Search Results for: Tim elkington

Google’s Earth Day celebration

Earth Day 1970 was a critical launch platform for the global environmental movement – and features large in my PowerPoint slide showing the four great societal pressure waves since 1960, coinciding with the peak of the first wave. The focus at that time was on the USA, whereas when I joined the International Board for Earth Day 1990, the spotlight had gone global – thanks to the indefatigable efforts of Earth Day co-founder Denis Hayes. 

More on Earth Day 2010 here.

Now, 40 years on, it’s tempting to think what we can do to celebrate the 50th anniversary in 2020. Meanwhile, however, it’s good to see a constellation of NGOs coming together to protest Anglo American’s plans to develop the so-called Pebble Mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed. The NGOs have secured a full-page ad in today’s Financial Times, the same day that Anglo American holds it annual shareholder meeting in London.

Somebody hadn’t looked at the calendar!

 

 

A day working at home and, intermittently but determinedly, reading Ian McEwen‘s novel Solar, which I finished literally as the sun touched the western horizon, scratched by high-flying jets making good the huge global travel deficit of the past week. But the extraordinary silence in Barnes continues, with the air traffic taking off westwards, I assume.

Many, many years ago, perhaps in 1987, I did a multiple review of novels that addressed green issues, in Green Pages, most of which weren’t that great. But I found Solar really ‘sticky’, not least as the first novel that I know that has name-checked such iconic figures in our landscape as James Lovelock, Stewart Brand, Tim Flannery, Jared Diamond and Paul Ehrlich. The ending of Solar really got me – though the Stones are playing as I write this, rather than the Kinks.

Was interested to see the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, featuring fairly prominently in the story. I visited them in 1981, when they were the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) and Denis hayes was still a Director, for a few days more before Ronald Reagan began to dismantle Jimmy Carter’s solar efforts. (Interested to see on the NREL website today, the home page features – on a 3-image rotator – a photo of Denis speaking in 1970.)

My meeting was Denis was a key reason why nine years later Denis kindly invited me to join the International Board of Earth Day 1990, an initiative whose fortieth anniversary we celebrate today.

Jack Sim and Amy Animation Rafael next door Jack’s hat Some of today’s guests Jack holds forth Sublimely insulated from it all

A second day of hosting people stranded after the Skoll World Forum by the Icelandic eruption – this time with folk from Canada, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Very lively discussion, but even livelier after the arrival of Jack Sim of the WTO (World Toilet Organisation).

Later in the day, Charmian and I headed across to Knightsbridge for a session with JWT. Home relatively early, to watch a recording of the second programme in Joanna Lumley’s Nile series.  The best of British.

And now the planes are growling overhead once again as the airlines start to clear the backlog of people stranded around the world. As many have observed, this dark cloud has proved to have a brilliant silver lining – in that we got to see more of people we enormously admire, who would otherwise have winged their way home directly the Forum ended.

Christ Church College, with a condensation trail – an extinct species in a day or so Worcester College 1 Worcester College 2: zen space Sheldonian screen Tim Smit

Slightly s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d week, among other things heading down to Oxford by train on Tuesday evening for a Skoll Foundation dinner at Christ Church College, to celebrate the new round of awardees, ahead of the 2010 Skoll World Forum. Glorious glow as I was warmly greeted by many of the entrepreneurs. Next, joy of joys, found myself seated next to Sally Osberg and Jeff Skoll at the dinner, with Paul Hawken the other side of Sally, as a sequence of extraordinary social entrepreneurs took the stage to headline what they are doing around the world.

On Tuesday, there was also a magic moment as I waited at the seminar centre at Worcester College for a session to begin with the moderators for the Forum – and had about 20 minutes on my own. Very much, as the first person to arrive commented, a zen space and moment.

After various other meetings, including a partial Volans board meeting across the road from the Saïd Business School, I had to scoot back to London, to kick off an SAP conference on sustainability on Thursday. Various people slated to be on the platform weren’t there because of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland, though technology swung into operation to link in one key speaker. Stayed all day, for an ongoing conversation with companies like BAT, Nestle and Unilever.

Then back to Oxford very early on Friday morning, in time for the first climate session – and then, at 11.00, for the one I was moderating on climate change, societal need and food security – with Mark Fulton, Mark Lynas, Ndidi Nwuneli (a member of the Volans Advisory Board) and Richard Jefferson as my panellists. Capacity audience and the feedback afterwards was extraordinarily positive. For an audio file, click here. Then lunch with Charmian and David Grayson, on an article we are working towards for Harvard Business School, and thence to the Sheldonian Theatre for the closing ceremony.

Highlight for me, at least, was Tim Smit of The Eden Project – and another member of the Volans Advisory Board. He was quite extraordinary, talking about things like “the Swagger of Intent”. You had to see it to know what he meant, but he would have made a great pirate. Another instruction that stuck in my mind was his injunction to, “Kill negative people – they don’t have dreams.” A little extreme, perhaps, but one knows what he means.

After a quick chat with him and a round of goodbyes, Debra Dunn walked me to the station – and I headed back east on the train, under a sky free of condensation trails, and to a home where the skies are quieter than they have been since the days after 9/11. This morning when I went out, the cars in the street were covered in a thin film volcanic ash. Found myself agreeing with an editorial in The Times this morning, about how the eruption underscores both our lack of control over our planetary destiny – and the abject failure of most political leaders to engage issues like climate change.

News of the World photo: Tim fourth from left

Tessa accompanied Tim as he was driven across the country to RAF Duxford yesterday, for a photo-shoot, the results of which appear in today’s News of the World. An interview here. Among the delights we discussed this morning were a Catalina (one of my favourite aircraft) and a Mustang (which he flew in WWII), plus he was able to scramble into the Spitfire (ditto), though with a bit more effort than would have been the case 70 years ago.

Tim, looking a little cold Tessa and Tim