Journal

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

BOLLOCKS, DARLING

I remember, in 1971 or 72, my much-loved, much lamented paternal grandmother Isabel assuring Elaine and I after a cocktail party in her Knightsbridge apartment that when we were grown up we would love cocktail parties. When I assured her I had antibodies to the whole cocktail culture, which were her preferred milieu, her response was blunt: “Bollocks, darling!”

Well, this evening we were at a very interesting party, hosted by Shell, which confirmed me in my long-ago feelings. Yes, Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer very kindly introduced me to Shell’s new Chairman, Jorma Ollila, previously CEO of Nokia, and I certainly wouldn’t have met him many other places, but I have bat’s ears, where I seem to hear every frequency all at once, and find these events a torment. Indeed, my idea of Purgatory would probably be an eternal cocktail party, with the same guests.

LEAPBLOG

Yesterday evening we launched the new Skoll zone of the SustainAbility website at http://www.sustainability.com/insight/skoll.asp, including a ‘Leapfrog’ blog at http://www.sustainability.com/blogs/skoll/skollblog1.asp?id=914

Thursday, November 23, 2006

EYE WATCHES PARK PELICANS

The Millennium Eye peered at me over Horseguards Parade as I made my way across to the Triodos event this evening – and traffic blurred past. Passing the pelican area, I pondered media coverage of recent pelican-eats-pigeon-in-St-James-Park-shock-horror. The fact that pelicans snack on their cooing neighbours has been known for ages, but no doubt it was news to the children who no doubt watched on in horrified fascination. Made me think of the premieres of Phil Agland’s Korup rainforest film 20 years or so ago, when one bunch of Cameroonians told me that they only liked the bits when animals were eating one another. Tonight it was almost as if the Eye were keeping watch over the unruly parklife.

Millennium Eye

A DAY IN THE LIFE

Once I got back home, put on George and Giles Martin’s astounding Love, which I had bought at Virgin in Piccadilly this afternoon. This is the impossibly wonderful reworking of 26 Beatles tracks for the Cirque de Soleil show – which Geoff (Lye) went on to see in Las Vegas after our board meeting in DC. Don’t envy him Las Vegas, but on the strength of this CD I do envy him the show (http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/CirqueDuSoleil/en/showstickets/love/intro/intro.htm?sa_campaign=internal_click/redirect/love).

Rest of day included meetings with a German financial organisation and Nick Parker of Cleantech Venture Network (http://www.cleantech.com), a session on climate change communication hosted by the International Visual Communication Association (IVCA: http://www.ivca.org) and an evening event hosted by Triodos Bank, launching a new report – The Future of Finance.

James Vaccaro of Triodos (http://www.triodos.co.uk) described the bank as a hybrid between a financial institution and a social experiment – and argued that the growing importance of business means that investment is now almost more important than voting. The other Triodos speakers, Charles Middleton and Peter Blom, described the bank’s emerging focus as “conscious investment.” Nice to see them our old 3P formula, which I first used for a SustainAbility brochure in 1995 or 1996: ‘People, Planet and Profit’ (or ‘Prosperity’, if you want to be a little less provocative).

Speakers like Tom Delay of The Carbon Trust gave a number of examples of entrepreneurial efforts to tackle major social and environmental problems. Jonathon Porritt wondered whether we are now approaching a tipping point in the sustainability field – or whether this is simply one more spasm of capitalism as people try to forcefeed new information into existing business models? But he noted that the recent Stern Report had hit the nail on the head by describing the climate challenge as the greatest market failure of all time.

Monday, November 20, 2006

YALE UNLOCKED

Dinner this evening at the Mirabelle in Curzon Street, to celebrate with Dan Esty and guests the launch of his new book, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage. Among many other things, Dan is Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale University and Director of the Yale World Fellows Program (http://www.yale.edu/worldfellows), which was also very much on the agenda. Fellows are high achievers, selected from outside the US at an early mid-career point, generally 5-to-15 years into their professional development, and spend 15 weeks designed to jump their careers into overdrive.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

IBRIDO TV

A side-benefit of blogging this week was that a ‘good news’ web-TV team I hadn’t yet heard of tracked me down in New York – and came and interviewed me virtually at the drop of a hat. They are ibrido (http://www.ibrido.tv/welcome.html). I’m green with envy: I want to be able to step out of a door on our home page the way Daniel Belanger does on their site. Their podcast for that day can be found at http://www.ibrido.tv/video_51, trailing the full interview.

I really like the Antoine de Saint Exupery quote they use on their site: “As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.”

THE DESTINY OF LOVE

The Observer today covers the work of Bao Ninh, who wrote the most extraordinary book I have yet read on the Vietnam War, The Sorrow of War (http://www.amazon.com/Sorrow-War-Bao-Ninh/dp/1573225436) – which in Vietnamese was rendered as The Destiny of Love. Utterly horrifying in parts, as the war was, but whole sections remain in my memory, even though I read it many years ago. One reason I was so interested in the war, apart from the fact that I protested against it, was my friendship with the Observer‘s foreign correspondent Gavin Young, who covered the war and its aftermath in books like A Wavering Grace (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wavering-Grace-Gavin-Young/dp/0140251154).

Friday, November 17, 2006

WORST CASE SCENARIO

Storm incoming

The lashing rain on the way out to Dulles airport should have been warning enough – but there wasn’t that much I could do in any event. My Northwest flight to Detroit and then on to Lansing was first delayed, then cancelled. After an endless queuing saga, I was diverted to Atlanta on Delta, and then on to Detroit. On the way, I lost my coat – and my pen exploded ink all over my hands as we reached altitude en route to Atlanta.

Worst of all, when I got to Detroit, after midnight, to be picked up by Chris Guenther, we discovered that my large case hadn’t made the trip with me. Given that it had pretty much all my clothes, cables for all my electronic equipment and all the signed forms for the share transfers we have so laboriously been working through at SustainAbility, this was the Worst Case Scenario.

When Chris and I eventually got to Ann Arbor, I had to drop into a convenience store to buy some shaving things, toothbrush and so on. My heart fell when I saw everything was made in China, including the only cold razor on offer. I knew I would end up with a scalped face, as indeed I did this morning.

Still, made it on time – if after precariously little sleep, to see (Professor) Tom Gladwin for an early coffee and then on to a brunch session from 09.00-11.00 with a bunch of students and Andy Hoffman. One person I met for the first time, after a fair time communing by email, was Aparna Sunderam. When she first contacted me, she was a social entrepreneur in Tibet, and is now a student at Michigan. Then on to meeting with Tom Lyons at the Erb Institute, before doing my lecture early afternoon. Introduced by Tom G, I launched forth – and we got into a wonderfully lively discussion. Tom noted that SustainAbility is now the second biggest hirer of Erb Institute students, after the Meridian Institute, I think. And given the quality of the ex-Erb people on our team and the people I met on this trip, I’m not surprised.

Coda on Worst Case Scenario: Annie Oliver in our DC office finally tracked the case down in Detroit, where Northwest were getting ready to project it back to London. Rather than trust them again, we had them store it until I came through after my Ann Arbor trip. And it was there when I arrived late afternoon. Aparna had given me a Tibetan scarf earlier today, saying that my luck was about to change – and, at least with this case, this trip, there seems to have been a local better luck effect.

Playing hide-and-seek with Tom Gladwin

Thursday, November 16, 2006

FIRST U.S. BOARD MEETING

Today, we held our first SustainAbility board meeting in the US, at our office in Washington, D.C., following a reception there last night. A bunch of us walked across to the office from the Willard Hotel this morning in spectacular sunshine, soaking in the glorious yellow of the ginkgo trees along the way.

The evolution of our US team really is a wonder to behold, with a real sense that it has reached critical mass. All credit to Jeff Erikson, our US Director. Given how delightful the current brownstone office is, it’s amazing to think back to our previous offices: the tiny one in Brooklyn from which our much smaller team watched with horror as the planes flew into the World Trade Center in 2001, our bigger, smarter and yet not much-loved first office in DC, and now this one. Feels like home – and even they have a couch these days, to ensure the roll-out of our sofa strategy continues. The thinking behind our couch position is that free-flowing conversations are a key ingredient in the rocket fuel that propels us to new heights …

Gingko tree

Rescued from the street, a gingko leaf follows us to the office

Sam gets a handle on the teapot situation

Tom (Delfgaauw) and Geoff (Lye) after board meeting

Somewhere else where new thinking may now impact our agenda …

LESTER BROWN

Meghan (Chapple-Brown) and I made our way across this morning to the Earth Policy Institute in driving rain, though luckily we quickly found a yellow cab. Had talked to Lester Brown at the World Economic Forum Davos summit earlier in the year about visiting, but then had to cry off last time when I missed a flight out of Ithaca – after a visit Meghan and I made to Cornell University – and then had to drive seven hours in a rental car to catch a flight from JFK. This time we make it, though, and, boy, I wish I had a direct feed into the Brown brain.

The process is made a little easier, of course, by the fact that he is such a prolific writer. Previously with the Worldwatch Institute, he now runs the Earth Policy Institute (http://www.earth-policy.org/) – and manages to achieve an extraordinary amount of media coverage for his thinking. One recent theme has been the danger that the American Dream will become a nightmare when adopted – or aspired to – by China’s 1.3 billion people. That’s only one of many things we discuss with Brown and his colleague Janet Larsen, EPI’s Director of Research.

One subject that sticks in my mind, though, is his observation that the number of failed states is growing – and with it a wide range of health, environmental and security risks for the rest of the world. But anyone who reads this and begins spiralling into gloom (we talked of the suction effect created by failed states, and the way that we may found ourselves pulled in rather like many of those who jumped from the Titanic were sucked into the vortex the foundering ship created), a useful antidote is Brown’s book Plan B 2.0. (http://www.earth-policy.org/). An essential introduction to the man’s thinking.

Janet, me, Lester Brown

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

STONE’S THROW FROM WHITE HOUSE

By Amtrak to Washington, DC this afternoon. The four of us arrived at the Willard InterContinental to be met like royalty, because of the relationship SustainAbility’s US team have built with the Willard on our issues. The hotel, which says it is a stone’s throw from the White House, something which I am still tempted to test, is this year celebrating the 20th anniversary of its re-opening.

And what a place this is. The Willard has hosted just about every US President since Franklin Pierce in 1853. Its anniversary brochure also notes that it was “at the Willard that Julia Ward Howe wrote ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ where Abraham Lincoln lived for a month, where, in the grand lobby, President Ulysses S. Grant coined the term ‘Lobbyist,’ and where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King finished his famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech.” Talking to someone earlier today about bribery and corruption, I noted that one of the prominent American inhabitants of my family tree was Grant’s rampantly corrupt Vice President, Schuyler Colfax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuyler_Colfax), who came so spectacularly to grief towards the end of the Gilded Age (http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/schulyer_colfax.pdf). The widespread corruption of the era helped precipitate a depression.

After shaking off the dust of our travels in the comfortable embrace of the Willard, we sped across to SustainAbility’s offices for a reception, which pulled together old and new friends – ahead of our first-ever board meeting in the US tomorrow.

Monday, November 13, 2006

IMAGINE

The highlight of today – aside from meeting the likes of Linda Rottenberg of Endeavor Global (http://www.endeavor.org) and Alice Tepper Marlin of Social Accountability International (http://www.sai-intl.org), alongside Sam (Lakha) and Sophia (Tickell) – was a long, long walk on my own through Central Park.

My main purpose in Central Park was to visit Strawberry Fields, the black-and-white memorial to John Lennon. The first time I went there, fairly soon after it was opened, I found myself there alone, except for a small, quiet figure that suddenly appeared on the other side of the circle: Yoko Ono. No such luck this time, but the fall colours were exquisite. And the Alice statuary (http://www.centralparknyc.org/virtualpark/thegreatlawn/aliceinwonderland) was strangely moving, the mushrooms linking nicely to the hallucinogenic fuel that drove so much of my favourite music way back then.

At the nearby Tavern on the Green, on my way, I had come across something that reminded me of this year’s 800-pound gorilla (see previous entry), all the tune of Imagine played in the most eggregiously schmalzy way. Later in the day, Sam and I also met up with a couple of TV people planning a series on sustainability pioneers, which would be useful if it came off.

