"Being and remaining authentic"

This is the expressed objective of Commercial Ltd., the in-many-ways-admirable office supplies firm based here in Cheltenham. I went - rather at the last minute - to their CSR Day today, at the Racecourse.

I posted a bit about the 2011 event, the last one I attended, and came away with much the same misgivings today as then: enough is enough.

The attraction today was hearing what a psychologist from Unilever had to say: Dr. Richard Wright, comes with the wondrous title of Director of Sustainable Behaviour. "To achieve sustainability," he told us, "it's critical to change behaviour - and industry has a key role; so we try to change the behaviour of our consumers." He used as an example the health benefits in the Third World from the use of Unilever's Lifebuoy soap. "And from eating Wall's ice cream?" chirped Steve McDonnell, Gloucester City Council's Environmental Coordinator. "Well," came the response. "We still need to have a bit of fun in life."

My photograph shows one of the other speakers, the passionate-about-organics Tim Westwell, founder of Pukka Herbs (one of his colleagues alongside): to the question, what if your competitors mimic your environmental/ethical trajectory? he said he'd be delighted - and the Unilever man went further, saying effectively that if other companies didn't, we were sunk.

The only note of hesitation came from the "fiercely competitive" Simone Hindmarch-Bye of Commercial itself, so I became not the first person to ask whether the word “authentic” has lost its authenticity.

The killer question remains, How do we consume less? Yes, half the world lives on $3 a day or less, but what future for Planet Earth if their standard of living rises to the level of ours?

"The world we made"

Jonathon Porritt's new book envisions the world as it will be 37 years hence, in 2050. It's a fictional memoir, looking back to yesterday, today and the intervening years, and postulating that we have responded to all the warnings that he amongst others have issued to date: that unless we alter course sharply, our world then will not be a pleasant place into which to be born.

It is getting on for 37 years ago that I first met Jonathon, in the heady, fairly early days of the Ecology Party: with the eloquence and passion he showed at Party gatherings, he stood out from the pack. I admired, not least, the way he used his experience as a comprehensive school teacher for tackling conference hecklers; but more significantly he was amongst the first to join me and others in recognising that God and his creation were the elephant in the room. As a result, we went on to establish what is now Christian Ecology Link. (I took this photograph of him at our annual conference last year, where he was a keynote speaker.)

Nobody has worked more unrelentingly for the green cause. Not that we have always seen eye to eye. In sending me my copy of The world we made Jonathon expressed the hope that what he has written about population "won't be too infuriating." "Hostile to addressing population issues," the book says, "was a great army of environmentalists and left-wing politicians in Western countries," arguing "that the real issues were poverty, injustice and over-consumption in the West." Mea culpa. The book goes on, "This kind of approach was not just stupid, but cruel." As Jonathon envisages in his inscription, my question remains, does the end then justify the means?

Various turns in Jonathon's career have been marked by his publishing a new book, but none will - I guess - have brought great riches through royalties. The world we made may just be different. "For me," Jonathon says in his postscript, "writing this book has been a big deal." And indeed an immense amount of research and imagination has gone into it. As you expect from a Phaidon publication, it is beautifully produced and presented. Comprehensive, authoritative, easy to read, and aimed at an international non-specialist market, I foresee it selling well. The question here is, will it release the energies in its readers that are needed to produce the change it predicates? And as a supplementary, how much flying will the author have to do to promote those sales?

Commercial and environmental

Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network arranged a site visit today at the premises of the Commercial Group. Though barely 500 metres from where we live, I had never before ventured down their road, which runs through the site of the former Leckhampton Station. Commercial's sustainability tsar, Simon Graham, gave us generously of both his time and his experience - a most impressive performance!

Since their Damascene moment, six years ago, Commercial have achieved in excess of a 75% reduction in carbon, and - as from Friday last - are able to say they do zero waste. The effect on both customers and suppliers must be very considerable.

Simon outlined three drivers for business to move towards sustainability. Seeing the need to be part of the solution, in looking at responsibility to shareholders. Resource constraints: durability necessitates stewardship. And finally the need to be able to look our grandchildren in the eye.

 I have probably quoted before the question asked by Sir Toby Belch, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Ale was there sadly none, but Simon did produce a packet of chocolate biscuits.

Competition

We picnicked at Guiting Power on Friday night, before the opening concert of its annual music festival: not exactly Glyndebourne-come-to-Gloucestershire, but pretty perfect on a sunlit evening. On previous occasions we have used the one and only table, stationed by the swings, but this year it had been spirited away - I spotted it, across by the Hall: though we were there early, I felt that its removal might not go unremarked. Anyway the rug was all that was really needed.

