02. More nonviolent civil disobedience to confront climate emergency - Jonathon Porritt CBE (Forum for the Future)

In this episode, we welcome Sir Jonathon Porritt - a renowned environmentalist, sustainability campaigner, writer, member of the British Green Party, and founder-director of Forum for the Future.


We talk about intergenerational justice and intersectionality. We explored citizen leadership and civil disobedience and the blocker that is the indifference of so many people.


We adventured politics and political funding, the juxtaposition of oil investment and climate action, nuclear power, EV, energy and energy efficiency and Jonathan's book, Hope in Hell (A Decade To Confront the Climate Emergency).


My heart is wide open for Jonathan and I am deeply grateful for the encouragement and support he gave at the very beginning of the Future Planet.  This is why it's a great pleasure to bring this conversation to you at the start of our journey together.


Who is Jonathon Porritt, CBE

Sir Jonathon Porritt is an eminent writer and campaigner on sustainable development.

For the last 30 years, Jonathon has provided strategic advice to leading UK and international companies to deepen their understanding of today’s converging environmental and climate crises.

He is also focused on intergenerational justice, supporting young people in their activities around sustainable development issues as they face a future defined by the twin crises of the Climate Emergency and Biodiversity Emergency.

He is President of The Conservation Volunteers and is involved in the work of many other NGOs and groups.

In 1996, he co-founded Forum for the Future, a leading international sustainable development charity, working with business and civil society to accelerate the shift toward a sustainable future.

Jonathon was formerly Co-Chair of the Green Party (1980-83) and Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90). He stood down as Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in 2009, after nine years of providing high-level advice to Government Ministers, and served a ten-year term as Chancellor of Keele University (2012-2022).

Jonathon was awarded a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.

His latest book, Hope in Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020, revised 2021) is a powerful ‘call to action’ on the Climate Emergency.

Where shall we go next, what questions shall we ask? To co-create the podcast with us, connect with fellow change makers in the FuturePlanet community of action, visit www.futureplanet.love to sign in or sign up.