Green gorilla

Blowing in the wind

Tried to catch falling leaves, but failed …

It’s 26 years …

Last of the fall colours

Not far removed from the hat I wore the other evening …

Alice 2

Hatter 2 – with Dormouse

800-POUND GORILLA IN NEW YORK

Arrived in New York a couple of hours ago, to pouring rain. Yellow cabbed to hotel, where I have been trying to do justice to my role as guest editor of an upcoming issue of marketer, which they are dedicating to the triple bottom line and sustainability. In my main article, I note that at a World Economic Forum meeting earlier in the year one of the WEF people had said that the 800-pound gorilla looming in corporate boardrooms this year has been the issue of sustainability. Seems appropriate to recall in the city of King Kong.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

BLUE MAN FALLING

Racing to get ready to fly to New York, but one thing I had to do before heading off was to write a congratulatory note to Frank Barnard, author of Blue Man Falling. Finished this extraordinary novel yesterday morning, and can’t wait to re-read. Covers the RAF’s campaign in France before the retreat across the Channel and the Battle of Britain. One of Barnard’s references was a copy of a book first published in 1941, Fighter Pilot: A Personal Record of the Battle of France. The author was the late Paul Richey, a member of No. 1 squadron – with which my father Tim also flew. Sent him a copy of Blue Man yesterday via Amazon, such a wonderful service. Talking to my mother, Pat, yesterday, she recalled that when they saw Richey last he was late – his pet swan was ill.

The other reason I am interested to engage Barnard is that he features the sinking of the Lancastria towards the end of his book, which I covered in my blog of November 23, 2005. He has Do-17s sinking the ship and escaping, whereas I had understood a Heinkel 111 was involved – and that Flt Sgt Fred Berry, who later saved Tim’s life, had been awarded the DFM partly on the basis that he had shot down the bomber that sank the old Cunard liner. In the midst of such chaos, it must have been very difficult to keep track of who did what to whom, but I’d like to ensure my facts are broadly correct …

Saturday, November 11, 2006

REVIVING BRAND AMERICA

Filed retrospectively on November 13, after reading a letter in the Financial Times in New York under the title: ‘Bush united the world.’ John Arndt from San Anselmo, California, noted that “Many underestimate how successful President George W. Bush was as a uniter. He succeeded in uniting practically the whole world against him!”

Elaine and I had a delightful dinner this evening with Doug and Margot Miller, he of GlobeScan, and Peter Kinder of KLD. At Whits, just off Kensington High Street. One of the areas of discussion, inevitably, was the potential longer-term impact of the Democrat victories in the US Senate and House of Representatives. And one of the eddies in that conversation revolved around the question of how long it would take for the US to reclaim its pre-Bush 2 position in the world, rebuild its tarnished global brand and recover at least some of the soft power lost in the process.

We reflected on companies like Nike and Shell, where top management eventually admitted some degree of fault as a necessary first step to the recovery process. Phil Knight of Nike may have taken a while to get there, but when he recently noted in a foreword to a Nike report that “yours truly” had been responsible for among other things misreading the runes, my phrase, it was a major step forward. It’s virtually impossible to imagine George W., or Tony Blair for that matter, accepting real fault and culpability, but perhaps even here we should say ‘never say never …’

Friday, November 10, 2006

BLOGGER APOLOGISES

Well not really, but my silence for over a week has been because of Blogger problems, which they prefer to leave to users to sort out. Only a technical wizard, or someone with hours of free time on their hands, could resolve. Thanks to the wizard Craig (Ray) for sorting, and as soon as I can find an alternative to Blogger I will switch.

WILD LAW

First thing I see as I leave the house this morning, on my way to Victoria to catch the train to Brighton, is that someone has taken a hammer to our car – with the result that the bonnet has a hole in it worthy of a cannon-shell strike.

Once on the train, I was poring over the bios of the speakers of the conference I was to chair later in the day at the University of Brighton. Organised by the UK Environmental Law Association (UKELA: http://www.ukela.org), the Environmental Law Foundation (ELF: http://www.elflaw.org) and The Gaia Foundation (http://www.gaiafoundation.org), the event was due to spotlight the ‘Wild Law’ movement, led by Cormac Cullinan. Read his fascinating book, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice (Green Books, 2003), as the train rattled south.

Suddenly, a small, dark-haired girl (she turned out to be Romanian) erupted in the opposite seat and asked me, in broken English, what colour my shoes were? What colour was my front door? And what colour my garden? When I asked how old she was, she replied 7. Then she asked me how old I was. When I asked her to guess, she frowned and suggested 8. Then she pointed to a photograph of Satish Kumar, one of the speakers whose bios I was poring over, and asked who he was?

How do you explain someone who at the age of 9, just two years older than my earnest neighbour, had joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks, subsequently leaving in his late teens to join India’s land reform movement, then walked 8,000 miles from India to America to meet Bertrand Russell and join the anti-nuclear-weapons movement, handing out tea to world leaders on his way across to London? And, if my memory serves, at the suggestion of women in a weapons factory he had met in Russia, encouraging those leaders he did get to see to brew up a pot before they brewed up the planet? I had missed this year’s fortieth anniversary celebration of Resurgence magazine, which Satish has edited since the early 1970s, because I was in Australia, but hold it and him in great affection. The fortieth anniversay edition of Resurgence (September/October 2006) carried an article of mine on the evolution of the relevant business agendas. Apart from Cormac, other speakers included Norman Baker, who chairs the All Party Environment Group, and Begonia Filgueira of Gaia Law. One of Satish’s lines that sticks with me is, “Let all isms become wasms.” Another: “Long live the worm.”

Also met up before the conference with Fiona Byrne, after many years. Fiona was SustainAbility’s first employee way back in the 1980s, when we were still based at our home in Barnes, and now lives in Brighton with her daughter. Reminded me of just how long we have been hoeing this particular furrow.

At the end of the day, four of us travelled back on the train to London, including Satish and Ed Posey of The Gaia Foundation. Wonderful conversation, palely captured in the somewhat speed-blurred photos below. Alighted from the train at Clapham Junction and looped back to Barnes station. Arrived home to find that Hania had just called in from Madrid (we didn’t even know she was there) to say that she had had her purse and credit cards stolen. Odd to be discussing how to evolve systems of Earth-focused jurisprudence when the waters of criminality lap all around.

Ed and Satish 1

Ed and Satish 2

Ed and Satish 3

Thursday, November 09, 2006

TOMORROW’S VALUE LAUNCH

Today, we launched our latest report, Tomorrow’s Value, at parallel events in London and New York. This is SustainAbility’s fourth international benchmark of corporate sustainability reporting, once again developed in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Standard & Poor’s. This year we introduce a revised methodology, developed in close consultation with experts and leading corporate reporters, and — in line with our sense that the focus also needs to shift beyond disclosure and reporting to communication — we have adopted a portfolio approach. Tomorrow’s Value is the flagship document in a suite of publications that will explore wider aspects of reporting, including communication with financial analysts and the innovation agenda.

I chaired the London event, hosted by Standard & Poor’s in Canary Wharf. Free, downloadable copies of the report are available from http://www.sustainability.com/insight/research-article.asp?id=865, together with a podcast version of highlights of the launch session – and another in which I interview Matt Loose, who ran the 2006 Global Reporters benchmark survey, on the findings. The photos, taken at the reception afterwards, show Sasha Silver of Credit Suisse Securities and Monica Araya, both of whom went through Yale – where Monica organised the event I spoke at (see October 1, 2005 entry). JP Renaut was one of our interns on the Global Reporters project and has since joined the Core Team.

Me, Sasha Silver, JP Renaut

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

SUSTAINABILITY RETREAT

Written, belatedly, on 12 November:

October 30-31 saw the full SustainAbility team (now exceeding 30) engaging in an extremelysuccessful retreat at The Orangery, Kew Gardens. Tremendously invigorating – and the new strategy is coming together very well. Due to problems with Blogger, I didn’t capture the spirit of the thing at the time, and also agreed not show team members in their extraordinary Halloween costumes after our fancy dress at the Bluebird Restaurant, which has somewhat cramped my style!

But here are a few less peopled photographs to give a sense of the proceedings. The Earthlife health poster caught my eye, given that it was the unravelling of a different Earthlife in 1986 that led to our founding of SustainAbility early in 1987. On the second day, I took much of the team around the Princess of Wales greenhouse (showing them the time capsule Elaine dreamed up and Gaia Books, David Attenborough and others of us installed in 1985) and the Palm House.

Poster en route to Kew

Early morning sun

The lion and the unicorn

Pumpkin Man

Symbolic, perhaps, of our quest to find the levers of power …

Handscape

Angelic corner in The Orangery

Kelly at speed

Squash 1

Squash 2

Time capsule, Princess of Wales Greenhouse

Maggie Brenneke and Mr Mystery (or Mr E: thanks, Sam)

Thursday, October 26, 2006

A WEEK OF CONVERSATIONS

A somewhat fractured week of writing, including a long paper for a new Indian magazine called Triple Bottom Line, team discusions and meetings – or perhaps I should say conversations, which are the fuel which drive much of what we do. Among others, these included lunch with Michael Meacher, MP (http://www.epolitix.com/EN/MPWebsites/Michael+Meacher), on Monday; a gentle walk across to IIED (http://www.iied.org) with Mark Lee on Tuesday to see IIED Director Camilla Toulmin – the first time I had been at IIED for what seems like many a year; a morning meeting on Wednesday with Charles Middleton, Managing Director of the UK end of Triodos Bank (http://www.triodos.co.uk/uk/?lang), who is also Chairman of the Haller Foundation, of which I am a Patron (http://www.thehallerfoundation.com/governance.html); a session later in the day with Sophia Tickell’s sister Alison and her colleague Shelagh Wright, to discuss the creative sector in the UK; and then, on Thursday later afternoon, I walked across to The Athenaeum with Geoff Lye for a meeting with Fields Wicker-Miurin and Tom Wright of Leaders’ Quest (http://www.leadersquest.org/index/articles.php?id=126&page=Partners&navi_id=2), having first met Fields in Davos earlier in the year.

The meeting at the Athenaeum – Fields noted in the process that Darwin and Dickens had joined the club on the same day, which suggested some interesting conversations – put me in mind of one of the pivotal meetings of my life, late in 1977 or early 1978, when Max Nicholson asked me across to the Athenaeum for tea. This was to discuss whether I would join Max and David Layton of IDS in setting up Environmental Data Services (ENDS), which we did later in 1978 (http://www.ends.co.uk/). I asked for several months to do a feasibility study while remaining at TEST, but in the end concluded that it was worth making the jump. Thank heavens.

Footonote: I never joined a club, partly because they seemed saurian, partly because I lived in London anyway, partly because I couldn’t afford it, but mainly because they didn’t let in women. Even the Athenaeum, which seemed fairly lively at times, seemed to be largely populated with old grey men in sofas – who seemed so settled that it was almost impossible to see where the old men ended and the sofa or armchair began.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

GIBBERD, THRING & COOLING TOWERS

Two people I glanced off in recent decades appeared cheek-by-jowl in the obituary columns of The Times. The first was Professor Meredith Thring, a scientist and engineer driven by the notion that engineers should have a social conscience. One of his passions was energy – and fuel technology in particular. During WWII, he led a project to run vehicles on producer gas, made from wood to save petrol. Another, later scheme, was a key reason I came across his work: the development of ways of harvesting water hyacinth, an aggressive water weed, and turning it into food.

Whether or not they ever met, Thring turned up cheek-by-jowl this morning with Lady Patricia Gibberd, who was involved in the development of Harlow New Town, designed by her husband Sir Frederick Gibberd. We met them both over dinner over 30 years ago, thanks to her nephew Toby Greenbury, with whom Elaine and I shared a flat in Belgravia. One of my memories of the dinner is our discussion of Gibberd’s design of the cooling towers at Didcot, which we used to pass regularly on our way by train down to the Cotswolds. The Gibberds waxed lyrical about the beauty of the cluster of cooling towers, something I confess I struggled to see.

