John Elkington
A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.
The story of my recent involvement with Extinction Rebellion is told today in Ethical Corporation and on Medium. The ripple effects of the protests have been profound and will spread for some time, long after any remaining graffiti have been removed.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) have been making considerable ripples today, among other things having shut down Waterloo Bridge – just outside our Somerset House offices. I went down to talk to some of the protestors this morning, after a fantastic meeting with the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency – and was blown away by their mild manners and gentility. Loved seeing children doing chalk pictures on what would normally be a very busy London thoroughfare.
No great surprise to hear that some folk, accidentally or not, have smashed a door at Shell’s HQ building on the South Bank – doors I often went through in the 1990s. Not ideal. But the truth is that the oil industry has strung out this game for too long – in a strategic process that Alex Steffen calls “predatory delay”.
Very impressed by the cover story in this weekend’s Financial Times Magazine, titled ‘Survival Tactics’. It’s behind a pay wall, but if you haven’t yet read the piece, I strongly recommend it. As the Wikipedia entry for XR notes, we must all now move well beyond our comfort zones.
I liked – and was very impressed – by XR co-founder Gail Bradbrook when she came into Volans a few weeks ago. Our missions are closely aligned – and we are looking into how we might help them build bridges, rather than blocking them, to the business world.
My hips and knees are complaining after a march that took us over three hours just to clear Park Lane, but Gaia and I had a wonderful time reading the placards and talking to people. The mood was just as wonderful as last time we did this – but the size of the demonstration seemed much bigger. We were still in Park Lane when Parliament Square was already crammed.
Yesterday, Friday, Louise and I were across with Carlo and Conor of Twist Creative in Kew, working on the roll-out of our new branding, based on the hummingbird – see below.
After our session, I decided to walk back along the River Thames, as the light faded, the first time I had ever walked that path. It was unbelievably beautiful, like going back in a Tardis to Edwardian times, or similar.
The first three photos above were taken on that walk back to Barnes. The second three were taken today, Saturday, as we retraced much of that route in glorious sunshine. Elaine had been urging me to walk the route for decades, but I had never got around to it. How stupid am I?
Hania sent a link to the most extraordinary free diving film this morning. Watching it reminded me of my sometime semi-lucid dreams – and the time I would listen to Roger Payne’s remarkable whale song albums back in the 1980s, with the girls probably both under 10, sitting in the dark. It was as if the whales were nosing all around us. Extraordinary.
Here is the background:
In the film by Guillaume Néry, “the world champion free diver swims across the world in one breath, or at least creative editing and camera tricks present the illusion of this great feat. One Breath Around the World follows Néry to the spectacular scenes he explores without a snorkel or air tank, like a variety of underwater caves or a pod of clustered whales. The film is shot by his wife Julie Gautier who was also free diving as she filmed Néry throughout France, Finland, Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, and other oceanic destinations.