Transcript

episodee02-jonathan (raw): 1:59

Some people that are youth might not know your illustrious career. Right? Like you never know. Discovering you. Well, I think looking at the intersectional nature of what we need to do, like a lot of young people are joining the movement. Yes. And they're thinking, what do we do? What can we do? But actually people like yourself have been there for quite some time being like, yeah, we're doing this, we're doing this. And actually it's about bringing their youthful energy into Yeah. Insight and the knowledge that you already have and you write. Uh, in sexuality and youth, don't you in your I certainly do intergenerational justice and intersectionality, getting people to understand you can't just address the climate emergency in itself. You have to think about it much more deeply. Yeah. In terms of society and how we live together and all the rest of it. And there are a lot of people there, what I call them climate geeks who just think narrow focus, climate story. It's not like that. It's, yeah, it's a very different tapestry of. we have to weave together. I love that. I met someone recently that talked about patchwork of solutions. Yeah. I love that idea of like, everyone's got their bit and they can bring their bits together. So I feel like. I know and love you, and I have the pleasure of, um, knowing a little bit about your career. Um, maybe you might like to give a small introduction to yourself so people Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I, I strapped lucky in as much as I read a couple really brilliant books about this stuff back in 1972, limits to Growth and Blueprint for Survival, and that kind of set me on my path. Joined the Green Party in 74, spent 10 years in the Green Party while I was a teacher. Yes. Big comprehensive school in West London. Um, then went to Friends of the Earth, then went to the Earth Summit, uh, in 1992, saw all these world leaders and big business people and you know, spiritual leaders, everybody coming together. And I thought, okay, this is it. This is where we start at. Long last, they, I, I was saying at long last, even in 1992. Okay, so Anyway, I felt. Fired up by that and came back and got involved in setting up forms for the future and the Prince of Wales' Business and Sustainability program. All of these different initiatives, which, which happily are still making their contribution to the world we live in now. But the focus has been on solutions really now since 1992. It's been 30 years of trying to bang the drum for, if you can think positively about the solutions, push them forward. The many barriers that are still in the way can be removed. Yeah. Because you are putting your ideas into that space positively. You're not just campaigning negatively and angrily about all the things that have gone wrong. You are always trying to put that positive energy in as a substitute for the things that are going wrong. I think there's been a shift change as well. I think you've been in the last two years, I mean you will have noticed probably many shift changes over the time of your career, but I think in the last two years we've seen a huge amount of hiring happening across loads of different organizations and business. Huge amounts of business leadership, I think where perhaps that was lacking and a lot of other citizen leadership. You mentioned the need for civil disobedience as being part of your, like what, I think you mentioned three levers, I think, or three focus. Yeah. And how do you think that's, has, do you think that's changed the narrative? How do you think that's changed the narrative? Has it, has it brought people's awareness more to things and, and what would come after that if, cause it's not the whole solution, right? Yeah, I mean it remains pretty controversial and obviously we've had a wave of new style protest with, um, Britain and just stop oil that has polarized opinions about the role. Yeah, that's of civil disobedience. Um, I think for me it's very clear we're not gonna get to the place where we need to be without a lot more civil dis. I just don't see it happen. I don't see the, the mindset of our politicians moving fast enough to get us to that point. So we're gonna need a lot of additional, I suppose you'd call it aggressive. Politics. I don't mean aggressive as in violence, but I mean clearly stated, uncompromising. Reminding people of personal responsibility. Yeah. Across generations and in their own communities and being very outspoken about that. And not kind of hoodwinked by the wretched level of greenwash that we get today. Cuz greenwash is everywhere. Everybody is doing. Well, greenwash has gone exponential. What's gone Exponential. Greenwash has gone exponential. has, oh, don't, don't do that, Carl. That's not, that's not good news, as you know. But what I love about, about just oil and I, I'm supporting them and I know they've caused a lot of disruption. They've made a lot of people very grumpy. But the truth is, have an extremely simple objective. And the objective is that the UK government should stop lying. about its readiness to address climate change by canceling these new licenses they're gonna bring forward for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea. You cannot go on having, it says, we care passionately about climate change and doing more than most countries in the world. But hey Presta, look at what we're doing here in the North Sea. A hundred new licenses for new development of oil and gas. So just stop oil, very clear campaigning. Go. Just deal with that hypocrisy. And then we can get on and think about some of these other things. Yeah. I love the aims of it. I wonder if, I wonder if the methodo, I wonder how much the methodology does to win the hearts and minds of the next group of people beyond what still is perhaps the early, the early adopters into a little bit of the early majority. Right? I wonder whether, whether we, if we need them, and B, whether it wins like I want, at what point do you need to make a more constructive form? Well, you need all of that. You, uh, just stop. Oil is not the answer to the inertia that we face in society, but it's part of the response to that. And sure they're alienating a lot of people, but quite honestly, it's probably not a bad thing. I've been very conscious of the analogy that's going on now around. Women's suffrage movement at the start of the 20th century, literally a hundred years ago when you have many of the same debates. When Em, Emily Panko sets up the women's Social and Political Union the suffragette, and begins to launch this campaign of direct action. which doesn't get anywhere. And then they launch a campaign of violence. Now, I'm not saying that's what the climate movement should be doing here, but they launch a campaign of violence, which starts by breaking people's windows and then they go further and they start fire bombing letter boxes and railway stations and putting bombs in places and, and of course the suffragettes got massive push. including pushback from a lot of women who said women and from the state, of course, politicians using violence, claiming that this was a just war against oppressive male