Journal

Flew from Edinburgh on Monday evening, where I had been speaking at the Airmic conference, themed around ‘”Tomorrow’s Risks Today,” to Heathrow and then across to Madrid. I caught the Iberia connecting flight by the skin of my teeth, thanks to delayed flight and mechanical problems at T5.

In Madrid for South Summit 2024 event. First day involved several off-the-record sessions at the Palacio de Liria, the first a “fireside chat” in the grounds of the palace. Then a VIP lunch, again al fresco, a tour of the palace (including original documents signed by Christopher Columbus) and an evening reception, for which I walked to and from from my hotel, the Thompson, in Plaza del Carmen.

On the first day, I had awoken with the shadows of swifts racing across the translucent curtains of my bedroom – a display by my favourite birds that continued all day. Endless joy – and continued this evening as I sat with Lara Birkes, planning our biodiversity and nature-based solutions session for the main stage tomorrow morning.

B Leaders For Change event and many other things

Travelled by Eurostar to Amsterdam on Wednesday 22nd for the B For Good Leaders event there. First evening involved a wonderful dinner at the Royal Tropical Institute, where I met a bunch of new people – always a good test.

The following evening, having not booked one of the optional dinners (because the ones I was most interested were already fully booked) I trusted to fortune. Then, out of the blue, Sabine Oberhuber, a longstanding friend, got in touch and invited me out to dinner at an Indonesian restaurant in the Hotel Jakarta. Glorious. Five hours later, we were still talking.

That was the day, too, when I did the plenary session alongside Rutger Bregman. Ann odd format, where Rutger and I sat with out backs to the audience, with cameras ahead of us projecting our images onto the screen, while we faced our “anchor”, Isabelle Grosmaître.

Still, the feedback afterwards was very positive. A key question came to me early on, when Isabelle asked whether there had been a moment after which my path was set. I replied that I could tell stories about epiphanies at age 7 or 11, but that the real shaping factor had been a series of metamorphic moments in my working life, which seem to come along every 5-6 years. And, I said, I’m going through one at the moment, like a caterpillar wandering into a chrysalis. Happily, people took that very much in the right spirit – or at least the many ones who came up later to engage.

Probably the session highlights for me, though, were in the building’s basement, the Wisdom Keepers area – curated by Kiva. The Wisdom Keepers taking part were Cheryl Angel (Lakota Elder), Carola Esparza (Mapuche tradition, Chile), Rutendo Ngara (South Africa), Toroa Aperahama (New Zealand) and peace-builder Scilla Elworthy (UK). The two sessions I got to see, with Rutendo and Scilla, were outstanding.

Overall, a wonderful trip, though somewhat scrambled by Eurostar on the way back late last night. Our train was delayed by two-and-a-half hours, crawling at many points in the journey, with some noisy passengers (thank heavens for noise-cancelling headphones) but at least I got to peer into some interesting hedgerows.

Travelled across by train to St Austell on Friday, with Elaine. Then as we walked up the hill between the Cornwall Hotel & Spa and the sea, I looked back and had one of those arresting moments where life almost spools in front of your eyes, like the credits at the end (or beginning) of a film.

So what triggered that? Well, on the far horizon were a line of china clay spoil heaps, both the “old men’s tips” and the later, more industrial, spoil heaps. It was to investigate the reclamation of the latter that I had first visited the English China Clays workings back in 1977, while writing an article for New Scientist, titled ‘Restoring the Cornish Moonscape’. And from that period of writing flowed the subsequent invitation to set up and later run ENDS (Environmental Data Services) in 1978.

And while I was doing the ECC visits and interviews, Elaine, Gaia (aged but a few months) and I stayed with Teddy Goldsmith, founder-editor of The Ecologist magazine. He and I had first met earlier in 1977 in Reykjavik at a conference organised by Professor Nicholas Polunin, where Teddy and I productively shared a bedroom for a week. I met a bunch of people I wouldn’t otherwise have met – and wrote that 3-page article for New Scientist on much of that story, including my memorable breakfast with Buckminster (“Bucky”) Fuller, on the flight back to London.

Gaia’s name, in turn, linked back to James (“Jim”) Lovelock’s 1975 New Scientist article on his Gaia Hypothesis (later Theory) – and years later I had the great pleasure of coming to know him quite well. And so the connections spooled – and that was even before I got to the Eden Project, which occupies one of ECC’S former open-cast mines, and whose founder was the ultimate reason why we were back in Cornwall.

From early afternoon on Saturday through to late, we joined the celebration of Tim Smit’s wedding to Charlotte Russell in the Lost Gardens of Heligan – a pre-Eden venture of his. Wonderful to catch up with people we knew, including (Professor) Mike Depledge and his wife Juliana (who I had first met when all three of us staying with Tim a while back), former Soil Association CEO Patrick Holden and a bunch of other Eden friends, alongside some new folk.

Later, a great dance band played some of our favourite songs, including Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” as we arrived. These two old folks certainly wished the newlyweds well – but the sound level was such that it soon had us retreating to the edges, behind a brazier in which marshmallows were to be toasted.

That’s a smell that evokes powerful memories, too, linking back to holidays in Cornwall, alongside the River Tamar. And particularly to one summer holiday with the three March girls we knew from our Cyprus days. We whirled along between the high Cornish hedgerows in the family Land Rover, all singing Troggs songs like Wild Thing and With A Girl Like You. Those were the days, my friend.

A peaceful interlude during turbulent times. Indeed, on the train, I was reading Fareed Zakaria’s extraordinary book, The Age of Revolutions. If and when I next look across that valley, there will be even more for my brain to call to mind – when, to borrow Paul McCartney’s phrasing, often feels as if it is very much at the Memory Almost Full stage.

To Istanbul on Monday, to keynote a GPAS conference on investing in the green economy. Picked up from the airport by Osman Şenkul of Scala Publishing, who have produced the Turkish edition of Green Swans. Wonderfully warm response that reminds me of Brazil – and the book goes to everyone attending.

I do a signing session – and then Osman kidnaps me and we walk around the Asian side of the city, involving a fascinating walk along a street of richly tree endowed embassies, before taking a ferry and spending a delightful evening in a fish restaurant that he frequents. Have a strange feeling that I will be back here before too long. Have already had one request to talk at a Fast Company event here in the autumn.

Have just posted my latest Substack article, on my trip this week to Rotterdam to speak at the 2024 World Energy Council Congress. A real serendipity engine – and my mind is still buzzing.