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View from my window

Flew via Sao Paulo on Wednesday to Florianopolis, in Santa Catarina State, for the 2008 Eco Power Conference. The other international speakers were Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown, Fritjof Capra, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore  and, on cleantech, Ron Pernick.  Asked to do the final keynote, I had come in late and arrived after they had all spoken – but managed to meet up briefly with Lester Brown after his press conference.  Happily, my session seemed to go extremely well.  Inside, huge interest, especially from young people.  Outside, however, the rain scarcely stopped all the time I was there.  

People told me the rain had been crashing down for perhaps two months.  On the last evening, I was filmed for a documentary, ‘Sector 2.5 – The Film’ by some wonderful people – including Maria Fernanda Gayoso.  The rain was still thumping down as I went out to the airport yesterday, Saturday, and the taxi driver kept turning back over his shoulder to express amazement at the sound of the rain drumming on his roof – and the lack of visibility, as he drove along at 85 miles an hour.  I was glad to get out and onto solid ground after aquaplaning much of the way.

Despite the huge umbrellas they gave each of us to walk out the plane, I was splashed up to the waist.  The tarmac was an inch deep in running water – and I steamed gently for much of the trip back to Sao Paulo.  Finished Mrs Lincoln, by Janis Cooke Newman, almost as the plane touched down at Heathrow.  Astounding book, a forensic exploration of grief – and a completely different angle on a president struggling with epochal challenges.  Almost tempted to start it over again.

Meg (right) was my guide to all things Eco Power   Film crew, with Maria Fernanda Gayoso centre row, left   And me The way is illuminated – but either side the rain goes on

Reagan National 1   Reagan National 2

The G20 summit was still in session in Washington, D.C., as I came out through Reagan National Airport.  Had to fly to Detroit before heading across to London, but trip made widly worth while by conversation on the plane with Alicia Diaz, a lawyer, who I started talking to because she had a copy of David McCulloch’s wonderful biography of John Adams.  I continue to work my way through Mrs Lincoln, which I am enjoying hugely.

Had largely spent the week in DC, for a SustainAbility AGM and Board meeting, including joint sessions with the team and a delightful dinner at a restaurant that only serves relatively local food, albeit noise levels were almost industrial.  When I first arrived, I snuck in visits to the National Gallery of Art, to take a look at Calder’s giant mobile, and then to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

Then took Amtrak to Philadelphia on Friday afternoon, to speak at the Net Impact ‘The Sustainable Advantage’ conference at The Wharton School.  My session was titled ‘Unreasonable People: The Role Entrepreneurs Play in Shaping Tomorrow’s Markets’.  Chaired by Virginia Barreiro, New Global Ventures Global Director at the World Resources Institute, the panel session also involved Agnes Dasewicz, COO at the Grassroots Business Fund, and Ben Powell, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Agora Partnerships.  I began early road-testing of my thinking around the emerging ‘Phoenix Economy’, the focus of a possible new book I’m working on.  Wonderful reaction to the session from the several hundred MBA students and similar that took part.

Calder mobile   Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis, Rutan’s SpaceShipOne and Yeager’s X1   Dark Star, Predator et al   Mark Lee and Sophia Tickell in SustainAbility’s DC office    Bottled carrots in restaurant   Table setting – with Mark and Geoff in background   Meghan and Kate

Extraordinary day spent at annual Environmental Advisory Meeting of Nissan, with many of the top brass in attendance, but with we visitors – and many of the younger Nissan people – barely able to keep our minds off the results of the US election.  Cell phones and laptops were being passed around at various junctures, with people debating the signifciance of the mapped results.  When the news finally went solid, there was applause across the room, twice. 

A strong sense that a dark, misguided, benighted, mean-spirited period in America’s history may finally be drawing end, with at least the hope of something better. Like many people, I suspect, I found my mind turning back to the even darker days of slavery.  Am currently reading Janis Cooke Newman’s extraordinary novelised life of Mrs Lincoln.  And then Mark (Lee) at SustainAbility sent out a link to the latest Tom Friedman op-ed from the New York Times.  Caught the spirit to the nth degree.  What a race it has been – and the first US election where I actually dreamed of the outcome on election night.  No-one can envy Obama the Augean task he now faces, but he certainly won my (non-existent) vote.