But in recent days I had been struck in reading England in Particular, by Sue Clifford and Angela King, to see them also wax lyrical on cooling towers, in an entry squeezed between confectionery and corn dollies. “What a magnificent presence they have, these great chess castles gathering beside rivers as if for communal ablutions,” Clifford and King begin. “They steam away water and heat generated by the making of electricity from coal.” They mention Didcot, too, noting that the towers there “dominate views acros the Thames Valley and from Wittenham Clumps.” Protypically Clifford/King, that last bit.

Still, I don’t share their regret that, “Perhaps during the next twenty years these structures will disappear, taking their functional beauty into the history photographs.” They note that the dismantling of a single cooling tower near the M6 in Birmingham “proved disorientating.” True, I’m sure, but this is an area where we need to be disorientated, as I am sure Professor Thring would have agreed. Cooling towers are the most visible component of a fossil-fuel-to-electricity cycle which on the same time-scale will come to look criminally insane.

Much of the latent energy in the fuels is dumped into the atmosphere as steam. I remmeber visiting expreimental units aiming to use waste hot water to produce tomatoes, eels and such-like, though in the end most of them bit the commercial dust. The old CEGB, when I was a member of their Environmental & Development Advisory Panel for several years in the pre-privatization era, used to insist that the steam wasn’t pollution. But it has always signalled profligate inefficiency – and still does. Those cloud-making towers stand as symbols of an era of dinosaur technology.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

MURDEROUS NEIGHBOUR

Red in beak and claw, to mutate Tennyson. One of the neighbouring sparrowhawks on the Hill House lawn, photographed a couple of days ago by my father, Tim. The debris appears to have been one of the collared doves that are such a prominent part of the local acoustic environment. Sparrowhawks have come back in force, apparently, among other things decimating a neighbour’s dovecot at the bottom of Little Rissington Hill.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

APPLE DAY

Today was Apple Day, a celebration of local distinctiveness and diversity in terms of apples. Elaine brought back Orange Kidd apples from the Farmer’s Market in Barnes which deserve to be arrayed as artworks, for their glorious colours, but turned out to be wildly delicious too. Apple Day was launched many moons ago by one of my favourite charities, Common Ground. Two of the co-founders were Sue Clifford and Angela King who I first came acros when they were at Friends of the Earth. The culmination of their Common Ground efforts is a book I bought a couple of weeks ago, England in Particular. As Cleve West notes in today’s Independent Magazine, the book is “an almost biblical record of everything from accents and anty-tumps (anthills) to zigzags (a way to negotiate hills) and zawns (narrow recesses in cliffs).” I also came across one of my favourite artists, Peter Randall-Page (http://www.peterrandall-page.com/), ages ago thanks to Common Ground, who at the time were creating wayside shrines for walkers.

Friday, October 20, 2006

NAU AND BEST FOOT FORWARD

Matt (Loose) and I are finishing off the last bits of our 2006 Global Reporters survey, which is shaping up nicely. Craig Simmons of Best Foot Forward (http://www.bestfootforward.com/) comes in to give Mark (Lee) and I a briefing on their ecological footprinting methodology, which underpins WWF’s impending One Planet Business offering – which Seb (Beloe) and I have been helping with. Hard at work writing columns for the likes of Grist (with Mark), European Business Forum (with Geoff Lye) and Director. Late in the afternoon, Mark and I do a teleconference with a fascinating new start-up based in Portland, Oregon, called Nau (http://www.nau.com). They are largely refugees from companies like The Gap, Nike and Patagonia, and their sustainability strategy sounds world-class. They launch their first products in January. Worth watching, I think.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

SHELL AND ECGD

Another hectic day, much of it spent with Shell. Niel Golightly, who we worked with when he was with Ford, has moved to Shell as VP for External Affairs & Communications in the company’s Downstream business, which stretches from bitumen and refineries to chemicals. I had to do two short presentations, one on climate change and one on the wider public agenda. Good people, some tough issues, lively discussion.

Then on to a dinner at Lancaster House this evening, hosted by Ian MacCartney, Minister of State for Trade – the annual ministerial convening of the members of the Export Credits Guarantee Department’s Advisory Council, which I chair. Walked from Waterloo, where the Shell event was held, across to St James, stopping off at Waterstone’s in Piccadilly on the way – where I bought three books, including two novels (one of which was Blue Man Falling) and The Goldilocks Enigma, which poses the question why the universe is so suited to life, at least in our neck of the woods. Weird October weather: by the time we were having a pre-dinner drink in Lancaster House the temperature was almost tropical, hot and steamy.

One issue on the agenda was the recent NGO proposal that the Advisory Council should consider ‘live’ cases like Sakhalin, the giant oil field being developed in Russia by Shell and Exxon. (At the moment, the Advisory Council only considers cases that have already been decided.) Sakhalin was already controversial, because of alleged environmental impacts, but has become a good deal more so now that the Russians have stalled a permit, on environmental grounds – though it is hard to believe that they care a fig about the environment. If the Advisory Council did shift to live cases, which it seems that we are unlikely to do, I would probably have to “consider my position,” straddling as I now find myself doing the worlds of oil and export guarantees. Meanwhile, it’s a fascinating opportunity to work on some of the issues that exporters are increasingly expected to manage, among them bribery and corruption, human rights and sustainable development.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

AIX ET MAS DES GRAVIERS

And here are some shots of Aix-en-Provence, Mont Sainte-Victoire and Mas des Graviers, where we celebrated the sixtieth birthday of Jan-Olaf Willums. On the evening of the celebration, there was a jazz band and 38 guests.

Museum window, Aix

Heads in a museum, Aix

Roadworks

Four Dolphins

Mont Sainte-Victoire 1

Mont Saint-Victoire 2

Elaine on Mont Sainte-Victoire

Praying mantis

Parasail

Cleared for replanting of vines

Elaine 1

Elaine and Pastis

Elaine and Doris

Elaine 2

Breakfast begins

Jan-Olaf

Mas des Graviers, masking the pool

Saturday, October 14, 2006

CYCLE COMES HOME FROM HOSPITAL

Have more or less finished wading through the pile of newspapers that built up while we were in Provence. After a session with the opticians this morning, where it turned out that I have embyonic cataracts, I walked across Putney Common to pick up my bike, finally repaired after my entanglement with the Mongolian woman (see 23 August entry). Also bought a radiant fluorescent yellow jacket to try to ensure that future autopredators see me a little earlier. Ribs almost mended, but, my, it takes a while. We really ought to have laws like those in Amsterdam, where it’s universally assumed that drivers are at fault in accidents involving cyclists. Things can swing too far the wrong way, of course, but we have a fair way to go before we are in any danger of that here.

Friday, October 13, 2006

FRIDAY 13

One explanation for the dark reputation of Friday 13 was the destruction of the Knights Templar in 1307 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th), launched on Friday, October 13 – which will make the same date next year something of a milestone. Today, though, has been fun. First meeting, organised by Charles Perry of Green Order (http://www.greenorder.com/), was with Nick Hurd MP and Clare Kerr of the Conservative Party’s Quality of Life Policy Group (http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=126829, though the link to the Policy Group website didn’t work when I tried it). I can’t imagine ever voting Conservative, but I emerged impressed with what they are trying to do in such areas as climate change, quality of life and sustainable development.

Then Paloma Berenguer of Shell came across to brief me on a session on sustainable development I am due to do there next week. Next, among other meetings, we had a lively session with Marcos Egydio Martins, Chief Sustainability Officer of Natura (one of the most interesting of the many hundreds of companies I have visited and certainly the most impressive in Brazil, see http://www.natura.com/) and Simon Lyster of LEAD International (http://www.lead.org/member/2566). Later, John Ganzi came in to talk about a fascinating new social enterprise he is developing in the area of sustainable tourism.

And all this in the midst of my efforts to keep on track with the final bout of writing for our Global Reporters benchmark survey. The main section I worked on today covered corporate reporting in the emerging economies, or non-OECD world, and in the end quite well.

In the evening, I collapsed on the sofa to watch The Death of a President on TV. In many ways it’s shocking that they would do such a program on the assassination of a living President, but equally this President is likely to be remembered as a special case, a man who – as a Financial Times columnist argued earlier in the week – has done more than anyone else to make the ‘Axis of Evil’ a reality. I can’t help but enormously admire this week’s statement on the Iraq War by General Sir Richard Dannatt.

SHOULD YUNUS HAVE WON THE ECONOMICS PRIZE?

Sent a congratulatory note today to Muhammad Yunus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus) on behalf of SustainAbility, after hearing the news that he had won this year’ Nobel Peace Prize (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/). It did make me wonder, however, whether it mightn’t have been more interesting if he had won the Economics Prize. If the socioeconomic side of sustainable development is ever to be achieved, his work on microcredit will be critical. Some years back, I was thrilled when the UK paperback of his book Banker to the Poor sported a quote from me, extracted from a review I had done for The Guardian. His work with Grameen – including the new partnership with Danone on local yoghurt production – is central to the book I am doing with Pamela Hartigan.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

CAN PROPERTY THRIVE IN A CHANGING CLIMATE?

Across to Claridge’s first thing this morning, to speak at the Estates Gazette Summit 2006, on the theme of how the property industry can thrive in a changing climate. Estates Gazette editor Peter Bill kicked off with comments about how weird the UK’s weather is at the moment, which is certainly true – at times it’s like June and quite sticky. He was followed by John Gummer, as co-Chairman of the Conservative Party’s Quality of Life Commission. One of the things he said was that any property develop who has been buying up land for development around airports could be in for a rude shock when the air travel business goes into something of a tailspin – and the Government imposes controls on further airport expansion.

I followed on, talking among other things about the need to green the valuation of buildings, something I really woke up to when listening to Chris Corps in Canada earlier in the year. Next up was Keith Wells, Director of Strategy & Planning at Dragon and Rupert Clarke, chief executive of Hermes Real Estate. Then a fascinating presentation by Jan van Dokkum, president of UTC Power, on everything from fuel cells to to the future of elevator technology. He was followed by Yolande Barnes, research director at Savills, on the trends in demand for greener residential and commercial property. And then Sir Crispin Tickell summed up. He is now director of the Policy Foresight Programme at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford.

Lunch was in the Gordon Ramsay restaurant at Claridge’s, which I cycle past regularly but had never darkened the doortstep of. Food and wine exquisite. Then raced back to the office for a session on the Pharma Futures II event we are organising in Docklands next week, bringing together top executives from the pharmaceuticals industry and major pension funds, who invest in those companies. This initiative has been developed by Sophia Tickell, our Chair – and Sir Crispin’s niece. A much more structured approach to a particular sector than anything we have attempted to date. Today’s event made me wonder whether the property sector mightn’t be a suitable future case for similar treatment?

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

99 TO 1

An interesting thing happened at today’s conference organised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (http://www.cim.co.uk/cim/new/html/newArt.cfm?objectID=45BE13FC-A022-58D8-769BE7A98652DAB6 and http://www.cim.co.uk/conf/speakers.html). My talk followed that of marketing guru Philip Kotler (http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/bio/Kotler.htm), who told me that his work has consistently overlooked our agenda – and that if he gets a chance to do a 13th edition of his standard work it’s one of the areas he feels he must now engage.

Then we had a breakout debate organised in typical university fashion (though not any university I ever attended), with a motion, a proposer, an opposer and two seconds. The motion was that “the triple bottom line complicates marketing – and doesn’t help.” I opposed the motion, perhaps not surprisingly.

I have to say that I played to the gallery a bit. I noticed that over half of the audience were women. So, while my main opponent read an excellent prepared speech, I did the thing on the fly, said I had no idea how to do a formal debate (appealing to the sympathy vote), noted that TBL thinking does indeed complicate anything it touches (but, then, it’s an increasingly complex world out there), and then told two stories.

The first picked up from the proposer’s attack on what he dubbed “minstrel-driven lists” of 3Bs (me), 4Ps (Kotler) or whatever. I said I had just come back from a land – Provence – where minstrels had played a critical role in the evolution of culture. One minstrel serenaded Sermonda, the beautiful wife of the hot-blooded Raymond de Roussillon, as one was meant to be able to do in those days. Raymond promptly waylaid and slew the troubador, I learned from Lawrence Durrell’s book Caesar’s Vast Ghost. He then had the man’s heart cooked and served to his unsuspecting spouse. When she discovered what had been done, she threw herself to her death from the castle’s highest window. The perhaps inevitable result was that an appeal for revenge was made to King Arragon, who invaded with an army of freebooters and put everything and everyone to the sword.

