page 02 of 02
previous June postings
Thursday, June 09, 2005
MUSEUM OF FLIGHT
Took the opportunity on my way out to the airport to drop off for a couple of hours at Seattle's Museum of Flight (www.museumofflight.org), which includes the (currently under refurbishment) Red Barn in which the Boeing Company started in 1916. Probably 20 years since I was last there and was as impressed as last time. It may not be politically correct, but I still find many of the aircraft of the 1930s and 1940s really beautiful - and the collection includes such favourites as a (in this case Goodyear) gull-wing Super Corsair, a twin-boom Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a North American P-51 Mustang and a Supermarine Spitfire Mark IX. But the most spectacular of all the planes in the museum has to be the Lockheed SR-71 'Blackbird' (www.sr-71.org). This air-breathing monster set air speed records that remain unbroken after more than 25 years.
Foreground, the pedal-powered MacReady Gossamer Albatross II
Fokker D-VIII monoplane, introduced too late into WWI to make a difference
Nose-to-nose: Supermarine Spitfire and Messerschmitt Bf-109
Super Corsair, late WWII variant
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
A DAY IN SEATTLE
Yesterday, a reasonably energetic session on CSR trends with Microsoft (www.microsoft.com), today a series of sessions with Starbucks (www.starbucks.com), starting with their new CEO, Jim Donald - one of the most impressive CEOs I have yet met. After our meeting, Mark (Lee) and I were invited to observe one of the company's open forums, in which Jim and Howard Schultz (now Chairman) opened themselves up for an hour to maybe a couple of hundred Starbucks 'partners'. High touch, highly responsive, and a good deal of humour - usually a good signal. Then a very productive session with several Starbucks people in relation to the piece I am doing for California Management Review on blended value, with Jed Emerson and Seb Beloe.
Early in the afternoon Mark did a presentation for some of the Starbucks team on our benchmark analysis of their latest CSR report. They score pretty well, appearing in our 2004 Top 50 ratings, but much of the good stuff they are doing isn't public knowledge. My impression of Starbucks improves considerably during the day, though it will be fascinating to see how the company copes in the coming years with the inevitable shock waves created by its plans to grow from around 9,000 stores today to a targeted 30,000 outlets - or even 50,000, as some hope.
Later in the day, after Mark has flown back to San Francisco, I have dinner with Denis Hayes, President of the Bullitt Foundation (www.bullitt.org) and co-founder in 1970 of Earth Day (www.earthday.net). I first met Denis in 1981, when he was Director of the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), just as President Reagan started to undermine many of the institutions that had been spawned by the Earth Day movement. I was researching my book on renewables, Sun Traps (Pelican 1985). Had subsequently caught up with him in Palo Alto in the run-up to Earth Day 1990 and, later, in Seattle after he took on the Bullitt job. Wonderful chance to catch up with one of the godfathers of modern environmentalism.
Over the weekend, had been handed a bunch of press articles by my cousin Charlotte Turner, on top of which I found a piece written by Denis for the Seattle Times. In it he argued that in the same way that the US invested in the DEW Line, to provide "distant early warning" of nuclear attack during the Cold War, we should now be investing in early warning schemes to alert us to threats in such areas as climate change, invasive species and tsunamis. Conversely, the Bush Administration is currently running down funding for such key institutions as NASA (www.nasa.gov), NOAA (www.noaa.gov) and the National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov).
Howard Schultz (centre left), Jim Donald (right)
Monday, June 06, 2005
FLIGHT SERGEANT BERRY RESURFACES
Something I had always hoped to be able to do was to thank the family of Flight Sergeant Fred Berry, who saved my father's life during the Battle of Britain (http://www.johnelkington.com/inf-people-father.htm), sadly being shot down himself and killed shortly afterwards, on 1 September 1940. I had also posted photos of Berry on my blog on 6 February 2004, but we had failed to track the family down. So I was thrilled today when Berry's granddaughter got in touch by e-mail, having come across this website and my reference to how her family tree interconnected with mine all those years ago. Given that today marks the 61st anniversary of D-Day, it's one more reminder - alongside the constant B17 fly-pasts outside my Edgewater window - of how much we owe to the 'Greatest Generation'.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
EXPERIENCE MUSIC PROJECT
Back from Vashon Island, and with rain threatening, I walk from the Edgewater Hotel to the Space Needle, in search of Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen's Experience Music Project (EMP: www.emplive.com). As I go, a B17 flies overhead (www.museumofflight.org/collections/craftdisplay.html?ID=23), a reminder of 'Rosie the Riveter' (www.rosietheriveter.org), D-Day (whose anniversary it is) and the huge contribution Boeing and Seattle made to the ultimate victory in WWII. Various of the people we have known in the Seattle area have been involved with Boeing, my cousin Hollister Sprague - who died in 1986 - as Mr Boeing's lawyer, others as designers, engineers, photographers. (And as I type this up in the fading light, around 20.00, the B17 drones past again.)
