featuring, from left to right, Robert, Renat Heuberger, Steve Westly and myself

Bad weather in Amsterdam, from the Hotel Jakarta, 6 September

Let my people go surfing and cycling, even in the rain: the venue for the Ashoka Circular Futures conference, Patagonia’s Amsterdam offices

Large-scale photograph of a a graffito on a small dam – one of the targets of a European campaign backed by Patagonia

Artists producing a painting that would later be cut up, with the pieces distributed to participants

View over the old Casino building in Bern, where the Swiss Energy and Climate Summit was held, 19 September

My co-panellist, Anders Wijkman, being made up; I’m already done

Joschka Fischer speaking at the end of the conference: why can’t every country have a politician like him?

Wheels outside the cathedral

Part of my route back from the cathedral to the conference venue

A small Dalí, a rare pleasure in an otherwise slightly boring and relatively expensive Museum of Art

A view from the Berenberg Bank, London, during an impact investment event they hosted, 20 September

A fairly frenetic September to date, among many other things with speeches given in:

Zurich at the Innovation for Sustainability conference on 4 September, Taking Sustainability Exponential, followed by a panel discussion with other members included the venture capitalist Steve Westly, who I hadn’t seen for some years having been on an HP advisory group with him shortly after we started Volans);

Amsterdam, at the Ashoka CircularFutures event on 6 September, co-hosted by Patagonia and eBay, where I spoke alongside Ken Webster of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation;

Bern, where I spoke at a dinner on 18 September, the night before the Swiss Energy & Climate Summit opened, meeting former German Foreign Minister for the first time since some time around 1990, when we spoke at an event in Wiesbaden; followed by a panel session the next day, alongside Urs Gredig, Editor-in-Chief of CNNMoney, Switzerland, and Anders Wijkman; and then

London again, where I was part of a panel that formed the centrepiece of an evening event co-hosted by Berenberg, Philanthropy Impact and the Impact Investment Network. Chaired by Richard Brass, Berenberg’s Head of Wealth and Asset Management UK, the panel also featured David Connor (Founder, 2030Hub, Liverpool), Martin Ewald (Managing Director & Head of Investment Strategy, Infrastructure Equity, Allianz Global Investors) and Rupini Deepa Rajagopolan (Head of Berenberg’s ESG Office)

Otherwise work continued on our New Carbon Economy Pioneers program, with Richard Roberts organising an event alongside Governor Jerry Brown’s Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) in California, where we launched our new White Paper, Our Carbon Future, on our Innovate UK event in Exeter, and on our Tomorrow’s Capitalism program. All in the teeth of headwinds created by e.g. Brexit and looming trade wars, but we are making real progress.

A Work In Progress

My first answer in an interview in The Knowledge Review, a U.S. educational publication:

“I am 69, I have been an environmentalist since I was 11 (when I raised money for the World Wildlife Fund in its first year, 1961), have founded four companies since 1978 (all still exist), written 19 books (one, The Green Consumer Guide, sold around a million copies), coined terms like green consumer and the triple bottom line, founded the company Sustainability in 1987 when the world was hardly used, have sat on over 70 boards and advisory boards, have spoken at some 1,500 conferences worldwide—and am still trying to work out what I will do when I grow up.”

Elaine compared the interview to a sub-image in a picture she recently bought at the Royal Academy summer exhibition by Mila Fürstová. The sub-image shows a tsunami (based on Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa) in a bottle.

The bottled wave is at the centre-bottom of the image, which also, serendipitously, includes the constellation of Volans.

Here’s the whole image:

All The Rivers That Run Through Me, Mila Fürstová

Temperate Afternoon In Kew Gardens

Giant educational puppet in action in revamped Temperate House

Semi-geodesic plant

Waterlily House

Assumed these were mollusc trails in algae on Lily House windows

Gaia, Elaine and I went across to see the new Temperate House, which is wonderfully done, though plants need to grow on a bit. Then across to the Palm House and Lily House, before lunch by the lake. A joy.

The Innocents Launches

Netflix poster for the series

Blown away on Monday by the first episode of The Innocents, the new Netflix series co-written by our daughter Hania and Simon Duric. Launched today. We attended the premiere at the Mayfair Curzon. Here’s a piece by Hania from the Sunday Times Magazine last week – and here’s a review from the New York Times. Go, June and Harry! And brilliantly well done to the entire team!

Volans Celebrates First 10 Years, Looks Forward

Some die-hard celebrants prepare to move on to the Euston Arms

Last night marked the formal end to our first decade at Volans, the actual milestone having been 1 April, and the end of a face-to-face Board meeting involving the likes of Paul Bunje (former Chief Scientist at the XPRIZE Foundation and now co-founder of Conservation X Labs), Kavita Prakash-Mani (Global Markets Lead at WWF International), Sam Lakha and Geoff Lye.