Driven to Nissan’s R&D Center outside Tokyo in a fuel-cell vehicle, for a session I did head-to-head with one of Japan’s leading environmentalists, Junko Edahiro.  Great fun – and someone I’m keen to build a deeper connection with.

Dashboard of Fuel Cell Vehicle I was driven out of the city in   Solar roofing at Nissan R&D Center   After the session – Junko in the middle   Any colour as long as it’s …   Electric car 1   Electric car 2   Now I have my Carbon Off Passport, what mobility option to choose?

Our Land Rover with Blue, the whippet, as bonnet mascot

It’s sixty years since the first Land Rover took to the road, in 1948 – the year before I was born.  Its registration number was HUE 166.  For close on 20 years in the 60s and 70s, my family had a vehicle which didn’t look much different, JBW 797.  It was old even when we got it, the story being that it had been twice around the world already and at one stage had served as a logging vehicle.

Whatever its family tree and previous exploits, it became a centre plank of our younger years, a porch on wheels, a rough-and-tumble covered wagon.  We would put it in the lowest gear as we drove across Little Rissington airfield, leaving it to its own devices as we all dived off to find and pick mushrooms.   We treated it to excursions in a nearby quarry, in the days when we still shot things – and I recall one time, with the canvas top removed, when we drove back through Bourton-on-the-Water in the rain, with at least one of our party wearing a huge snorkel mask and another plucking something, with the feathers strewing out in our wake.

In 1970, Elaine and I took it – and four friends from university, ian, Jan, Martin and Rex – to Greece for two months, taking the ferry to Skiathos and then on around the Pelopennes.  During that trip, it turns out, we bumped into Geoff Lye, much later a colleague at SustainAbility and Volans, who was driving around the Greece with friends in a London black cab. 

It was a wrench when the family finally sold JBW 797, but by then its alumium body was corroding fairly badly – and its paintwork had worn down to silver on the wings and bonnet, where we seemed to spend much of our time – as shown in the photo above.

So happy birthday to HUE 166, to whatever is left of JBW 797 and to Land Rover. That said, I do wonder whether a decade hence we will look back and see that Land Rover – like many other automakers – took a dangerous detour in plunging so wholeheartedly into the SUV era.  True, as Land Rover insists, the vehicle has served brilliantly in an endless number of scientific and environmental projects, but the marque has become much more closely identified in recent years with the 4×4 plague of Chelsea Tractors.  If conspicuous consumption becomes less socially acceptable, it will be fascinating to watch the Land Rover mutate back closer towards its original functions.

JBW 797 in Greece   JBW 797 in the Pelopennes

En route to the London Accord

With the financial world tumbling around our ears, Charmian and I went early in the week to find out more about the London Accord from Michael Mainelli of the Z/Yen Group.  A fascinating initiative which aims to blend social, environmental and financial agendas and that deserves to be even more widely known.  A little later in the week, Doug Miller of the European Venture Philathropy Association kindly came in and did a 101 session for a group from Volans and SustainAbility.  Spent a fair amount of the week doing client work, writing articles and preparing presentations, all of which are tending to refer back to the work of Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter, two economists whose work had a profound influence on the way I see the world.

London’s future as a financial centre is being questioned by some as the market turmoil continues, but the current crisis and suffering is put in perspective by something Elaine told me today.  I have always wondered why the Piccadilly Line jinks about and makes such a screeching noise between South Kensington and Knightsbridge stations.  The reason, according to Catherine Arnold’s book Necropolis, is that the line had to be routed around huge numbers of corpses that had been buried near Rotten Row during the Great Plague.  Something else to think about as I cycle nearby on my way to and from work.

The conversation continues after Doug Miller has gone   Charmian and I …   … are among those celebrating Smita’s joining full-time   Sam reclines towards the end of another frenetic day   With Sam, Astrid and Smita: am I turning into a silver-back gorilla?   Deceptive: the sun sets over London – after another day of financial carnage