The point I was making, in perhaps overly dramatic form, was that a culture of male domination and brutality had eventually been civilised by a social movement, the Courts of Love, catalysed by the minstrels. And what had previously seemed normal later came to be viewed as repugnant. The same would be true, I concluded, as the sustainability revolution really gets into its stride. And the vote? Well, our session attracted around 100 delegates and when it came to the vote, exactly 1 hand went up for the motion, and every other hand went up for our view of the world.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

A HOWLING AND BELLOWING AT POURRIERES

As we walked around Mas des Graviers, partly through fields laid bare where Jan-Olaf’s vines had been pulled up to plant new ones, it was hard not to think of the fact that this plain beneath towering Mont Ste-Victoire was the scene of a perfectly hideous battle in 102 BC. A huge horde of Teutons and Ambrons streamed towards Italy and Rome, with a view to sacking the city. Plutarch says that the Roman troops under Marius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Marius) watched the barbarians stream through a gorge beneath them for six days.

Whatever the facts, Marius outwitted his enemies, who had earlier slaughtered some 200,000 Romans in a disastrous reverse. Now Marius turned the tables once again, with his men killing anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 of the Teutons and Ambrons, and taking an estimated 80,000 prisoners. Contemporary accounts report that the beleaguered Romans awaiting a counter-attack heard instead a “crying … all through the night, not like the sighs and groans of men but like the howling and bellowing of wild beasts.”

I have all this on the authority of Lawrence Durrell, in his book Caesar’s Vast Ghost (Faber & Faber, 1990 and 2002). Again according to Plutarch, the remains of the dead were left where they had fallen, rotting in the summer heat, with the result that the area became known as Campi Putridi, or the Fields of Putrefaction. And that phrase, it seems, accounts fro the name of the nearest village to Mas des Graviers, Pourrieres.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

AIX EN PROVENCE

Some photographs from Aix en Provence, where Elaine and I have been decompressing these last few days – having come down by Eurostar and TGV. Read Sophia MacDougall’s novel Romanitas on the way down, and am now immersed in Lawrence Durrell’s Caesar’s Vast Ghost, his valedictory book on Provence.

Site of the old thermal spring

Spirals outside the thermal baths

Fountain

Statue and modern equivalents

Market

Market 2

Cross-legged pillar

Bollards

Sunday, October 01, 2006

ROYAL SECRET

When I was in Auckland last week, a number of us recalled the limpet mining of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in 1985. Today it turns out – at least according to The Sunday Times – that one of French presidential contender Ségolène Royal’s brothers was the DGSE agent who attached the mine to the ship’s hull. A Portuguese photographer was killed and the incident backfired badly on France, except in France. Still feel that Royal is an attractive proposition, politically, but what a complex world.

That complexity is also underscored by another story in the same paper, taking groups like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Soil Association and WWF to task for the many flights their top staff take – and the climate consequences, both directly and because of the example they set. SustainAbility has offset its carbon emissions from all its activities, including team members’ lifestyles, for many years – and, in the case of client projects, has long invited clients to double the offset. But this is something we are clearly going to have to devote more thought to.

Saturday, September 30, 2006

SUSTAINABILITY APPOINTS SKOLL FELLOW

SustainAbility put out this press release yesterday:

SustainAbility appoint Maggie Brenneke as first Skoll Fellow

Hot on the heels of the announcement of a $1 million, 3-year grant from The Skoll Foundation, SustainAbility has appointed its first Skoll Fellow to help run its evolving Skoll Program on entrepreneurial solutions to sustainability challenges. Maggie Brenneke joins SustainAbility as both Associate Director and Skoll Fellow. She will work closely with John Elkington, SustainAbility’s Founder and Chief Entrepreneur—and will also play a leading role in business development and consulting, bringing expertise in the energy sector.

“The Skoll grant has been an extraordinary shot in the arm,” says John Elkington, “and Maggie Brenneke will help us drive our work in such areas as creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Our thanks to Jeff Skoll. Both with his Foundation and his new movie studio, Participant Productions, Jeff—who co-founded eBay—is an extraordinary example of entrepreneurial energy. A central goal as we move towards our twentieth year as a business is to leverage the passion, experience and contacts of such people in support of sustainable development.”

Prior to joining SustainAbility, Maggie worked in Portland, Oregon for LaunchBox a boutique strategy and market research consultancy, and for Ecos Consulting, as a Senior Manager focusing on developing energy efficiency and renewable energy transformation programmes for utility and government clients. Maggie has ten years’ industry experience and has a BA in Economics and an MBA.

So what persuaded Maggie Brenneke to become the first Skoll fellow? “What attracts me to SustainAbility and The Skoll Program”, she says, “is the opportunity to tap the wells of creativity springing up around the world – and in some of the most unusual places – to inspire fresh thinking in addressing our most pressing social concerns.”

Two new analysts join London team

Joining the London-based team in early October, Ivana Gazibara and Jean-Philippe Renaut will play important roles in supporting the implementation of SustainAbility’s new strategy. Recently graduated from the London School of Economics with Masters degrees and as key members of the Global Reporters research team, Ivana and JP will be working to apply their insights in key areas of SustainAbility’s forward strategy such as the emerging economies program and in further development of our ICT and healthcare sector practices.

Friday, September 29, 2006

CRYING WOLF

Our latest Grist column is titled Citizen Hope. It begins, “Who’s afraid of the big, bad future? Al Gore, clearly — and pretty much anyone who has seen An Inconvenient Truth. While Gore’s dissenters may argue that he cries wolf too often, no one who knows and understands the statistics used in the film can doubt that the Big Bad Wolf of climate change is at the door. The question is whether our economies are best built of straw, sticks, or bricks.”

For more, http://www.grist.org/biz/fd/2006/09/27/crywolf/

HOW MANY LIGHTBULBS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE THE WORLD?

The question isn’t mine. It’s from the September issue of one of my favourite magazines, Fast Company. And it’s about Wal-Mart’s plans to push compact fluorescent lightbulbs, with dire implications for the now wildly obsolete incandescent lightbulb industry. The scale of the company is mind-boggling, although that scale can be used for good or ill – as a range of activists, unions and local communities have argued in recent years. But my sense is that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott was serious when he described his environmental epiphany, post-Hurricane-Katrina, as waking up to the fact that the broad spectrum of environmental issues can be seen as “Katrina in slow motion.”

IN NATURE’S FACE

For some years, I have contributed a monthly column to a Japanese newsletter, Nikkei Ecology. The latest covers the death of Australian wildlife enthisiast Steve Irwin, whose funeral got saturation coverage when we were in Oz. Here is the piece:

NATURE HAS WAYS OF STRIKING BACK

When the World Economic Forum convened in Davos this year, one key question was what risks the world faces in the future? Among them, alongside terrorism, conflict and climate change, was the growing threat of pandemics. And that threat was brought home to me during a lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand a few weeks back, partly through the death of an internationally known Australian wildlife expert, and partly as I read a book—China Syndrome, sub-titled ‘The True Story of the 21st Century’s First Great Epidemic,’ by Karl Taro Greenfeld—on the long flight home. The book, which reads like a thriller, is about the evolution, spread and eventual containment of the SARS epidemic.

As we shuttled between conference venues in Australia, the TV screen in the limousine showed long sequences of the funeral of Steve Irwin, featuring the country’s Prime Minister John Howard (a political ally of President Bush in denying the reality of climate change) and an extraordinary list of Hollywood stars, including Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner (who made the film Waterworld in part to underscore the threat of climate change) and Cameron Diaz. But the highlight of the show turned out to be a tribute to her father by Irwin’s 8-year-old daughter, Bindi. Among all the tears and TV cameras it would have been easy to miss a key element of the drama: Irwin’s fame came in large part because he got in close to wildlife, for example wrestling crocodiles on camera. So the nature of his death—killed by a stingray, whose barb punctured his chest, was hardly a surprise.

What struck me as I watched the tributes flow was that Irwin’s work and fame was symptomatic of a world in which the human species pushes ever deeper into the natural world. Yes, that creates opportunities for wonderful television, but it also opens up growing opportunities for unknown diseases to cross the species barrier. Among the diseases that have jumped in this way have been Lassa fever, HIV/AIDS and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). In his book, Greenfeld takes the reader on an extraordinary ride from the bedside of an early Chinese victim, via leading laboratoriess where researchers race—compete—to identify the new illness, to the World Health Organization as officials desperately try to work out what is going on behind massive Chinese government cover-up. We only just escaped a devastating global pandemic, with 15-20 per cent of those infected dying

SARS probably originated in the city of Shenzen, in China’s Guangdong province. Scientists tracked the site of the wild-species-to-human jump to markets and restaurants selling, slaughtering and cooking exotic wild animals for what is known as ‘Wild flavour’ cuisine. Thanks to a lawless culture, the trade in snakes, camels, otters, monkeys, badgers, bats, pangolins, geese, civets, wild boars had become a booming industry. In this horrendous, overcrowded, polluted environment a virus hopped from civet cats to humans. Worryingly, Greenfeld concludes that diseases like SARS and Avian Flu are part of a much wider pattern of disease that suggests that the next global pandemic will break out in Asia.

So was the Chinese cover-up unusual? No. In Vietnam, in 2004, the government covered up cases of avian flu rather than upset the preparations for the South-east Asian Games. What happens if the next pandemic builds as we move towards the 2008 Beijing Olympics? Who knows, but one thing we can be sure of is that if a major pandemic does take hold our delicately balanced global economy, much of it based on the globalization of Japanese just-in-time methods, will unravel. This could happen sooner—and much faster—than we might imagine.

Monday, September 25, 2006

WWF 2

More from WWF UK, http://www.wwf.org.uk/news/n_0000003012.asp

WWF CRASH

When I first heard a day or two ago that a WWF helicopter had gone down in Nepal, I wondered whether anyone we knew was involved. It turns out that they were, and the search party reports that all 24 people aboard died (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-09-25T094932Z_01_DEL298529_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRASH-NEPAL.xml&archived=False). A meeting of the WWF UK Council of Ambassadors tomorrow morning has been cancelled. Our thoughts are with WWF and the families of those who died.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

BIG SHOT

Somehow, in transit, I have lost the copy of The Australian that on 21 September carried the interview I did in Melbourne, under its ‘Big Shot’ label, with a photograph against the a Titanic-like stairway. But the text can be found at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20448042-643,00.html.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

ULYSSES JOINS US IN MELBOURNE

If our Sydney event was largely business people, Melbourne has seen pretty much all levels of government represented. The day was kicked off by a longstanding friend, Terry A’Hearn – who is Director of the Sustainable Development Unit at Victoria’s Environmental Protection Agency. He had three ribs broken four weeks ago by an over-enthusiastic barrister during a game of football. So I kicked offf my presentation by saying that this was something else that Terry and I shared, though – given that my injuries were inflicted by an attractive Mongolian woman – mine probably had the edge in the romantic stakes. For the second time, I also showed the photo of our line-up with the Misses Earth, to underscore the travails of our journey so far.

The growing importance of government in sustainable development was weirdly underscored by a photo of a grotesquely muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lobby of the Sofitel Hotel, where we have been staying – and where our third conference has been held. His recent initiative to cap greenhouse gas emissions in California has featured in all my Down Under presentations this time – and was also mentioned by several other speakers. Who would have imagined a few years back that the Terminator would become an icon of sustainability, particularly given his continuing fetish for Hummers?

Among those contributing today were Matt Viney (Parliamentary Secretary for Innovation and Industry), standing in for John Brumby, State Treasurer and Minister for Innovation, a long-standing supporter of our series, Geoff Lawler (Director, Sustainability & Innovation, City of Melbourne), another long-standing supporter, and Liza Maimone (Partner, Environment and Sustainability Services, Ernst & Young).

After another highly successful day, seven of us (Alex, Attracta, Bob, Dave, Geoff, Murray and I) repaired to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate. On a whim, I brought along the mini-disk player and microphone that Crag (Ray) bought for me on eBay a short while back, and at the end of the meal – after Japanese beers (Asahi, Kirin), sake and a wonderful Australian red wine – I passed the mike around. Geoff Lawler become quite animated about the new green HQ (CH2) building the City of Melbourne has almost completed (http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/info.cfm?top=171&pg=1933), which I hope to visit next time around.