domination. Clearly made a lot of people very uncomfortable. But Emily Pant said to one of her friends who, Kept on saying, you're making me very uncomfortable. She said to her friend, I'm glad you are uncomfortable because you being comfortable never got us anywhere did it. And don't forget the suffrage movement. Yeah. By 1913 was already 30, if not 40 years old, and they'd been fighting for women's suffrage for 30 years. No. So look, I'm, all I'm saying is that, uh, for me, civil disobedience, Is part of a spectrum Yeah. Of responses to what we're doing and an important part of it. And I think we should be, personally, I'm full of admiration for what those campaigners are doing. They're brave, they're outspoken, they have total integrity in my opinion. They're not attention seekers as people try and make out. They're really doing what they think is right. Yeah. And vulnerable. And I think I really sup, I really support the peop their intentions and what they're doing. Absolutely. It's been interesting to in, to. You know, being in the thick of the group of people that are working proactively within organizations or, or, or wherever to work on these challenges. Yeah, it's been interesting to notice. I think there's a couple of points, so certainly after xr, how many people that were working as in, I guess would call them professionals, but that were part of xr or went part to be part of that movement, either as, as with their endorsement of their organization or, or on their own. But actually what happened after that? was, they had so much more ability to get things across the line and they had so much more ability to get a, a attention from people within their business to do things that they could then practically implement. You know, so maybe they were going for clean energy or maybe they were going for, I don't know, scope three, whatever they were going for, they then had this sort of more permission. I think there was a moment where they had a lot more, and I think now people are asking the question, but I think particularly around the arts and protests, because I think that's, Two quite, there's two quite controversial things there and it's interesting when they're coupled together. And so there are people having conversations about, about that element of it. And I, for me, I feel like there is a moment where, uh, I guess industry needs to stand up themselves, right? We, if we feel like other people are leading in a way that feels uncomfortable and that's great and we need that, then we also need to stand up and lead in another way. And I feel myself included, for a long time it's been quite difficult for, cuz we're all quite humble, I think, that we're in sustainability. So to stand up and for us to lead, I think as well is an interesting, like, if we can see a better way, and I've started to see a lot more of that happen. But I think that's also, I think something that we'd like to say, but I think a lot, I agree with you, Carl, and the standing up bit that you are referring to has been going on. It has, yeah. And more. More in some sectors than other sectors. Yeah. But you know, for me, I, as you mentioned, I want to hear business leaders stand up and speak out because they often are doing good stuff, but they don't particularly want to make a noise about it. I want to hear more from. Teachers and educators, for instance. Uh, I, you know, I spent the last 10 years of my life as chancellor of a, a University Keel University here in the uk, and I loved it. But when I looked at the sector as a whole, they were hardly on the front line of encouraging young people in universities to become better informed, more. Engaged in their communities. They, they were playing, I would call it pretty much a laggards role in all honesty. Uh, Keeley University was doing a fantastic job, but I was looking at the, the sector as a whole, and then you've got young people to take into account and because of the covid years, an awful lot of people have forgotten just how influential. it was when young people began to make their voices heard back in 2019. It was massive, absolutely massive, and it had a huge impact on on government. The UK government, for better or worse, became the first government in the world to have a statutory legislated target. Yep, for net zero by 2050. And I can tell you what young people were doing in 2019. Played a huge part in that, so we should be mindful of how this standing up and speaking out can impact differently on different parts of the system, depending on conditions. Yeah, that feels true. I've also really noticed this wasn't the case before, so previously. So within the context of people standing up. So previously what might happen is people might be sensitive to where their money came from, so they might not stand up so quickly, you know? And so they might not say, oh, I wish my company would do this, or we could do this better. I've noticed a real. Increase of the level of transparency and bravery around people, acknowledging that they're on a journey and being open about that journey and almost often being transparent about where they are on that journey in and as humans, which I think has been a huge step change actually. And I think it's, yeah, it's that. Because there really needs to be a, going beyond the case studies, which we've certainly seen in the future Planet community and in other spaces as well. But it's one really needs to be honest about the challenges that one's facing and then look at those in a very, I guess, almost vulnerable way and give oneself permission to not be in a good place and to be able to say, hang on, we've highlighted this challenge, you know? But in the future, planet community, are you talking about some of the blockers, for instance? Are you talking about some of the incumbent. Companies and industries which are partly responsible for us not making the progress that we ought to be making. Would you like to talk more about what those blockers are? Well, there are people who represent much of the accumulated wealth and power from the last a hundred years. I call them the incumbency, and they have become so influential because of course politicians defer to them and they are very often in in other countries as well. Dependent on them for financial support. So in America, big oil, big pharma, big mining, big ag intensive agriculture operations, they basically own politicians. And it's legal, it's, it's all above board. Everybody knows how much. Money these politicians are getting from these very big, very powerful companies. So the politicians very rarely do what they know they should be doing, cuz they're still looking back to the people who provide the payroll for their offices and their campaigns. And for me, I've become less and less tolerant about the bullshit that you hear from those incumbent interests because it's, it's malign, it's genuinely evil. Yeah. And if you talk about big oil in particular, everybody working for an oil gas company. They know what their companies and their products are doing to the prospects for humankind right now, and of course in the future. So how they square it with themselves every morning when they get up out of bed