The Road to Ecotopia

John Elkington

December 5, 2009

Spent the day at Cineforum’s ‘Road to Ecotopia’ event at the old St Luke’s office building, 22 Duke’s Road, just across the road from Euston Station. Much discussion of how to shift paradigms. With around 150 people, this was one of the most enjoyable events I have been to in a long time, organised by Jobeda Ali and James Parr of Fair Knowledge – and with the backing of organisations like Tomorrow’s Company, IDEO, SustainAbility and Volans. Alejandro (Litovsky) led an all-day session on the biosphere, which I helped launch – but then flitted from session to session as a ‘Honeybee’, my duty to cross-pollinate.

Among those kicking off the event were Bill Becker, of the US Presidential Climate Action Plan, and Hunter Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute. One of my favourite sessions was up in Nest 3, led by Louis Savy of Sci-Fi-London, which organises the London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film. Also very struck by the visualization work of Jonathan Arnold – and by a session on China led by Andrew Leung.

The day ended with a session in which Hazel Henderson and Fritjof Capra beamed in from the US, with Hazel using the opportunity to launch a new Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard, which tracks private investment in companies growing the green economy globally. “This new, never before reported number, showing $1,248,740,645,993.00 (over $1.248 trillion) in total investment since 2007, indicates how investors and entrepreneurs are leading governments in promoting sustainable growth,” she noted.

The scoreboard totals investments in solar, wind, geothermal, ocean/hydro, energy efficiency and storage, and agriculture. It purposefully omits nuclear, “clean coal,” carbon capture and sequestration, and biofuels. It indicates which investments have been publically announced and committed by major companies for 2010 and beyond.