The CH2 building won 6 stars

But the evening’s astonishing highlight was Murray’s quite unexpected, end-to-end rendition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s great poem, Ulysses:

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,–
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me–
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads–you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

A seven-stars-worthy recounting and podcast-in-the-making. True, at the end, Murray forgot the last six lines, but after the mike had circled the table, he remembered. As he finished the last line and handed the mike on, it caught him saying, “You could live by that.” He has. A great Australian, an enthusiastic supporter of all that is wonderful about this island continent, but also not afraid to name the challenges it faces in moving towards sustainability. He and his wife Dobrina have been transformative friends on this journey as we have striven, sought and tried not to yield to the passage of time and other challenges. A 72-year-old Ulysses and bringer of new things. As Tennyson put it: “Well-loved of me.”

Bimbocity: Schwarzenegger at work

Dave going global

Geoff Lawler leans into the future

Alex, Christine, Bob, Dave – and my empty chair (photo taken by Murray)

Alex, Murray, a cradled Australian red and Bob

Glowing with relief, sake and sunburn

Our two pianists, Bob (and Alex), try (unsuccessfully) to break into locked hotel piano

In the lift/elevator en route to a well-deserved rest

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

SYDNEY

Yesterday, as we flew in from Auckland, I read China Syndrome, by Karl Taro Greenfeld. Published by Penguin (though on the title page that’s rendered as Pengiuin), this is the story of SARS. Stunningly well written – more like a novel. A stupefyingly powerful case for transparency at all levels of the global economy.

The discussion in Sydney was livelier than in Auckland. Noel Purcell (Group General Manager, Stakeholder Communications, Westpac) kicked us off, arguing that business is now at a cross-roads, but that the paths leading outward are poorly signposted. Session chairs included Karen Waldmann, General Manager Regulatory, Integral Energy, one of the local companies that recently took a stand on climate change.

One of the most powerful elements of the presentations to date as been the stories told, Bob about his attempts to grow wheat and other crops without agrichemicals in his parallel-to-IDEO farming life, Dave about the growing pressure on companies like Intel to get toxic materials out of the value chain. The recent EU injunction to the ICT industry to get lead out of all of its products, including the tin-lead solder that has been a central feature of ICT technology since the get-go, has been the equivalent, Dave said, of saying to McDonald’s and Burger King that they can make all the burgers they want – just so long as they don’t use beef.

Dave (Stangis) and Attracta (Lagan) en route to airport

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

SYDNEY AND THE MISSES EARTH

We flew across to Sydney today, then made our way down to the Harbour for a drink ahead of being picked up by a boat owned by Ros Kelly (who I first knew when she was Australia’s Environment Minister) and her husband David Morgan (CEO of Westpac Banking Corporation). While we waited for Peter Kinder of KLD Research & Analytics – who just happened to be in Sydney – to arrive, several of us got embroiled with the Miss Earth Australia candidates (see photos below). In addition to their aesthetic qualities, they have to have a firm grip on at least one environmental issue. So the photos show us talking about bidoversity, salinization and the like. Honest.

When the boat and Peter had arrived, it was a tough job to prize our speakers away from the young ladies in green. But the effort was well worth it, as the boat put on speed and shot across the harbour. We picked up Ros and a friend, Peter Thompson, who is a leading educator, communications consultant, broadcaster and author. For many years he has been an ABC radio and television broadcaster and has hosted the ‘Talking Heads’ program on ABC TV. His publications include Persuading Aristotle.

Ros Kelly

Ros – who among many other things was the first Australian MP to give birth while in office (I discover in her Wikipedia stub, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ros_Kelly) – was great fun, as ever, and the party was under way. Later, we took a slow spin around the maritime museum (with its replica of Captain Cook’s bark The Endeavour, in which he went looking for the ‘Great South Land’) and then headed across to a small cove to anchor and have supper – watching the sun go down over the Sydney skyline. Breathtaking. Found myself wondering what Cook would have made of all this?

When we got back to the harbourside, David Morgan was there to meet and we all repaired to a fascinating bar to catch up and consider how best to respond to the Australian coal industry’s hard-ball tactics in response to recent attempts to get climate change onto the political agenda here.

Alex musing

Bob (Adams) does his research – Christine (Charles) in background

Four speakers (including me) carry out an eco-invigilation

We’re off to pick up Ros and Peter

Alex and Christine

Alex and Peter (Kinder)

Peter (Thompson), Bob (Adams), Dave (Stangis) and Attracta’s hands

Opera House and Bridge

The Endeavour

Waterfront

Replica paddle boat with Wallenius giant

Red water 1

Red water 2

Sunset over Sydney

Monday, September 18, 2006

SUSTAINABILITY 3.0: THE INNOVATION IMPERATIVE

And so we are off – with the first in the 2006 conference series held today in the Hyatt Regency hotel in Auckland. Murray Edmonds kicks of, saying this – our ninth series – is his swansong. Then come Ann Sherry, CEO of Westpac Banking Corporation in New Zealand and Judith Tizard, who – take a breath – is Minister of Consumer Affairs, Minister Responsible for Auckland Issues, Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Associate Minister of Transport, Associate Minister of Commerce and Minister responsible for Archives New Zealand and the National Library. Then me.

My theme was that we are headed towards a Sustainability 3.0 agenda, where 1.0 was the compliance agenda (when business was forced to do things by regulators and, as a result, was on the defensive) and 2.0 has been the corporate citizenship agenda, which like a snowball has scooped up a seemingly endless spectrum of issues, from human rights and bribery and corruption through to climate change. The Sustainability 3.0 agenda will see a growing focus on fun, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial solutions that can replicate and scale.

My presentation will end each time with an edited version of an ABC TV program profiling Jeff Skoll, with cameos from people like George Clooney, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson and Robert Redford and social entrepreneurs like Martin Fisher of KickStart and Bill Strickland of nonprofit Pittsburgh-based Manchester Bidwell Corporation, which offers after-school programs to at-risk public school students and vocational training for adults. The producer, Grace Kahng, had very kindly edited down the film for me.

Then the rest of our team were Bob Adams, Head Designer of the Sustainability Practice at IDEO, Dave Stangis who is Director of Corporate Responsibility at Intel, Christine Charles who is Director of Environment & Social Responsibility at Newmont Australia, and Alex Barkawi, Managing Director of Sustainable Asset Management (SAM). Each day, as the tour travels around, we will also have local people chairing the sessions. Today, for example, we had people like Jim Collings (General Manager, Shell New Zealand) and Rachel Dupree (General Manager of the Sustainable Industry Group at the Ministry for the Environment). The day is brought to an end by a brief overview by yours truly, followed by Attracta Lagan of Managing Values, a long-standing friend and colleague who has taken over from Murray in working out where this travelling circus will head next. We know where we are headed toimorrow, however: Sydney.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

RANGITOTO AND MUSTANG

No sooner had we (Bob Adams of IDEO, Alex Bakarwi of Sustainable Asset Management, Dave Stangis of Intel and I) arrived at Auckland airport, than Murray Edmonds had scooped us off first to central Auckland, then to the ferry dock – from where Attracta Lagan took us out to Rangitoto Island. We walked up through the lava fields, in fitful sun and fitful rain, past the volcano’s gaping maw to the summit – from where you look out over the Rangitoto Channel to distant Auckland.

As we were getting ready to walk back down, a Battle of Britain memorial flypast began, with an extraordinary collection of old planes, among them a Catalina, a Dakota in D-Day colours, and a P-51 Mustang, I think the first time I have ever seen one aloft. Tim flew the Mustang in India, where I seem to remember they used to fly beer up to great heights to flash-distil it. No doubt a great contribution to the war effort. I also knew someone whose father was one of the first Mustang pilots shot down over Germany and was tortured ferociously, by people desparate to know about a super-weapon that was beginning to turn the air war in the Allies’ favour. Stunning, stirring sight as the growling, geriatric warbirds went round and round our summit, before heading out across the Channel to Auckland. But you could also imagine what similar aircraft in less friendly hands might have sounded like over Pearl Harbor or, in WWII Australia, Darwin.

Mustang

Catalina

Distorted tower

THE SPIRE

I finally read one of the most extraordinary novels I have yet come across on the flights to Auckland: William Golding’s The Spire, first published in 1964. Various people had recommended it, and it seemed particularly appropriate since when we did one of those rapid-fire word-choice tests many years back, in which you have to choose between matched pairs of words like foundation and spire, I went for spire with no hesitation. Aspirational. In my mind, at least, if you were building a spire the foundations would logically already be in place. Not in Golding’s book. My brain is now seething, infested with the story. The humming, then shrieking pillars in the cathedral on top of which Dean Jocelin builds his towering folly struck me (whatever Golding intended) as a powerful metaphor for the ecosystem changes we are beginning to detect all around, in our climate, marine fisheries and so on – as we continue to build our unstable civilization upon ever-more-precarious ecological foundations.

ANZ VS VEGETARIANS

The Air New Zealand flight from London to Los Ageles yesterday confronted me with some of the worst efforts at vegeratian food it has ever been my misfortune to confront. Before long, I gave up and went on an enforced diet. The good-hearted young steward had said it was his first day and when he later wanted to know if there was anything he could do better, I didn’t have the heart to suggest shooting the chefs.

But then on the leg from LA to Auckland, quite unprompted, a new steward said he hadn’t even bothered to put my vegetarian meal in the oven, it was so horrible. In so many words, he said that ANZ can’t be bothered with vegetarians and I would be better of with the ‘bland food’ option, where at least you got the odd potato. Hard not to agree. The sandwiches I was offered at one stage looked as though their flilling had been scooped up from the outfall from a silage clamp or intensive piggery.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE GOT IF YOU HAD CROSSED MOTHER TERESA WITH RICHARD BRANSON?

Have just finished listening to and editing the taped conversation I did with Pamela Hartigan a week or so ago, for the second in SustainAbility’s Skoll Program series of podcasts. We got so carried away that I have gone Rambo and edited it into a Part I and Part II. Part I is provisionally titled: ‘How Not to Give Away $1 Million.’ And Part II: ‘What Would You Have Got If You Had Crossed Mother Teresa with Richard Branson?’ The answer to the riddle, originally posed by Pamela, is the social entrepreneur’s social entrepreneur, Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank. But am glad no-one seems to have tried the experiment. Hybrid vigour can be taken too far.

Am beginning to enjoy this new format and technology as a way of connecting both with the agenda and the wider world. Tomorrow am off to Los Angeles, then Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney, and am taking one of our new (well, bought used off eBay) Sony MD Walkmans – or Walkmen – with me in the hope of chasing interesting stories to ground.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

ENVIRONMENT FOUNDATION

The Environment Foundation, which I chair, had a very productive Trustees’ meeting today, hosted as usual at SustainAbility’s offices. We were joined by a new Trustee, Halina Ward. And an idea I have been developing since the Richard Sandbrook memorial event earlier in the year – which would involve developing a collective history of UK environmentalism ahead of evolving some degree of consensus on where next – got a strong following wind. Have tested the idea on a variety of people in the field and all have been very positive, so am planning to move ahead, but would be interested to know whether anyone else is already embarked on such a venture?

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

This evening, Elaine and I went along to the Vue Cinema for a pre-release screening of Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. The event was co-hosted by Business in the Community, The Prince of Wales’s Business and the Environment Programme, and Tomorrow’s Company. A delightful gathering of the tribes. I had had high expectations of the film – and they were exceeded. Gore was graceful, powerful, persuasive. The links he made to the near-death of his son and the death from lung cancer of his only sister, Nancy (the irony being that their father was a tobacco grower who, to that point, had largely ignored the evidence on the health effects of smoking), achieved some energetic emotional spotwelding.

The overall sense given is that it may well be too late to do much of any great import, at least if we leave it very much longer, but that the idea – promoted by people like Bjorn Lomborg – that all we need do is invest in helping people adapt is borderline criminally insane.

[Later footnote, on September 8: Interesting that Stanley Fink, deputy chairman of the Man Group, introduced last night’s film screening. Today’s Finanical Times carries the news that he is stepping back from executive duties to devote more time to philanthropy. This follows Bill Gates’ recent stepping back announcement, and that by Citigroup’s Sandy Weill that he would give away $1bn. A very welcome trend, but what will happen (to the trend) when the next recession kicks in, I wonder?]