and look at themselves in the mirror and think to themselves, well, this is a wonderful, gainful, highly responsible company and work that I'm doing. But in reality, of course, what they're doing is trashing life on earth. Yeah, I think that's true. I also feel like. We in ourselves are lying if we don't think we're complicit in that. Like I feel like it's, I, I think pointing just at big oil doesn't really work. Like it's so entrenched in everything that we would use or do. I wonder if I have seen recently. And, and I guess in saying that, I think we all need to take responsibility, right? I don't think it's, I think in a way, if we use, what about when we point to oil, we're effectively avoiding doing the thing that we need to do, which is make sure that we've got renewable energy in our supply chain factories or whatever the level, whatever, whatever those particular challenges that we need to solve are, it can, it's not either or you. It's, I totally agree. Totally agree. You, you need to. Absolutely rigorous in the analysis of why we are not making that faster progress. Because if you're not rigorous in the analysis, when you come up with advice to people about what needs to happen, that advice won't be as attuned to reality as it needs to be. That's the only reason why I'm pressing the point about rigor in analysis, because the prescription for doing things better depends on being absolutely honest about the situation we find ourselves. Uncomfortable. Though it might be. It's not. I would not, I've, it doesn't feel that uncomfortable for me. It feels like it's just a set of challenges I was thinking about, I mean, obviously it should feel uncomfortable, but I, I was thinking about, the more that I look at it, the more that I feel like you unlock systems change through being systematic. and what, and this might not be the only way to do, right, but there might be other parts to it. But for example, if we think about. The challenge of renewable energy in the manufacturing supply chain and the the business might not own its factories. So suddenly you've got this challenge where even if you're a mid-size or large SM e, you probably are not owning. You're not owning your own factories and now multiple people using those factories. So the challenge of getting renewable energy into your supply chain in India or Vietnam or wherever it might be in. Is a challenge of collaboration where you've gotta take the time to go and build those different relationships, those different people. That brings back to a challenge of a sustainability person who's got like a myriad of things that they're doing and they're under-resourced, and therefore how are they gonna build that? How are they gonna build that collaboration to then unlock that particular piece of the puzzle? So I think it, the more I look at it, the more I think that you need a template for doing that at scale to get to the point where you can. Try and affect policy and regulation because I haven't seen regulation and policy. I might, I probably don't know enough, but I haven't seen it working extremely well, even in instances where, um, this is where I'd love to receive your knowledge on it, but even in instances where there's a, if, for example, in d r s deposit, respe return scheme in the uk, it's taking so long to get that across the line, right? Like, yeah. what are you seeing that's working in that space and like, what, you know, could you add more to perhaps that like, line of thought, like what has your been your experience at Forum or in other areas? Like, how do we unlock? Because it's very easy to say, oh, well this is the problem, but that feels, what feels difficult about that is it's so challenging. How do you change politics, right? Like, that's challenging. So how do we get those? I'm, I'm interested in like, what are the. Yeah. And it's messy. Always messy. That's messy but you have to have the right kind of market framing for these things to work. So one out out success story for us in the UK and now increasingly for the world is offshore wind. Yeah. We happen to have a regulatory system and a government policy that drove investment into offshore wind quite early on before it had really establi. The viability of the industry at the scale it's now operating at. Yeah. And the consequence, a lot of that painful learning was done quickly. Yeah, yeah. And we now have a world beating offshore industry, which many other countries are emulating. That's an example of success where the private sector can use the existing regulatory framework to. Huge new investments. I mean, we're talking, you know, tens of billions of dollars now in this country and around the world. A less good example is you can sometimes get a government that sets a target, which sounds wonderfully ambitious, but then it doesn't do anything to make that target a deliverable. So we have a target for there to be no new set sales of ele, of petrol and diesel vehicles in this country by 2030. No new sales, but the government's done practically nothing. Yeah. To actually affect the way in which that target will be achieved. So we haven't built any of our big battery factories that we need to do. The only one that is actually had government approval hasn't even started construction yet, and may well fold because the finances are so dodgy. There are. Big, they're called giga factories. I think that's the Elon Musk influence personally, but 20 Elon, Elon Musk style giga factories of batteries being built in Europe now. Right? So those countries have absolutely seized this story and said, okay, you wanna get rid of petrol diesel vehicles? EVs have gotta be as cheap, if not cheaper. We've gotta have the infrastructure throughout our country to make it work so that people don't. Uncomfortable, insecure in their use of an electric vehicle. And we're gonna drive this now using a combination of state intervention and funding and private sector investment. Do you think it's, um, Well, I dunno why I mentioned that example. Cause I'm less keen on the EV revolution than an awful That's, yeah, that's a separate conversation, right? That's a separate conversation. Exactly. Well, I mean, we can have it in a moment, but do you think the state knows what to fund? Sometimes, yeah. I mean not, not always. I mean, we, we live in one of those sad countries which still think nuclear power is worth putting a lot of government money into. Yeah. You know, and we'll, we're getting one new power station built now. Henley Point, Somerset, and government says it's gonna get another one built at Sizewell in Suffolk. solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, massive investment in energy efficiency, storage and changing the grid. Those are the six things. That's where you get value for money and you get it within a very short period of time. Yeah. Could you go through this again? Solar. Yep. Onshore wind. Yep. Because that's cheapest way of getting renewable electricity. Yeah. Offshore wind. Essential energy efficiency in everything we do, particularly in our homes where we live, cuz we have really wretched housing stock in this country. Storage. Cuz you can't really Yeah. Get the full benefit of renewables