One sad note was Louise Kjellerup Roper’s absence in Copenhagen, following the sudden death of her mother.

In the evening, I also mentioned the deaths of Richard Northcote, whose friend and former CEO Patrick Thomas spoke last night, and Tessa Tennant – with Tom Burke and Mark Campanale in the room, both of whom I had last seen at the lifetime achievement celebration event for Tessa a week or so before she died.

Also heard from long-standing friend Steve Warshal of death of another key figure from the environmental movement, though since it’s not yet mentioned on his Wikipedia site or anywhere else, I’ll not mention him by name here.

Despite the intimations of mortality, over 100 of us celebrated the first 10 years of Volans at the Wellcome Collection.

The ‘cabaret’, performed from a red-carpeted staircase, featured Geoff, Clover Hogan (whose camera took the image above), former Covestro CEO Patrick Thomas, Kavita and Paul. Went on twice as long as I had planned, and any fault was mine as the compère, but you could have heard a pin drop throughout the session.

Interesting to see several people in the above image holding copies of our new OPEN brochure, which we have been working on in recent weeks – featuring our emerging thinking around the “locked-in syndrome” our species is now suffering from. And with one of the four keys spotlighted for unlocking mindsets being the need to shift the focus from cleaning ‘fish’ (e.g. corporations) to ‘oceans’ (e.g. markets).

And below is the image I conjured at the beginning of my introduction to the evening, the photograph originating from the first visit I made with Yinka (Awoyinka) to see the Wellcome Collection Reading Room, where we held the event.

I love the upside down Antony Gormley figure, coupled with the signage, ‘Somewhere in Between’. Between worlds, between geological epochs, between our first ten years and whatever comes next. But our Board meeting over the past couple of days suggests that there could be some great things ahead …

Antony Gormley sculpture in reception of Wellcome Collection

Volans Board Meeting & Tenth Birthday Party

Yinka prepares, with fans struggling to hold down the temperatures

Team and Board members intermixed at the Bedford Hotel

Water feature in the Hotel gardens

Kavita’s hand

From memory, Kavita’s, Geoff’s Sam’s and Paul’s hands

The party winds down, with the remnants on the staircase

Sideswiped by Louise (Kjellerup Roper) having to head off to Copenhagen to look after her dying mother, and then deal with the aftermath, I found myself having to pick up the threads with the Board meeting and 10th anniversary event.

That said, and though everyone else was responsible for the outcomes, both the Board meeting at the Bedford Hotel and the party at the Wellcome Collection Reading Room were, well, runaway successes.

Particularly wonderful to see two of our Board members who had flown in from the US, Paul Bunje of the XPRIZE Foundation and Conservation X Labs from the West Coast (LA), and Kavita Prakash-Mani, Global Markets Lead for WWF International from the East Coast (NYC).

More details in my 25 July entry.

Richard Northcote, RIP

A view of Arran, across the water from Seamill Hydro, Seamill, Ayrshire

Less panoramic

A picture of Richard with his daughters, Catriona and Roisin, over the Grand Canyon

As a pirate

Table pictures of the man himself

Rachel (Owen) and Patrick (Thomas) en route home

There are few colleagues I have felt as close an affection for as Richard Northcote, who I first came across at ICI Polyurethanes in the 1990s, then worked with at Bayer MaterialScience and then at Covestro, where he was latterly Chief Sustainability Officer.

Flew to Glasgow yesterday with his former Covestro colleagues Rachel Owen and Patrick Thomas, for his funeral. his was held at the Holmsford Bridge Crematorium, Dreghorn, Irvine, and was one of the most glorious funerals I have taken part in.

Profoundly impressed by his family, his wife Meabh, his sons Alex and Callum, and his daughters Catriona and Roisin.

Aiming to fly back to Heathrow in the evening, Rachel, Patrick and I had to leave the reception early, only to have the flight cancelled out from under us – after a fire alert at the Heathrow control tower.

Queued for hours, but managed to get beds in a nearby hotel – and then caught an early flight back to London City.

Magic moment was standing on the beach, overlooking Arran, watching two seals swimming leisurely by. The grief is less pacific, coming in waves.

The New Ism And Me

Delighted to appear in ‘The New Ism’, a podcast by social entrepreneur superstar Mel Young and Alex Matthews. My only regret in the podcast‘s 47 minutes running time is that I said that the optical experiments in Hannover mentioned by Thomas Kuhn were from the 18th century – when I meant 19th. But what’s a century between friends?