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

MEDIA ON MY MIND

Spent a fair amount of time this week in the normal cycle of writing columns for various publications, including Director magazine, Grist and Nikkei Ecology (published in Japan). I also got mentions in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal Europe, plus – a real thrill – had a piece appear in the fortieth anniversary issue of Resurgence.

Pamela Hartigan was in the office for several hours this afternoon, both so we could discuss follow-up on the book and record a new podcast, which (owing to my impending absence in Australia and New Zeland) should be out in a couple of weeks. The Schwab Foundation, which she heads, is building a wider range of media relationships around the world. Indeed, she had come on from a meeting with the Financial Times – which hopefully will help when the book comes out next year.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

THE CYCLING WOUNDED

As the current frenzy of greening builds in the media, we are being encouraged to get on our bikes. All well and good, until you factor in the perilous conditions in which cycling is currently done. Jan-Olaf Willums was in the office earlier today, with Richard Blundell, his colleague in the TH!NK electric car venture. Jan-Olaf’s head now has an extraordinary, livid scar which loops across his scalp, from a wound he recently received coming off his bicycle on his way downhill from seeing an artist we both adore in Provence, Sama. That, I think, we can put down to over-enthusiasm.

Then, this evening, Elaine and I had Peter Kinder to dinner – and it turns out that when he came off his bike recently he broke all his ribs and did major damage to a shoulder, all of which are still in the process of mending. Which made me wonder whether I hadn’t got off reasonably lightly a couple of weeks back? Meanwhile, the Neurofen works wonders, though Peter was recommending industrial quantities of Ibuprofen.

Whatever Peter’s excuses, mine – of being hit from behind while well inside a cycleway – must qualify as almost watertight. As to getting back onto the road, it turns out that the mechanic who usually sees to my bike is away for a week, overlapping with my trip to the Antipodes, so it seems I’ll be bikeless for a while. It’s a little like losing a limb.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

FORUM FOR THE FUTURE ALUMNI

Tintern Abbey

Got back home earlier this evening after driving back from Ross-on-Wye, which we visited for the first time this morning. Last night, we had arrived at The Leadership Trust centre in West-under-Penyard (http://www.leadership.org.uk), just outside Ross, where I was due to do an evening session with alumni of the Forum for the Future Master’s programme. Soon after we arrived, we sat in on a session that Forum CEO Peter Madden and a colleague did on futurology and scenarios, then after dinner Sara Parkin introduced me and off we went. After a short introduction, I basically turned it over the to the 50-or-so alumni to drive with their questions and comments, and the discussion took wing. Hugely enjoyable. Elaine and I got to bed around 12.30, with the distant rumour of jollity continuing on virtually until sunrise. On our way back today, we visited Symond’s Yat, walking for a couple of hours alongside the Wye, and meeting a huge caterpillar along the way, and then dropping in on Tintern Abbey on the way home – arriving at the Abbey as Vespers were sung.

Market building, Ross-on-Wye

Wye, Symond’s Yat

Ditto

Caterpillar – for what? Does anyone know?

Wye

Saturday, September 02, 2006

PODCAST PAT

Pat Elkington – listening to taped interview

This morning, I managed to record a long sequence of my mother, Pat, talking about cellar that sits beneath the oldest end of Hill House. Apparently someone came through a few weeks back who was something of an expert in such things. He went down into the cellar and pronounced that it was possibly a couple of hundred years older than we had thought – we had always assumed it was from the 1500s, predating that end of the house. We also talked about the cider presses that used to be set up in our back yard as late as the 1920s, when the turned Rissington Redstreak apples into a powerful cider, much of which was chanelled through lead pipes into barrels in the cellar. There’s a new book by Michael Boyes, a neighbour, which contains a 1920s photograph of eight men at work on the presses, all wrapped in sackcloth aprons. We were given the photo some years ago by Bill Oakey, whose family were involved in the cider-making way back then. Sadly, the last Redstreak apple tree was felled a few years back, apparently.

But much of the time we talked about the ghosts that have long haunted that end of the house, most notably the 12-year-old girl who many years ago told my siblings via a ouija board session that she had died falling down the back stairs while visiting the house. Have never believed in ghosts, but this one has put in too many appearances for comfort. Even guests who knew nothing about her have found themselves following her downstairs. With advice from another expert, I think from Gloucester Cathedral, Pat eventually did a DIY exorcism, which seems to have worked. Now the idea is to edit this morning’s tapes down into some sort of podcast for the website.

Friday, September 01, 2006

THE SPIRE AND A BLOODIED EYE

Another Friday, but one that marks the 33rd anniversary of Elaine and I getting married in 1973 – an event I suspect we have never previously celebrated as such, and rarely remembered. More often than not I have been abroad, but not this time – and we drove down this morning to Little Rissington, en route to a Forum for the Future event tomorrow, near Ross-on-Wye.

At the last moment, however, my father had to take my mother across to Cheltenham to get an injection in her eye, so after lunch we drove across to Stow-on-the-Wold with Caroline. There Elaine fell in love with a raku ceramic hare, sprawling out in a gallery window, its legs crossed ahead and behind. So it became the first anniversary gift more or less in living memory. A few doors along, we also dropped into the Borzoi Bookshop, from which I emerged with Sun Shuyun’s The Long March, Douglas Galbraith’s A Winter in China, and William Golding’s The Spire – a book I had been meaning to track down for years. In that old test where you are asked to choose – fast – between the words foundation or spire, I went for spire without any hesitation, as did Elaine. I suppose we both assume that the foundations will sort themselves out … unlike those under Dean Jocelin’s towering folly.

On the way back from Stow, we dropped down into Icomb in the hope of seeing Bunny (Vanda) Palmer, and arrived a few moments before she came back from a trip across to Stow. Had a wonderful time catching up and discussing the diaspora of once-upon-a-time children from our various families. In her eighties, Bunny is an extraordinary advertisement for old age, though that generation is not without its torments these days. When we got back, it was to find the parents back – and Pat’s eye so bloodshot that it reminded me of that ghastly still from Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin film.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

BOOK AND BRUISES

Have just pressed SEND on version 3 out of 5 of the new book with Pamela Hartigan, which has been taking a fair amount of my time this year – indeed, in recent years. Now we’ll see what Harvard Business School Press have to say.

Meanwhile, my bruises are beginning to turn wondrous hues, hopefully in preparation to fade. It’s like seeing an X-ray image of the handlebars and kerbstones coming out. Have made the acquaintance of a wondrous variety of painkillers since my encounter with the Mongolian woman and her car, but have been weaning myself in recent days. Next thing will be to take my bike to the bike hospital.

As I nursed my cracked ribs, I have also been working on a whole bunch of different projects at SustainAbility, including our latest Network Debate (which serendipitously spun off a column for Grist, http://www.grist.org/biz/fd/2006/08/29/plastics/); on the survey of our 8000-member Compass Network; on our globalization report; on a couple of new appointments to the team, including a Skoll Fellow; and, with Rupert Bassett, on a major revamp of our branding and of our slide formats – ahead of the Australia and New Zeland tour on ‘The Innovation Imperative’ in mid-September (http://www.sustainability06.com.au/).

Thursday, August 24, 2006

THE FUTURE FOR GREEN BRANDS

Nursing my cracked ribs, and feasting on painkillers, I made it across to the ‘Will non-green brands survive?’ session organised by Esomar (http://www.esomar.org). Was standing in for Julia Hailes, who is speaking at Esomar conference later in the year. Spectacular views all around, of Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast. Facilitated by John Kearon (CEO and Founder, BrainJuicer), and the other speakers were David Bickerton (General Manager, Brand and Group Communications, BP), Mark Palmer (Marketing Director, Green & Black’s), Alison Austin (Head of Brand Policy & Sustainability, Sainsbury’s), Stephen Philips (Director & Founder, Spring Research) and Will Galgey (Director, Henley Centre HeadlightVision). My view was that the pressures for greener brands would grow, overall, but that – sadly – there would continue to be plenty of room for non-green brands. Afterwards, Sam and I walked back along the river to Tower Bridge, to catch a taxi back to the office.

On the theme of our latest Radar

HMS Belfast

Greater London Authority building

Black egg echoes Erotic Gherkin

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

THE OUTLOOK ON PEER PRESSURE

Media interviews are strange. You do (or maybe it’s just me who does) them in the midst of everything else, quite often without thinking too deeply, and then the paper, magazine or whatever comes along and you’re stuck there, like a butterfly on a pin. Pleased to see myself on the cover of the leading Indian magazine, Outlook Business (August 20, 2006, interview on pp 54-55: ‘Peer pressure is a big change agent’), given that India is one of SustainAbility’s focus countries in the coming years. But also interesting to see myself quoted as saying that Transparency International (http://www.transparency.org) is an “aggressive” campaigning organisation, something I would never say. Energetic, certainly. Effective, without question. But aggressive, hardly. Overall, one of my favourite NGOs.

SPARE RIB

My mother has always insisted that I was born with an extra rib – a doctor told her so when I was small. Just as well, really, since I seem to spend most of my time cracking my ribcage. Last night, as I cycled home via Olympia, a Mongolian woman – first day driving on London roads- swivelled around in her seat as she drove along, she later told me to constrain a 6-year-old daughter who had escaped from her safety belt, in the process veering into the cycle lane I was pedalling along.

The long and short of it is that I was once again airborne, flipped, landing with my ribcage on the kerbstone. The driver turned out to be perfectly charming, but as someone put it today, one pays a price for the city’s diversity – the first time I was left unconscious in London’s streets was in 1975, when an Indonesian (first day out on London’s roads) overtook me as I sped down Bow Street, Covent Garden, en route (it’s a longer story) to Cairo, and then turned hard across me. I sailed clear over his roof.

Last night’s fracas, however, was the first cycling accident in my growing portfolio where the police were involved and I found myself ferried off, after an eternity of different people taking the story down in notebooks they didn’t seem to know their way around, to hospital in an ambulance. The service at the Charing Cross Hospital was lamentable. I couldn’t sit down because of the pain, and no-one bothered to ask whether I wanted the oil, grit and other matter washed out of my grazes. So I finally gave up without having the x-ray and rode the buckled bike home, literally screeching in pain as I went along. People must have thought I was a banshee, with the front wheel wailing in sympathetic harmony.

But my latest set of cracked ribs have been subjected to a wondrous assortment of painkillers today, and I came home this evening to find two boxes of further pharma-wonders on the table. All of which made the session we had today at SustainAbility on the future of the pharmaceutical industry seem quite relevant.

Friday, August 18, 2006

MY FIRST PODCAST

As part of SustainAbility’s Skoll Program on Social Entrepreneurship, we have posted our first podcast on the SustainAbility website (http://www.sustainability.com/insight/skoll_article.asp?id=538). It features a conversation between Sophia Tickell (our Chair) and myself on the field of social enterprise – and why we are so interested in the field. The title: ‘What is it about Social Entrepreneurs?’ Any comments on the content and format always welcome, not least because we intend to do more of these things.

JOYS OF LIFE

Cycling home last night, heading south towards Hyde Park Corner by the Joy of Life fountain inside the Park, I was once again struck by how beautiful and cathedral-like the ride of plane trees is there, with the setting sun slicing between the great trunks. The photos below were taken as I zoomed along, hence the blur. But the cathedral-like setting was appropriate, since around the same time the funeral was taking place of Clark Turner, to whom we were related via his wife Charlotte.

Over the years, we have visited the Turners a number of times on Vashon Island, not far from Seattle, in their extraordinary glass and wood home right on the water. Indeed, the last time I went – last year – I was there just in time to see Clark off to the ferry and hospital. I called Charlotte a couple of days back to see how she was and, in the process, recalled Hania catching a salmon from the beach in front of their home. Her face – this was many years ago – was the most extraordinary blend of excitement and devastation at ending the life of such a beautiful creature. And then, irony or ironies, we discovered it was out of season. Must do something for salmon conservation in Puget Sound.