without storage and then rethinking. Because obviously the grid of the future looks very different from the grid of the past. Yep. And, and I'm not saying that's the answer to everything, but boy, I tell you those six things that'll get us a long way there. Right? Exactly. Yeah. So we've looked at, I guess, politics as being a blocker. What are some of the other blockers that you see and how would be them? Well, I'm gonna say something, which is probably not what most people talking about these things. Would expect, but a blocker for me is the indifference of very large numbers of people. Yeah. And I don't want to get into a kind of pollyannaish, everybody's worried about this now and everybody who's in a position to do something about it is doing something about it cuz it's just not true. There are millions of indifferent citizens here in the UK and in most rich world countries who really don't want to have their way of. Changed are comfortable with what they've got. Even though they're a bit worried about what it looks like now, they don't feel the same level of compassion and solidarity with people in the poor world, as I think is gonna be required as the climate emergency hits. And essentially they're just waiting around for something to happen without taking responsibility themselves. So for me, I get a little bit angry when. Just put all the blame on business or put all the blame on government or stick all the blame on somewhere else, investors or banks or whatever it might be. We have to look at ourselves and say, well, are we really playing the part that we need to play in this change process? Do two things that arrives to me there. One is, do we need everyone? And we can talk about that. But the other is do people know what to do? Do they, well, we don't. We don't need. Um, because if, yeah, yeah. Nothing would ever change if we needed ev everyone. Yeah. But we need, we need more than we've got at the moment. We need more than we've got. Yeah. We need more than we've got. And it's going that way. Like if I think about the number of overworked sustainability and social impact professionals, then that certainly they need more help. And I think that's a, you know, building that their building their support even 2, 3, 4, 5 times wherever they're working would be, would be a fundamental shift change in terms of. Cause we don't need that many people there. And I think being in more intentional about who you know. Going company by company and making sure that they've got people in-house that are trained to do whatever they do, and they've got their support network and they understand the steps that they need to go through, so they don't need to go through the learning. There's some learning presses. Again, there are some very systematic things that I think that we can do that are probably more bottom up than a top down target that we're receiving. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think in that respect, like we don't need that many people, I don't think. And then what you've got for us, when you've got that network, You can be more effective at how you can be proactive in terms of policy, regulation, legislation. Cause all at the moment I see happening is you get things highlighted or things shared, but the amount of energy you need is an individual that works in the space to contribute to everything. To have a say on everything, to be part of everything, to know about what's happening. It's just so much there. but actually you don't. If we could be more systematic about that, I think we'd probably be a lot further forward. And you, you talked about, in your book, you talk about almost like a war effort. Yeah. You know, I think we, I, I think we've got that collaboration in pockets, but I don't think we've got that in, its sort of openhearted, open, armed, let's all work together. Yet I think that's another sort of No, I think you're, I think you're right. Absolutely. Yeah. I think you're right. But do you. You see, for me, the real measure is speed of change. Whether those communities of concerned citizens are actually growing or are they more or less in the same place as they were five or 10 years ago? If you talk to all the big supermarkets today, I think they, yeah, they'll always tell you, well, we've got 10 to 15% of our consumers who really care about. We've got 10 to 15% consumers who don't give a shit about it. We've got an awful lot of people in the middle, which we can reach out to in all sorts of different ways. And then Carl, they'll say, and it's been like that for a decade or more, so is it actually moving? I love, I love what Jamie Broderick was saying about how many tweets it gets a pension fund to move. It was like 13 tweets and a pension fund will pay attention to what you're saying, right? like I, and I might have the numbers slightly wrong, but then, but in essence that's sort of, you know, what we're dealing with. And I think, so I, I, I don't think it's a lack of, I think yes, you're right. There's a lack that a lot of people don't care and that can be sort of disheartening. good. I'm, I think we have, so I'm not disagreeing with you on that, but I also think that like, I, I think there's a lack of a lack of joined up credible options for people that care to go and have an impact on, because it's complex. and it's easy to understand that maybe I should use a water bottle to go to work, or maybe I should change to clean energy, but it's difficult to understand how it can have an impact on policy, especially when it's totally fucking disheartening. When you've got government cycles that just mean you lose hope in that process, right? Sure. That what we live, what we lose, what we've lost is a form. Societal or person based organizational structure that people can invest in, that means that they know that change is gonna happen. That's what I think. So I don't think there's a lack of people. I think there's a lack of like, where do we go if we are interested and active? And I think a lot more people would join that if they knew they, we had what, how many people join ex extinct billion Millions. Right. But the, the challenge with Extinction Rebellion is it fell really short. There was a. after its first reaction, there's nothing next. Mm-hmm. And then it struggle to find like in, it's, it's a great movement, but it's struggle to find any meaningful connection with really tangible on the ground change. For example, it, it struggles to get into organizations as a movement. It struggles to get into business as in movement because it's had to do that other thing that, so I, I think I, I'm talking a lot, but I think there is, I think it's more that we. We don't have the system for people to engage with. Yeah, well you may be right. I think I, I'm always astonished that peop so few people actually translate their concern into what it means for the future. And I get really cross with politicians who say, Including our new Prime minister, Rishi Sunk, who say Yes. The reason why I'm really most concerned about this is cause I've got two young daughters who tell me I really ought to be, and you just say, oh my God. Utter, utter prat. What? Sorry? I love that. That's my surname. I'm