Probyn Miers, Chairman of the Festival committee, thanked the audience for turning out despite the "competition" elsewhere. But was this really necessary, given the quality of what was respectively on offer - at Guiting and in the Olympic stadium?

In the intimate surroundings of Guiting Village Hall, Joanna MacGregor gave us characterful takes on two contrasting Beethoven sonatas - the Pastorale and Waldstein; and then joined with the Heath Quartet for the always thrilling Shostakovich piano quintet. High definition performances. In Stratford East - we caught up with the ceremony on the iPlayer this afternoon - Danny Boyle laid on his spectacularly quirky melange of Britishness to precede the athletes' parade etc. - an incredibly-long drawn out affair, which must have exhausted everyone in the arena, participators and spectators alike. It was certainly amusing in parts, but it tired me out, watching it even with the benefit of the fast forward facility.

At the back of my mind was the ever-resent [I'm leaving this typo: too good to change] thought: this ceremony has set us back £27m. Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the London 2012 Sustainability Ambassadors, happened to be dining here last night: he was at pains to set the minds of those of us present at rest about the Games' overall... sustainability - given that we accept the Olympics are a good thing in principle.

The Romans were appeased by panem et circenses, bread and circuses: for us it's circuses, sponsored by McDonalds. Those without bread will have to await David Cameron's Hunger Summit.

Cheltenham Inter Faith

I'm not a member, but have been along to Cheltenham Inter Faith before. Tonight, our friend Julia Neuberger came to talk on "Why Inter Faith relations matter": as can be seen, she attracted a big audience, but not a lot of non-WASPs. At least, I'd guess many of them were WASPish: I counted the other Catholics I knew there on the fingers of one hand, and there were equally few obvious Muslim, Hindu, Sikh faces.

Julia is always worth listening to. Of religious education for children, she said, "They have to believe it matters." And that's the same, not just for children, but for all of us who wish to be taken for credible defenders of faith by an unbelieving world.

The problem is, where to go after we have got up from drinking our cups of tea together. I put it to her that, in this week of Rio+20, shouldn't people of all faiths make some joint commitment to strive for simpler ways of living for individuals and sustainable development for the world at large. "No," came the firm reply. She favours, rather, joint action for those in current need - which brought Groucho Marx to mind: "What has posterity ever done for me?" But surely it's not a case of either/or, Julia?

Nevertheless welcome back to Cheltenham! You are a lovely ambassador for your faith, and you really do walk the talk.

Water +

"We've had the driest 12 months on record," said Jim Naughtie on the Today programme this morning. This chimes in with something even more disturbing that Nick Reeves, Executive Director of The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, wrote recently. (It came to mind following yesterday's visit to Leicester.)

“While we have been making headway in cleaning up our rivers and beaches, the air we breathe and the water we drink . . . we have created trashy inner city settlements where the poor, the vulnerable, the hopeless and the unhinged have been kettled into urban breezeblock ghettoes that have become a breeding ground for disaffection, anger and feral behaviour . . . These rotten environments turn on its head the notion of sustainable development. Sustainability is about much more than water and energy efficiency, insulation and recycling. The human dimension somehow got forgotten. The environment is about the condition in which we all live together, not just the well-connected, the empowered middle class and those with sharp elbows and loud voices.”

I took this photograph of the sluice on the 37-hectare Retenue de Brousseau in Les Landes when walking on the Voie du Puy in April 2009.

Time to dig again

A couple of years ago, after a tricky negotiation, I edged the vegetable garden a bit further into the lawn: this week, I have been permitted to dig up a further 15 or so square yards of turf, in the quest for some sort of self-sufficiency. Now that I have the best part of the area of an allotment, it should be possible to run more of a rotation - rather than just squeezing a row of this and that in where there's space. Less to mow, also, as we now have fewer paths.

"livesimply"

Clifton Cathedral was the scene of the launch, last evening, of a livesimply award scheme. The idea is aimed at engaging parishes so that they take God's creation seriously.

Christian people are challenged to live simply, to live sustainably with creation, and live in solidarity with people in poverty. CAFOD launched the livesimply campaign five years ago; but now it's been repackaged for community use. A couple of parishes are leading the way, and were represented in the Cathedral yesterday: the schoolchildren of one of them performed a movement piece to St Francis's Canticle of Brother Sun: very nicely too.