One of the great joys of Clark’s life was sailing – and there was one memorable day when he took all four of us out for a long sail around the Sound, a gloriously sunny day with Mount Hood rearing in the distance. All a bit like that long-ago album cover for the Beach Boys’ Summer Days, but sunnier still. I shall remember him that way.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

TOMORROW’S GLOBAL COMPANY INQUIRY

Have just joined the Tomorrow’s Global Company Inquiry team (http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/global/news.aspx). For more information see: http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/uploads/TGC_pressrelease.pdf

Thursday, August 10, 2006

CAROLE AND LARK ASCENDING

After I cycled home, Elaine and I walked across to St Mary’s Church, Barnes, for a 15.00 start to the funeral service for our long-standing friend, Carole McGlynn. Appalling how many of our female friends have died of breast cancer. We met because I worked with her husband, Roger, at TEST in Covent Garden in the mid-1970s, and it was because of them we first came to Barnes and decided to settle here. Still remember the day we walked across Putney Common, past a fair, to have lunch with the McGlynns, and – to my surprise – I found myself beguiled with the area. A wonderful celebration of a gentle woman, themed around gardens, her great delight. Beautiful violin solo of the last cadenza of ‘The Lark Ascending’ by Vaugh Williams. First time I have seen a wickerwork coffin. Then back for a gathering in the Old Sorting Office, under lowering clouds, before heading home to continue work on the new globalization report.

SAVANNAH SW7

Cycling back through Hyde Park early this afternoon, I was struck by how savannah-like the landscape is becoming – with grass not even golden but dead-white and giving way to dirt. Many visitors sit on benches, seemingly oblivious. How long before we all look like extras in Lawrence of Arabia?

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

DINOSAUR BREATH AND UNICYCLE

Ah, the sweet smell of tractor diesel as I cycled along Great Marlborough Street this morning, in the wake of some sort of road-mending vehicle. Brought to mind the heady aroma of the small flock of tractors and harvesters that would head out from the next farm in Ireland in the 1950s, into a cool, sunny summer morning. A flock of metallic dinosaurs, their breath on the morning breeze redolent of the fossil fuels they consumed – and which look set to become wildly more precious in the coming, post-Peak Oil decades.

Odd how the mind works – sometimes linking things you are already thinking to external smells, sights and sounds. As I cycled in to Holborn yesterday, I looked along the Thames foreshore as I crossed Hammersmith Bridge, but saw no herons – having always chosen to view them as a sign of good luck. Then, as I passed Kensington Palace, a great swirling, honking cloud of geese, perhaps 80-100 strong, came in to land on the great pond. As I continued alongside Rotten Row, eight geese did a flypast, heading east in Victory V formation. My brain was processing all of this symbolically, concluding that the absence of herons and the cloud of geese symbolised a need to move from individual to collective initiative in our field, and that the ‘V’ of geese spoke to the need for leadership.

Then an extraordinary unicyclist shot across my path, atop a single wheel at least twice the size of mine, whizzing towards Hyde Park Corner. Well, said the brain, that’s a powerful signal that we also need creativity.

Then as I rode home across the Tames, I looked the opposite way to usual, downriver, away from the dazzling sunset, and there – camouflaged among the stretching fingers of river mud was the vertical accent of a heron. And riding in again this morning, there were two. Don’t ask me what it all means, but my brain – always seeking patterns – saw today’s twin herons as symbolising my continuing need to work in tandem with another key person, as with Pamela Hartigan on the book or, now, Ritu Khanna on our new report on globalisation.

Friday, August 04, 2006

SUMMER EXHIBITION

After interviewing a new candidate for the SustainAbility Associate Director role with Mark and Maddy, I headed across to the Royal Academy of Arts (http://www.royalacademy.org.uk), to meet up with Elaine and see the Summer Exhibition. Some fascinating things, but needed to race home to let in Kim (Russell) from SustainAbility, who is helping me sort out some computer problems. Then clattered on with the book – and with the analysis of the first round of responses to a major survey we are doing online at the moment on the subject of globalization (http://www.sustainability.com). The number and quality of replies has been extraordinary.

I was asked to cease and desist when taking pictures in the Summer Exhibition, not having realised it was forbidden. So here are some illicit fruits:

Rat and Elaine

Mona 1

Mona 2

Vincent and William

Scissormen: one of Elaine’s favourites

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

I WAS RAUL CASTRO

The news that Fidel Castro has gone into hospital and that his brother Raúl has taken over the reins of power reminds me that in 1969 or 1970 I was Raúl Castro. At least in a war-game at university, I played the role of the dictator’s brother, with observers watching us all from behind a one-way mirror, never realising that I would be in power something like 36 years later. One of the papers today notes the comments of a Jesuit priest who taught the three Castro brothers at school – that they were the worst bullies he ever came across.

Monday, July 31, 2006

NEOPHYTE PODCASTERS

Elaine, Sophia (Tickell) and I had lunch today at the Galleria Charlick (http://www.charlick.co.uk/), then went back and – with the help of Craig Ray, who helps us on website and other electronic fronts – Sophia and I recorded our first podcast. Will be posting it once the new Skoll Foundation area of our website is ready, but on today’s experinece I could quite get into it …

Friday, July 28, 2006

600 POUND GORILLA

Spent middle of the day with World Economic Forum, at 11 Cadogan Gardens, brainstorming agenda for the 2007 Davos summit. Fascinating session, but off the record. The thing that sticks in my mind, however, was one of the WEF team saying that this year in every company boardroom they have visited the sustainability issue looms, if I heard right, like “a 600-pound gorilla.” If I did hear accurately, that’s 200 pounds short of a 800-pound gorilla, the meanest gorilla in the forest, but I count it as progress of sorts.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

BUSINESS IN THE ENVIRONMENT

Across to Canary Wharf for a Business in the Environment (http://www.bitc.org.uk/programmes/programme_directory/business_in_the_environment/) advisory group dinner, chez Barclays Bank, ahead of a BiE corporate members meeting. Dinner on the 31st floor, with spectacular views across Docklands. Among advisory group members taking part were Tom Burke, Polly Courtice and Mark Goyder, and the BiE members noted at the end of the session that they had been struck by how often – and how forcefully – the issue of climate change surfaced.

Monday, July 24, 2006

TH!NKING IN THE SUN

EasyJetted from Gatwick to Marseilles on Saturday morning, with Doug Miller of GlobeScan (http://www.globescan.com), to take part in a brainstorm session on the future of the TH!NK electric car company (http://www.think.no), chez Jan-Olaf Willums. With four partners at InSpire Invest (http://www.inspiregroup.no/), Jan-Olaf recently bought the company. He picked us up at the airport and drove us to Mas des Graviers, his extraordinary home-from-home outside Pourrières.

Among those also taking part were people from Inspire and TH!NK, plus Alf Bjorseth of Scatec (Norway), Richard Blundell of Environmental Businesses (Switzerland), John Boesel of Calstart in the USA (http://www.calstart.org/), Patrik Kunzler of MIT’s MediaLab, Philip MacNamara of Inspire Nation (Eire), Eva Solheim of Innovation Norway (she’s based in San Francisco), Ber Sweering of ABNAmro (The Netherlands), and Claude Fussler – who also now lives in Provence, is a long-standing friend and colleague, and used to work with Dow Europe and then the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

The idea behind TH!NK can be tracked back to the 1973-74 oil crisis, when Lars Ringdal conceived the idea for a compact plastic-bodied urban car. (Early designs struck me as rather like garbage cans on wheels, but more recent products have been more attractive.) The idea lay dormant for several years, but growing environmental concerns in the late 1980s got things back on the road. In 1990 PIVCO AS (the Personal Independent Vehicle Company) was founded by Lars’ son, Jan Otto Ringdal. During the Lillehammer Olympic Games in 1994, only electric cars were allowed into the centre of town, where 10 second generation PIVCO prototypes were tested under pretty extreme climate conditions. PIVCO’s third vehicle generation was developed during 1994 and 1995, and named CityBee in Europe and Citi in USA.

Financial difficulties temporarily stalled development, but in January 1999 the Ford bought a 51% share of PIVCO Industries, which was renamed Think Nordic AS. That was shortly after SustainAbility started working with Ford. Ford later bought the remaining 49% of Think Nordic and formed the Think Group, which led the development of environmentally friendly vehicle technology in Ford. Over the course of the next two-and-a-half years, 1005 vehicles were produced, creating one of the largest fleets of electric vehicles on the road. The car was sold in 14 countries, including Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and selected cities in Europe and the United States.

Despite considerable investment and a fair amount of progress, Ford announced in August 2002 that they were pulling out of Think Nordic, on the basis that they wanted to concentrate on other alternative technologies such as hybrids and fuel cells. On February 1st, 2003 Kamkorp Microelectronics was announced as Think Nordic’s new owner – and it was from Kamkorp that InSpire recently bought the company.

We had an extremely productive series of sessions, and a good deal of fun, with pretty much everyone becoming more enthusiastic about the potential of the product and business as the meeting progressed. Certainly the ambience and home-produced wine helped, but then I have always found the combination of cities, mobility, design and sustainability a fairly heady mix.

For me, it’s all part of my growing fascinating with the world of entrepreneurial solutions to sustainability challenges, which I’m working on both as part of our evolving program of work funded by the Skoll Foundation (http://www.skollfoundation.org) and in the book I’m doing with Pamela Hartigan of The Schwab Foundation (http://www.schwabfound.org).

Even if Ford ultimately couldn’t make sense of the TH!NK business, part of what drives me in all of this is a growing interest in understanding what mainstream business can learn about tomorrow’s value, markets and business models from the ever-widening spectrum of social and environmental entrepreneurs, and – at the same time – how big companies and financial institutions can weigh in, both helpfully and sucessfully.

Waiting for the bee

Potshot

Part of Mas des Graviers

… and Doug too

Eva making sense

Under the mulberries

Is this a queue or a line?

Doris (left) introduces the tapanade

TH!NKers

Shady circle

Embrace?

Or an estate-agent showing off the pool?

The night before

Still life with balls

Thursday, July 20, 2006

CAKE FOR CAMERON

Delightful interlude this afternoon when Judy (Kuszewski) came in with her new baby, Cameron. The photo below is in the spirit of a piece I’m writing for Radar on diversity at SustainAbility. Shown are Maddy, Corrina, Sam, Kelly, Ritu, Antonia and Ivana. And there’s more diversity there than meets the eye, though the line-up is perhaps a little skewed to the distaff side. The photo above is of Antonia, one of our Canadian interns, holding Cameron while Judy caught up with tea.

NOT ALL BOSCH

Took part in the first Bosch Consumer Forum this evening, in the Churchill Dining Room at the House of Commons. Security worthy of a G8 summit, but we slipped through like eels. Managed to pass on Elaine’s thanks to Bosch UK Managing Director Robert Meier for her kitchen machines, which have served us very well over many years – and with a considerably lower environmental impact than would have been the case with many other brands (http://www.bosch.com/content/language2/html/index.htm). Over dinner, Robert told me about the company’s history, including the fact that the founder went public before WWII, but then bought the company back. Controlled by a foundation today, Bosch is able to pursue a much more independent line, and has long featured environmental excellence as a key part of its strategy.

Peter Ainsworth spoke, as the Conservative Shadow Secretary on Environment and the usual bundle of DEFRA extrusions (http://www.peterainsworth.com/). Surprisingly engaging for a Tory. Noted that “most people don’t go through life wanting to be part of the problem. They want to be part of the solution.” He also underscored the fact that what we need now is visionary leadership and “smart legislation,” coupled with tax incentives and financial penalties. Meant to ask him what he thought of Ken Livingstone’s congestion charge …

He had kicked off with what must be an oft-quoted (in this dining room) and perhaps apocryphal story of Churchill, from the days when Labour’s Clement Atlee was Prime Minister. Churchill apparently arrived in the Gents when Atlee was already installed, and walked determinedly to the other end of the line of urinals. When Atlee complained that this wasn’t “friendly,” Churchill – perhaps brandishing his not insubstantial member – growled words to the effect that “every time you see something big, useful and largely functional, you want to nationalise it!”