absolutely happy. I know, I know. I said, as I said it, I thought, oh really? Jonathan. Jonathan. I love it. It's fun. I do apologize for that. I really do. But it's I could have called him something much worse, but that I think perhaps you could have, yeah, exactly. but I hate it. I hate it when par when parents sort of say, um, I've come to the conclusion this really matters because my children are telling me this really matters to them, so it's gonna really matter to me. And you just think, what have you been doing for the last 20 years when you were having your children and not really paying any attention to the degree to which the world was falling apart around you? It's just kind of drives me mad. It's also such an easy line. It's like, I'm not racist cuz my friends. Exactly. No, it really. It really is an easy line and it, it ought to be banned. It's uh, it used to be, I used to get quite crossed by people who'd say, we're doing this for future generations. And I'd think, actually, how about doing this for people right now? How about sorting out things right now? How about sorting out the appalling housing stock in this country? Right now we have the first death of a young child attributed to black mold in a house. Just earlier this. and it just sent ripples through the housing community by saying there are so many people living in absolutely shit accommodation. And some of it is so bad it actually reduces their health massively and sometimes even kills people. And you know, if that's what we should be doing right now, that's what we should be addressing. Because as you address a challenge like that, address fuel poverty. Deal with that health issue, you simultaneously get on top of a lot of the climate related. That feels really true. And actually what advice me is looking at the redistribution of wealth or the equal distribution of wealth, or the more equal distribution of wealth as well. Yeah. And, um, we've seen de-growth gain some popularity, rightly so. Right? Like the concept of like, do we need to keep striving for more growth? How do you think we can, what are your views on like how we might start. Yeah. This is a, these are oil tankers of capitalism that require, like, changing Yeah. In terms of their whole, both, both literally and metaphoric. Yeah. Uh, absolutely. I, I, well, as you can imagine, I've wrestled with this for a very long time. I mean, the, uh, as I mentioned the start, the book, that first one of the books that first got me going, this was Limits to Growth. and in 1972 it said if we carry on growing our economies, regardless of the impact of that growth on natural systems, then we will hit a wall. We will meet physical. Barriers to being able to go on using the earth's natural resources and wealth. And sure enough, that's what's happened. We've, we've seen that in terms of the build up gas in the atmosphere, collapse of ecosystems, build up a pollutants in our, uh, oceans, et cetera, et cetera. So we know that these limits to growth are real. We still have a. Dominant political system that says growth is the only thing that tells people. We're actually progressing still and into that space now, as you said, has come this idea that we don't need more growth. We need de-growth. Now, the difficulty about the de-growth movement and it constantly has to justify itself in these terms is that it sounds as if it doesn't care about massive levels of poverty in the world. That's interesting. Poverty in their own countries, and poverty in particular in poorer, emerging and developing economies. And what I don't think has emerged yet is a really powerful story about alternatives to the current model of growth that factors in social justice and addressing poverty as the core element in what that alternative would do. And you. It does mean redistribution. It means a focus on social justice. It means fairness at every point in the economy, in my opinion. Without that, uh, growth economics is always gonna be corrupted and callous because it just dismisses the interest and concerns of sometimes half the population. If you think about the UK today, that's so curious. Cause we've seen like a growth in the. Movement of people having their own farms or their own small holdings, or choosing to not have expensive cars and choosing to just appreciate the balance in life. There's so, there's been more than I've seen perhaps, you know, for someone like my father who's seen more than that, they've probably already noticed that happening before. But like certainly there's a big change from, you know, where we are, where we have been. But then without regulation, I can't see how we would get there without some sort of like leveling of the playing field and also without looking at G D P. Because if GDP is the only thing we like, that feels like the, unless that's at the top of the pyramid, right? Like gdp, the only thing we measure ourselves on is Yeah. Yeah. How do we Exactly. Like, how does that, like everything else sorely feels like, you know, well different, there have been different approaches to this and I, I can't remember the last. Um, but there are many, many alternative ways of measuring prosperity and wellbeing in an economy. Human development index, the wellbeing index itself, uh, um, I think of the last count when I wrote capitalism as if the world matters. There was something like 15 different metrics, so, you know, systems of measurement, which would give you a very different, a much more realistic picture of how. Country was or wasn't doing, rather than just relying on G D P. So a lot of work has been done conceptually to come up with better ways of measuring what it is that makes a country successful. And we're still stuck with the dominance of G D P. Politicians don't really talk about other metrics. They still just focus on gdp. I don't think they fucking understand it, frankly, often. I've, I've, no, I'm not like, I wonder if they. Really understand, like, I wonder if you're a politician and has just been a politician all this time, and perhaps this is controversial, I wonder if unless you've been on the ground, unless you've been part of different things, I don't know how you would've received that knowledge to really understand it. So someone like Caroline Lucas, I trust to understand like some of the, all of the issues, right? But I, I wonder how others will even understand it if. I've never been in touch with these. Yeah, I mean it's a, it is a, I'm not sure it's that Actually, Carl, I'm Oh, nice. Thanks for challenging me. I think it's, people are trapped in a growth syndrome. The whole lives have been lived with an implicit assumption that if you want to make life better for yourself and for other people, then you need to be contributing to a story about growth. Yeah. Don't forget when it, okay. Liz Truss, in her short-lived period as, uh, Tru Nomics. Meister, she was the one who said, growth, growth, growth. But remember who said that before? Her? Kirs. Stama. Mm-hmm. Kirs Stama said The Labor Party now is all about economic growth, growth, growth, growth. So you see, even if you're talking about progressive, more, more progressive politicians rather than less progressive