All we need in Cheltenham is a handful of people to take it forward...

An Oscar at the RCE

Yesterday, I related unnecessary packaging to incipient climate chaos. Today, the RCE Severn Christmas Lecture by Michael Wadleigh related consumerism as a whole to unsustainable development by means of the simple equation:

H+P = -R

where H = the human population, P = manufactured products and R = resources. It's hardly an original thought, but he put it across well by means of excellent slides. They imagined our world was encapsulated in a space station with ten occupants - one of whom enjoyed half the available resources, the other nine sharing the rest. Result: of course, revolution.

What makes human beings happy? he asked. Products? No: nature, other human society and activities leading to fulfilment. Truth and finit-ism were his watchwords.

I commend Michael's presentation, called the Homo Sapiens report: he offers it free of charge to secondary schools and universities. And he'll bring along his Woodstock Oscar for a talking point!

David Fleming RIP

This afternoon, I was looking at this amongst other photographs I had taken during 2010, to select some for our usual kitchen calendar. As I did so, I thought to myself how short life is for some people - and that perhaps indeed it would be so for David. I can't imagine what gave me this idea, as that Michaelmas Day in Cornwall when I took this, just two months ago, he was in prime form - as cadaverous as ever, but enjoying a healthy if quirky diet, and no more stressed than usual about what might become his very own Casaubon delusion.

An hour later came the shocking news that David had indeed died at the weekend. What a friend we have all lost! Others have written more knowledgeably than could I about his originality of thought. You could see him as a curmudgeon if you opposed the invasion of Iraq; or the mad professor if you looked for a practical, straightforward answer to a question. He regularly won the family's competition for most unusual Christmas card. Sir Andrew Aguecheek sprang occasionally to mind, though David was nobody's fool - and never had money enough to match his generosity of spirit. Such a mixture of the extremes of conservatism and radicalism puzzled many, but beguiled our children, who will be heart-broken. And what other economic dictionary offers a definition of "quick" in the biblical sense?

The Iraq conflict re-erupted over supper in our kitchen on 8th October 2005 - between David and his good friend Jonathon Porritt. This photograph was taken a few glasses of wine later.

"Cheltenham under attack"

Jonathon Porritt was busy defending Cheltenham from the big planners last night - those wanting to bring on the Regional Spatial Strategy and dump unsustainable quantities of new housing onto the town in what they term "Sustainable urban extensions".

He was on good form. The numbers had emerged after "multiple meddling" by Government at every stage of the RSS development process. The challenge, he said, with any new housing development was to achieve a genuine "sustainability", such that, "as you uttered the word, you didn't trip up over your own despicable hypocrisy." What chance was there, at this point in time, that Government was going to provide the infrastructure needed for any substantial new housing development?

Senior politicians, he observed, have no difficulty these days in talking about climate change, and "even possibly with some sincerity," but they exhibit deep discomfort about going over to a truly sustainable low growth economy.

Last night, despite the thaw, Jonathon wasn't looking quite as summery as in this photograph - taken at last June's Cheltenham Science Festival.

Student engagement in sustainability

I have been at a national forum discussing this today, at the University of Gloucestershire's high-tech Centre for Active Learning. "It's so important to get students to turn lights off!" exclaimed one speaker, as the sun beat down outside and the lights blazed away in the Centre where we all sat. Apparently, the computer mechanism works with some delay in adjusting the levels of light and heat. A bit like getting the Queen Mary to change course.

This seems to me to say it all. Students are well ahead of the game in their desire to live simply, and usually that's all they can afford to do anyway. But do their teachers always set them a good example? Even though their talk is all about sustainability, do they walk it? If not, it shows.

"Students have the numbers to make a real difference," said UoG Vice-Chancellor Patricia Broadfoot in her opening address. Yet "student status depends on conspicuous consumption," observed Gill Kelly of QMU, Edinburgh. How do we all discover the knack of habit discontinuity?

A sustainable Festival?

Tim Smitt, responsible for "finding" the Lost Gardens of Heligan and for making a reality of the Eden Project, prowled around the Garden Theatre stage for an hour yesterday - a Festival of Literature event - with the large audience in the palm of his hand. He is a man of quite amazing energy. And given that he said he wanted to kill negative people, I need to tread carefully with my "But.."

Employment for Cornwall? Yes. Educational intent? Clearly of central importance. Local sourcing? Admirable. Encouragement to travel to the venues by public transport? Certainly. Sustainability rhetoric? In spades.