A little over my head

Homeward bound

GLOBAL REPORTERS 06

Interest has been building rapidly in the latest round of SustainAbility’s every-second-year ‘Global Reporters’ benchmark survey of international best practice in corporate sustainability (or non-financial) reporting, carried out in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Standard & Poor’s (S&P). As part of the process, we have had the pleasure of four GR06 interns in the London office: Manuela Fremy, Antonia Gawel, Ivana Gazibara and JP Renaut. (Another intern, Chris Guenther, is working in our Washington, DC office on our stategy in the area of innovation.) More GR06 information at: http://www.sustainability.com/insight/globalreporters.asp?id=458

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

SERPENTINE COSMIC EGG

Because I’m reading The Cloudspotter’s Guide, I couldn’t resist posting another photo of the dome alongside the Serpentine Gallery, taken as I cycled by this morning. The weather may be a little steamy, but it’s wonderfully uplifting to see the aerial precursors of further summery days.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

AN UPSIDE OF AVIAN FLU

Heard a few days from a friend who we know from holidays with family in the Seattle/Vashon Island area. Blake Trask was updating me on various family members who are ill, but also noted that he had returned to the Alaskan Arctic for “another go at shorebird research. While I didn’t think I’d return, my researcher friends greatly expanded their research due to new funding from the avian influenza scare and the offer of actually getting paid to do once-in-a-lifetime work lured me up again. For the last two weeks I flew around in helicopters across the oil-threatened National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (contrary to much of the rhetoric, this is the real biological gem of the Alaskan Arctic), and starting around 15 July or a little earlier I will be in charge of a small remote field camp located on the Arctic Ocean. I posted some photos and words of my time up here at www.blaketrask.com.”

I asked Blake if he minded my including the link. He didn’t.

Friday, July 14, 2006

STRANDBEESTEN

Fascinated as I am by mutation and evolution, I couldn’t miss the exhibition of Theo Jansen’s strandbeesten at the ICA, which I dropped in to see on my way in to SustainAbility early this afternoon. They look way better in motion (http://www.strandbeestmovie.com) than strung up from the ceiling of a black-walled gallery, but they were striking enough. Jansen hopes that the things will continue to evolve to the point where they can lead an independent existence on beaches, or some other habitat. A form of mechanical tumbleweed, driven by the winds. A delightful conceit.

Photo by Loek van der Klis

Photo by Loek van der Klis

Thursday, July 13, 2006

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY & GLOBAL BUSINESS

Spent much of the day at London Business School, taking part in a conference on Corporate Responsibility and Global Business – the third in a series organised by Craig Smith of LBS and Boston University, the Center for Responsible Business, and California Management Review (http://www.london.edu/crconference/). The event was sponsored by Nestlé, and my panel session involved Peter Brabeck-Letmathe (Chairman and CEO, Nestlé SA), Deborah Doane (Director, CORE Coalition), and Stefan Stern, a management columnist for the Financial Times. A very lively debate, and I then stayed on for the dinner, at which Craig Sams, President of Green & Black’s, did a very funny after-dinner speech.

At one point he said that Green & Black’s had had to play the role of the “serpent in the Garden of Eden,” telling consumers about all sorts of horros in the chocolate supply chain that they didn’t much want to hear about. Interesting that Green & Black’s were taken over a while back by Cadbury’s, and that L’Oréal, owned by Nestlé, has recently taken over The Body Shop. Who’d have thought it? But when I asked Craig in the discussion period what the most difficult part of the relationship with Cadbury had been, he said the whole thing had gone remarkably smoothly. Sounded a bit like a long-gone chocolate ad, but such routes to scale for social entreprises represent a key theme Pamela (Hartigan) and I are covering in our new book.

PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR CLEAN ENERGY

On the eve of the St. Petersburg G8 Summit focused on energy security, a 19-nation opinion poll conducted for the BBC World Service by GlobeScan (http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbcwsenergy) shows that large majorities around the world see grave threats from the way the world currently produces and uses energy.

Across all countries polled, majorities express concern that current energy policies pose the triple threats of harming the Earth’s environment and climate, destabilizing the global economy, and sparking conflict and wars. There is overwhelming support for alternate energy development as well as higher fuel efficiency standards in automobiles. (Interestingly, the UK media today carry news that London Mayor Ken Livingston plans to cane SUV drivers by charging them £25 a day to enter the city’s congestion charge zone.) In some countries there is concern – not surprisingly – that major energy suppliers, especially Iran and Venezuela, may withhold oil exports.

More detailed findings:

Eight in ten citizens (81%) across the 19 countries are concerned about the impact current energy policy is having on the Earth’s environment and climate.

This concern for environmental and climate impacts is closely followed by three in four citizens expressing concern that energy shortages and prices will destabilize the world economy (77%) and that competition for energy will lead to greater conflict and war between nations (73%).

Strong majorities across the 19 countries want governments to actively address energy issues, especially through tax incentives to develop renewable energy supplies (80% favor) and higher fuel efficiency standards for automobiles (67% favor).

According to GlobeScan President Doug Miller, “People see the energy status quo as too risky. What’s fascinating is that in the midst of historically high energy prices and geopolitical tensions, the number one energy concern in every industrialized country we surveyed is the impact on environment and climate.”

While I am at home this morning, working virtually ahead of speaking at a conference at the London Business School this afternoon, Elaine has made off with Doug’s wife, Margot, to take in some art exhibition … while there’s still time, perhaps.

SWIFTS PLAY CHICKEN

Well, they’re back. We commented only a few days ago that we hadn’t seen many swifts this year, and I said I thought that they normally seem to arrive in late July. And there’s a reason why I notice. As I cycled in to SustainAbility yesterday, the glorious screeching of swifts filled the air. Their shadows raced over the tarmac all around. But they haven’t yet started to play chicken with me, with 5-6 flying at me at head height, then breaking to either side at the last possible moment. A bit of background on these extraordiunary birds can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/south/series7/swifts.shtml, and I’m now looking to see if we can find a ‘Swift Brick’ or two to boost their chances of breeding in Barnes.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

SANDBROOK MAGIC

Waiting for Elaine outside the Royal Horticultural Halls late this afternoon, I found myself immersed in a steady stream of friends and colleagues, some of whom I hadn’t seen for 20-plus years. This was a celebration of the life of Richard Sandbrook, who I first met in the early 1970s at Friends of the Earth, when Elaine briefly volunteered there. Worked with him later in the 1980s on the UK response to the World Conservation Strategy and on several projects at IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development, http://www.iied.org). Among those there this evening was (Professor) Tim O’Riordan, who also worked on the project – and has been a key figure at the University of East Anglia, where Richard studied.

My mental image of Richard is somewhat clouded by the cigarettes he smoked in industrial quantities. But from the stories friends told this evening of his giant bonfires of garden rubbish, I got off lightly.

Our most recent encounters had been courtesy of Tim Smit of The Eden Project (http://www.edenproject.com), and his ‘Breakfast Club’ sessions with environmentalists – encouraging them to bury hatchets and to develop critical mass on critical issues. This evening’s event, compered by Dave Runnalls of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (http://www.iisd.org), was an astounding indication of the impact Richard had – and of the respect and affection in which he was held. There must have been 500-plus people. Tim Smit’s eulogy which concluded the contributions from the podium was very moving, ending with “Godspeed – and thanks for the magic.”

Monday, July 10, 2006

SERPENTINE

As I cycled in this morning, I took a shot of the new egg-dome atop the Serpentine Gallery – impressed by the way that it almost totally blended into the sky (http://www.serpentinegallery.org/). The Gallery had quite an impact on me in the early 1970s, when we went to an exhibition of the work of artists who were trying to cheer up school playgrounds – and I got embroiled, including writing an article for a magazine called New Behaviour, if memory serves.

WORKSTATION

Sam (Lakha) was playing around with my Canon IXUSi today, while pondering what sort of camera to opt for – and this resulted:

Friday, July 07, 2006

7/7, BACON AND HIRST

On the way to the National Portrait Gallery today, I dropped in on the Gagosian Gallery (http://blogon.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/drupal/?q=node/1242), to see the exhibition of Francis Bacon triptychs and various reeking bits and bobs by Damien Hirst. The visit confirmed my prejudice that Bacon will be seen centuries hence as one of the truly great painters of the twenty-first century, though I infinitely prefer his canvases of popes in torment than those of him and his sundry lovers similarly assailed. Probably a function of a childhood part-spent in Ireland. The Hirstworks, on the other hand, I would have gladly treated to a flamethrower and loaded into a skip. One might as well display a show of human-skin-lampshades as works of art.

Then, as I walked through King’s Cross, I came across the memorial service for the 7/7 victims. Explosives can make Hirstworks, too.

NELSON AND PORTRAITS

Mainly working on the book, but spend the morning interviewing at SustainAbility, then head across to the National Portrait Gallery with Elaine and Donald MacLeod. Nelson’s Column looked somewhat Christo’d in its scaffolding – but the view from the restaurant, to which we repaired after viewing the portrait exhibition, was as staggering as ever.

Nelson’s Column Christ’d

St Martin’s, etc

Thursday, July 06, 2006

WHITE BICYCLES AND TAMARIND

In a temporary respite from writing the book, Elaine and I head across to Piccadilly yesterday, mid-afternoon. I kicked off at Virigin, buying White Bicycles, a CD that runs alongside Joe Boyd’s new book of the same name; the new CD by Nouvelle Vague (Bande A Part), a set of CDs of original Tango music, and three of Johnny Cash’s American recording series. The White Bicycles CD includes a number of tracks I already have, by the likes of Fairport Convention and Pink Floyd, but closer listening reveals that some of the tracks are very different from versions featured on albums like Heyday, particularly ‘If I Had a Ribbon Bow,’ which includes wonderful vocals from Judy Dyble and jazzy guitar from Richard Thompson.

In addition, there are a bunch of tracks I haven’t heard for something like 30 years, including ‘Way Back in the 1960s’ and ‘Chinese White’ by The Incredible String Band, ‘Granny Takes a Trip’ by The Purple Gang, ‘Spanish Ladies Medley’ by Dave Swarbrick, and ‘Brazil’ by George and Maria Muldaur, who I best remember for her ‘Midnight at the Oasis.’

Then across to Waterstone’s, for further depredations. Tracked down a signed copy of White Bicycles, plus a riveting book on fads (Joel Best’s Flavor of the Month), and copies of The Spanish Civil War (by Anthony Beevor, whose books on the sieges of Stalingrad and Berlin are among the best history I have ever read) and Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, by Adam Tooze. On the latter, I have been fascinated by the history of the I.G. Farben (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben) ever since I visited Bayer in the early 1980s, alongside Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, following a Greenpeace blockade of Bayer’s massive Leverkusen site. The book raises questions in my mind about what it might take in future for business to align in similar ways with new tyrannies.

Then on, via a flying visit to the forecort of the Royal Academy (where in addition to a giant, partially flayed woman, there is a wonderful carving by one of our favourite artists, Peter Randall-Page, http://www.peterrandall-page.com/), to the Tamarind restaurant in Queen Street. A lovely dinner with Gaia, Hania and John Jencks, who brought me a copy of a new CD by Jolie Holland (http://www.jolieholland.com/), called Springtime Can Kill You. Marking the end of an era, given that we have just sold the Edinburgh flat bought a decade ago when Gaia was at Edinburgh University.

Then woke up screaming in the middle of the night, apparently, with cramp in both legs. Maybe I’m spending too much time sitting with a laptop atop my lap? Tant pis, am back at it again today.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

A MAZE TO JANE

Back in the early hours from a trip to Woking area, in which we managed to get lost repeatedly in a maze of roundabouts and sundry other turnings. Almost an hour late. The purpose of the exercise was to have dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Jane Davenport. Wonderful evening – but am glad I didn’t spool out a golden thread on the way there. We only got lost once on the way out. The fact that I coudn’t do it all on automatic is a sad reflection on how work and other pressures often get in the way of a proper social life.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

GOLDEN GRASS

Cycled across to Putney this morning, to put bike in for service. I love bicycle shops, such elegant technology. Walked back in bright sunshine, past a Hyde Park milestone by the old abandoned hospital, and then across the Common, through the old cemetery. The grasses have turned a glorious gold, though it’s probably the harbinger of desertification. The horse chestnuts are also showing the browning symptoms of the disease that has been hitting them in recent years. Work on the book progressing well: it’s starting to talk to me, which is always a good sign.

Ready to go

Mown

Bench

Winding path

Milestone