politicians, they're all trapped in the growth paradigm cuz it's the only paradigm. They've known through their political career and they're, they're not investigating what the alternatives would look like and actually for them, that is good. So I was, so it's curious. I, I remember meeting three or four people that that ran. Coal or power stations in, in, in, in India. And for them, they'd lived their whole lives building these great businesses that gave back to their communities, that supported their communities. And then were left with this moment where they were like, oh, we now have businesses that are seen as being the wrong kinds of businesses. Yet we've lived our whole life doing something that's So, I yeah, I really, I I can appreciate what you're sharing then, but I still, I, I still wonder how do. How do we embed, like how do we change that top bit? Like how do we embed better indexes within the existence? Well, again, I don't wanna bang on about the, the sort of energy efficiency in the housing story, but you've gotta think about co-benefits when you're developing policy. You've gotta think about what it is that helps peop, helps improve people's real. Quality of life. Not a fictional number, but real quality of life. And that's where you have to think about community cohesion. You have to think about better health. You have to think about access to good services in a community, sort of minimum basic public services as part of what it is that makes a nation state really deliver for its citizens. You've gotta think about. Indicators and when you've got a policy option, so, okay. You know, I don't wanna tie it to something quite as specific as the financial crisis here in the uk, but we had a chancellor of the X Checker who in the latest budget said, and we will address energy efficiency in our housing stock in three years time. Well, what the hell? I mean, this is a crisis right now. Yeah. So, Sorry, I must keep the frustration outta my voice, but you just hear this. Uh, 2019, the Bloody Tory party actually had a manifesto pledge to spend 19 billion pounds on improving the quality of housing stock in this country, 19 billion. Very little of that has led to I much improvement for people here in the UK so far. That's why I wonder whether this is, this is an this, this is. this is one of the challenges, right? And I think one of the things that we've perhaps done too much of, even though sometimes it's successful, is put our faith in a political party. Cause you go through these sort of cycles of like, like, I'm gonna put my energy into that. And then, oh, it's gonna be, and then it's gonna be like, you wait three or four years and you're like, oh no, but it wasn't, and then you sort of, all the time and, and I, and it's, and if you look at that globally, that could happen in any country at any particular time, even. There are some exceptions. There are some exceptions, but those are not the norm I think. I don't think so. Wondering. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But yeah. Right. But equally, We have, we have responsibilities as citizens, and part of those responsibilities are political because if we choose to opt down the political system, then guess what? That system is filled by. Exactly. The kind of self-serving forces that are certainly not doing any favors to anybody else. No, I think we need to engage in the political system. We need to engage in the financial system. We need. Places of work we need to engage in our places of home. Like I think, you know, we agree on those things. I just wonder whether, in fact, I should not shop broadly. I would imagine completely agree on those things, but like I, but I wonder whether we need an alternative system that runs alongside the existing system. and that we acknowledge that parts of the system are broken, then can't put our faith all in that part of the system. But then there's, there must be another way that we can mobilize that goes alongside and it probably is, you know, when you it to sort of bring on what you were saying, it's when we were talking about a tapestry of, of, of, of solutions or patchwork of solutions. It's something that's more. Like you could have something that worked in freight, for example, or a framework for working in freight that you could then bring into others. And I, you've, you've done much of that with forum, but like I'm interested now, how do you connect those dots? Like how do we then build more, like how do you build, I'm interested in how you build an alternative system between alternative economic system or political citizen, citizen based system. I think it's an important question to explore what you would need. At a certain point, we have to accept that it's really difficult to try and shove the better way of doing things into the old way of doing things, cuz it just gets so much resistance. It's like trying to put. I don't know, something into Jelly. It just doesn't, yeah, it's not a good analogy, but like, it's difficult, right? Like it is difficult. No, no, it is difficult. It's, um, but you can't, the diff the double difficulty is you can't opt out of trying to make this system better, even as you try and build a new system. Yeah, you've gotta do both. You've gotta, you've gotta build a new system alongside, and I think on the new system along side, you've gotta go where it's quick, quicker, so you've gotta go, okay, this is working. Let's go fast here. If in one country you've solved something, let's go fast here, and then that's scaled it up to other countries. If in one company you've done something, let's go fast here and then scaled it up like that, feels like then. Yeah, exactly. No, I, it it it's the right kind of balancing act to get sorted. I mean, it's not a new problem. It, it's, uh, it's always been when people are looking at political change and transitions, it's always the same. Dynamic that you're looking at. I think it was SK who said the crisis consists in the fact that the old is dying and the future cannot yet be born. Mm-hmm. and I have really seen that description of the ampas we're in at the moment. Cause the, the past is dying. There is no question about that. And there's his final throws, which you can see crumbling even if you. Yeah, it really is. Uh, and it's painful. And, uh, a a as it dies, of course, it causes a lot of damage. Yeah. And the future is being born and you can see what the contours of that new world looks like. Yes. So you've got some people who are intent on accelerating the death of the old system. You've got some people who are intent on bringing forward the future system through practice, not just through ideas and. These two things coexist it. That's why it looks like quite mud all the time. Cause you've got different forces at work in different parts of this dynamic. Yeah. So it's, it's messy. Well it's such a tension to hold everything that's happening. There's so many elements that are happening right now. That's such an interesting tension to be Yeah. Well I'm very conscious that cuz when we set the forum up in 1996, we were a. We set it up as a solutions based organization and, and what we said is we don't campaign against anything. We campaign for