Search Results for: Tim elkington

After all my travelling in recent weeks, Elaine and I took a bit of time out today to walk around Kew Gardens – and enjoy the Marc Quinn sculptures scattered across the landscape. Very impressive. A gloriously sunny day, perfect weather to view many – but nowhere near all – of the artworks.

The second day of South Summit Madrid was at La Nave. Yesterday had ended with a dinner on the outskirts of the city with an astonishingly wealthy family, with an impressive art collection, but with smoke from the barbecue drifting across the landscape just after a I had seen the terrified eyes of cattle in a giant truck speeding to the abattoir. After a while, I turned tail and headed back to the hotel thanks to an Uber wage slave.

Enjoyed my session with Lara Birkes, who has sent me the photo below of Tickling Sharks at her home in Paradise Valley, Montana. Audience here was much smaller than we had in Brazil, so not sure whether that reflects competing attractions or different national priorities. Then a bunch of conversations and a small lunch hosted by María Benjumea – before zooming out to airport and, eventually, home.

Overall, a fantastic trip – and met some fascinating new people. One who I had met before, Booking.com founder Jeff Hoffman, and I had a fascinating conversation as we were ferried out to La Nave – which has further stimulated my thinking on what needs to happen next with the whole ESG, impact and sustainability space. Serendipity at work, again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few highlights of a hyper-accelerated period

Leaving tomorrow for three days at the World Energy Council’s Congress in Rotterdam, where I am due to speak on Tuesday. Since we got back from Normandy – and delightful to see Hania, Jake and Gene again this afternoon – I have been working on my big rethink. Such things seem to happen to me every 5-6 years, the last time coinciding with my product recall for the triple bottom line via the Harvard Business Review.

This time around the driver seems to be a growing concern that however much excellent work we do with individual businesses, it’s can be a bit like putting cleaned-up fish back into polluted waters, in that market dynamics push them away from ambitious goals. We seem to be experiencing something of the same even with Unilever at the moment. All part of the ESG and sustainability recessions I have been talking about.

So I am focusing my thinking on how we can design markets that push companies in the right directions. Along the way, I plan to dig into the histories of attempts to build markets for carbon, biodiversity, fair trade, organic food, water, impact investment and eco-tourism, among others. A strong sense of being. back on the learning curve again.

In the process, am playing with AI in developing the thinking, including ChatGPT for word-based research and Artiphoria for image generation. One of my favorite images this week was one I generated for a Substack post on the Anthropocene, featuring a polar bear hitchhiking away from the Big Thaw in search of ice and deeper snows.

Happily, interest in my new book, Tickling Sharks, seems to be building – with several people this week – in places as disparate as America, Germany and the Czech Republic – saying they were attracted by the fact that I am unusual in. being able to cover the past, present and future of the sustainability agenda. Did an excellent fireside chat on the theme with Elisa Moscolin at a Sage offsite in Clerkenwell on Tuesday morning.

Then, on Wednesday, Elaine and I went across to the Science Museum for a session on the science of taste – with an additional sparkle added by the tasting of Prosecco, English Sparkling Wine and true Champagne. Absolutely fascinating. And perhaps the most interesting bit was when Professor Smith circulated strips of paper and asked us all to put them on our tongues. Some people winced with the bitterness, others experienced a slight sourness, while Elaine, I and some others simply tasted paper. A striking example of how different people’s palettes can be.

Am also managing to read a fair amount at the moment, while buying more books than I could ever possibly read. Am reading Jonathan Clements’ Rebel Island, on the history of Taiwan, at the moment – utterly fascinating. Before that I read The New Cold War by a family friend, Robin Niblett. And am planning to read Daniel Suskind’s book, Growth, on the Eurostar tomorrow.

On the fiction front, I also just finished Tom Brady’s fast-paced thriller, Yesterday’s Spy. Given Iran’s attack on Israel this week, it was riveting to read about a different Iran, back in the Shah’s day.

What an extraordinary time we had of it in Trouville and Deauville. Utterly relaxing – and glorious to get to know our grandson Gene a bit better. Can’t wait to go back.