But what Tim Smitt has launched are massive, disruptive activities. And they need the hordes to keep on coming in. How much do peoples' visits really change their lives for the greener, rather than serve to enable them to tick one more must-see leisure destination off the list?

And I have the same sense of dissatisfaction with the Festival of Literature itself. So many thought-provoking events; but so little potential for any coherent building upon the process within the community! Like animals in our different cages at the zoo, we are fed tasty titbits by people of ideas; but at the hour's end, when they've signed their books, off they've snuck into the Writers' Room, having left us without any mechanism to connect up to discuss those ideas in a coordinated way, so that something may come from them. A sustainable Festival surely needs to develop some mechanism for follow-up.

2030 targets

Last June, Professor John Beddington spoke at the Cheltenham Science Festival - fairly soon after taking up his appointment as the Government's chief scientific advisor. I mentioned his talk in one of my early blogposts. Last night he was back in his birth county, addressing a surprisingly sparse audience at the Oxstalls Campus of the University of Gloucestershire. His theme was The Challenge of Global Sustainability. It was a stimulating hour.

Professor Beddington listed the threats, and how they would grow over the coming 21 years - that is, by 2030. By then, the Arctic would be ice-free every Summer, and the world will need 50% more food, 50% more energy and 30% more water. A frightening prospect. His comfort? We can commission more nuclear power stations and look forward to fusion; and we can embrace GM foods. Bad news for many then.

Garden news - 2

Reverting to what I was saying yesterday, if the minutest fraction of the money that is being injected into the banks were somehow directed towards encouraging people to make gardens more genuinely productive - instead of turning them over to tarmac and decking - wouldn't life be vastly healthier? Morrisons' "Let's Grow" scheme has the right idea.

Of course, I wouldn't in any way exclude flowers: they do so much for our mental wellbeing. Apologies in advance for some more horticultural hubris: you expect geraniums to stick around for a long season, but I've never had such luck before with sweet peas. It was nearly four months ago that I reported that ours were flowering - and they are still. You see a lot of extremely realistic artificial flowers around these days, including sweet peas, but despite their short life, there is nothing to compare with having fresh ones in a vase on the table.

It's been a good year too for raspberries, a few of which seem to be there for the picking each morning. And though we've exhausted the fig tree at last, it's hard to keep up with falling apples.

For anyone without the opportunity to grow their own, there is of course a wide variety of vegetable box schemes, some more organic and local than others. Following a recent post, it was good to hear from my Canadian cousin, Bruce Coates that his son and daughter-in-law Kent and Ruth are heavily committed in this field: one of the ways a blog seems to be able to bring together diverse people with similar ideas.

Cradle to cradle

One modern usage I find more annoying than most is "Tell me about it". Which of course means, "Don't tell me about it: I already know". But most of our insights come from being willing to rearrange what we already know; and two talks I have been privileged to hear in the past week or so illustrate this for me.

On Friday night, Caroline and I joined the serried mass of commuters driving home to Bristol from Cheltenham/Gloucester along the M5: thank God I don't have that journey every day! Bristol was the venue for a local RSA meeting at which German chemist Michael Braungart - co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things - was the main speaker. And very inspiring his 'beyond sustainability' message was.

It's one that we all know makes fundamental sense, but that we easily lose sight of. Man can live with nature instead of off nature. Nature and commerce can coexist. It's not a question of growth or no growth, but what do we want to grow? And how do we eliminate the concept of waste? YouTube has part of an earlier address by Michael, and one by his American co-author, William McDonough: I recommend them both.

A week ago, at the Clifton Diocese Justice & Peace Commission's Day of Reflection at Woodchester, Frank Regan gave us this familiar text as what he called a Gospel echo: "I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full" (St John, chapter 10, verse 10). Faith is not so much "belief in God", but "knowing him through his energies, and knowing ourselves to be loved by God". And we need to share that love with others, this love underpinning our mission to be stewards of the planet; our quest for peace, our concerns for the poor and our struggles on behalf of those lacking basic human rights. (Frank, born and raised in the Bronx, speaks from a background of 22 years as a chaplain with the Young Christian Workers helping form trade union organisations in Peru.) At this crucial juncture, he asks, which path will we choose? We do not need a church which has the answers. We need a church which raises the questions for a full humanity that we are still constructing.

And the photograph? Taken a year ago at Charleston Farmhouse, Sussex: not on the way out, but looking in and towards the future!