the solutions to the problems that we face, and as an organization that's what we do. Yeah. For me personally, I've got too much anger bubbling around in my own psychological makeup just to stick with building solutions, which is why I continue to pull up my big stick and beat up on the people who I think. Are part of the dying past, but they're not dying fast enough and I want to make them die faster. So that obviously isn't forum for the future. In fact, even saying that will, yeah, yeah, probably. I've now breached the code of conduct for a forum for the future, cuz we're not really like that as an organ. We're nothing like that. As an organization, it's a difficult balance to hold, isn't it? That? Stick. Plus also, let's help you with carrots. Like it's a difficult bag. It is difficult. It is, but, but you know, I've got both in my kit bag and I'll get them out depending on who I'm with and what the circumstances are, what I'm feeling like on that day. And sometimes my ability to give the positive messages depend on how I'm feeling about the integrity of the people that we're working with, the prospect for moving things faster. You know, it's all, it's all mixed up in. Well, I've certainly appreciated both looking at what you and the people that built Forum built and other elements that you built as well, and, and, and learning from that, and also your time in, in sort of helping me at those very early stages. It, it's, yeah, no, it's good. And we've always tried to be a. Very supportive of all the new ways of making this kind of approach work, cuz it's it's apl verse of brilliant, new, innovative ways of, of helping people come together in trust-based communities to bring about change, which results in better lives for more people, basically. And there's never gonna be one route to that. It's always gonna be multiple different routes at different scales in different parts of our lives. So for us in the forum, it's always. Part of our role to work with those change makers as you did with Huge Planet and to, and to sort of see what the combined effect looks like. That's what the story is. That's where transformation comes. Well, it's, I, I, I really feel that, and I feel our movement was. is more collaborative now than it has been, but I still think has, yeah, been a long, long way. Like I found solace in our connection, but there's lots of people that didn't have time and so that's okay, right? That's just how it happens. But I think that there, that, that as a movement, we need to be a lot more joined up. I think that's definitely something that I've noticed. Yeah, I've, and a lot more open to collaborate and a lot more open to share, which I'm seeing starting, and it's complicated, but. Yeah, that I, it almost feels like one of the biggest changes that could happen organizationally would be to have teams that are focused on collaboration and that's their whole business, is to look outside with no vested interest in themselves, apart from to do good or to do better, like pre-competitive. I think that would be a really interesting thing to see start happening. I haven't seen that in, in. It's, there's tension there, Carl. Yeah, there is. I've, you know, throughout my life I've, I've come up against people often funders in charities, for instance, who say, there's so many, so many organizations, you're all doing slightly different things, but you all seem to be in roughly the same sense. Why don't you combine forces and work together and then you think, well, yeah, no, sometimes that. But a lot of the time it doesn't work and you've just got to accept that this is a very diverse movement with lots of, that feels true. Right. But I would also say that what? Like that for me, collaboration is what can you do together and what don't you need to do together? So you need like, you need lots of people that are doing lots of different things in the world that they see that feels true. Yeah. Yeah. And that's great. Cause otherwise you wouldn't get people helping our people in the way that they need to be helped. That's fine. But you also, there's things like data. So what Gavin Starks is doing with Icebreaker one is super interesting. Like how do we have open data so we can all sort of figure out there's, I think there are things that we really need to like No, I agree. No, absolutely. Right. Like I think, so we have a short amount of time. So wrap up. Uh, I wonder whether like, Hmm, I wonder whether a nice gentle easing out of, of the conversation would be to say, what, what are we going for? Like, what's like, what is that future when we've got past all the messiness? Like what does it feel like? What's it like? What is that future like? What, and and, and I think also maybe to speak a bit to the hope that you mentioned in the Hope and help, which Fantastic book, and I love the way that you framed it around hope as well. That feels like a nice way to like lead us out and lead everyone out from the Yeah, I know. It's, uh, it's certain you need to go to that place at the end of all of this stuff because if you haven't got that place available to you, it's very difficult to keep your energy going. It's very difficult to. Committed to doing the things we need to do, it's certainly difficult to stay in service to that wider, bigger cause, that's for sure. So for me, the, the hope still resides in the chances that we now have to build a different understanding what society could look like. Much more compassionate, much more supportive, much more community based, much less dependen. on consumerism, much less dependent on the idea that money is the means by which we buy happiness. Much gentler in a way, and of course much more attuned to the natural world. Oh yeah. You know, we've just gotta get back to some. Essential understanding here. Nature has been practicing what good life on Earth looks like for billions of years, and we still have a ton of stuff to learn from nature, which we need to bring into our sense of what progress looks like. To inform it better, to enrich it with a different understanding. So this whole wonderful thing called biomimicry, which I love, which is where we take lessons from the natural world and we then use those lessons to help shape our view of architecture, of the built environment, of regenerative farming, of new materials, of different ways of manufacturing. You bring back in that learning from nature and uh, there's huge. as well as hopefulness in all of that. I love the idea of falling into the arms of nature or like just sort of that's, we sort of strive for so much and we've been determined to show this. There's things we can build and things we can do without really paying to our natural rhythm and connection with Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm glad that you ended with nature. That feels nice. Cause we moved. Good. That was really nice. Yeah. Excellent. Thanks. Well, very nice to have a chance to catch up. Carl, I'm really sorry to have introduced your name again by slagging off our, I, I don't like that. Um, but good to hear too about so much of the energy you're bringing to bear on this, um, through future planning. It It is very inspiring. So it's brilliant.