As I twist and turn on my way to the Space Needle, I catch glimpses of Seattle's port installations, with the giant gantry cranes towering like herds of metallic orange brontosauri. Musing that George Lukas was inspired by such cranes to produce his giant, lumbering white battle monsters in Star Wars, I shortly afterwards find myself standing behind Darth Vader, or at least a cutout version, inside the Science Fiction Museum.
Maybe it is my mood, but the EMP experience is flat, tacky and commercial. I was here in October 2000 for the 'Digital Dividends' conference (www.digitaldividend.org), shortly after the EMP opened in June of that year, and wasn't hugely impressed then, either. The Beatlemania show, still advertised on the EMP website, has gone. Most of the displays strike me as second rate, a bit like an end-of-the-pier show, and the unbelievable electricity of performers like Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan - at least in the context of their times - is hard to detect. Ironically, I walk past a stall where Dylan, in later life, is explaining on video how dramatic the Sixties had been. You'd hardly guess it from the EMP version. You see clips of the civil rights marches, but the whole thing feels like History rather than an immersion in the era.
The Frank Gehry building in which the EMP and the Science Fiction Museum are housed is a real Curate's Egg, good in parts, but somehow less than the sum of its parts. But every so often there is a bit of detailing that catches the eye, like penultimate last photo in this series. The last photo, at least for me, raises the question of how we could do the same list of things - jam, touch, learn, play - for sustainability that EMP aspires to (but, I think largely fails to do) for rock'n'roll.
B17 over Elliott Bay
Herds of metallic brontosauri
Darth Vader's dark side
Bob Dylan and guitar geyser
Dylan, Joan Baez and Tide of Conformity
Civil rights marchers
Jimi Hendrix
Frank Gehry's undulations and tree
This works for me
How do we do this for sustainability?
FOOLHARDY KILLDEER
Breakfast this morning with close neighbours of the Turners - and good friends of ours from years back. Blake shows me where a pair of killdeer (www.nhptv.org/natureworks/killdeer.htm) have nested among the stones and logs on the foreshore. So vulnerable are they that his mother, Carol, has bought a water cannon of sorts to ward off predators like crows. Killdeer are precocious, able to run around amazingly soon after they break out of the egg, but I'm not sure I rate this pair's chances of successfully raising a brood at all high. Later, Blake drives me back to Seattle, via one of the ferries visible in the background of the crow picture.
Metal version of one of the predators
Carol and Blake, mother and son
It's the idea that counts
Saturday, June 04, 2005
OTTER AT WORK
Have always loved Ring of Bright Water and the like, so am partial to otters - though I think I have only seen them in the wild - once - in Scotland. This afternoon, as Clark and I watched the water, what he described as a river otter pretended to be the Loch Ness Monster a little way out from the beach. This was quite a large animal, with a long tail that would follow him down into the depths like a conger eel. Later on, I walked the short distance down to the beach to take a photo of the house - and surprised the same animal right by the jetty. He strolled to the water and swam away, repeatedly looking back over his shoulder, probably signalling his displeasure at being disturbed in his toilet.
PUGET SOUND
Am staying with cousins - Charlotte and Clark Turner - in their beachside house on Vashon Island, on Puget Sound. We have a delightfully extended lunch with Chuck and Jeanne Branson, also cousins, who live across the water, their son David and his partner, Ruth. The Turner house has outlandishly wonderful views of the Sound and I can't stop taking photographs, despite remembering the architect Moshe Safdie saying he threw his camera away because he ended up looking at everything through a rectangular frame.
SOY BEAN POWERED
Walking down the Fontleroy Ferry Dock, to catch the ferry to Vashon Island, I was truck by the large message across the bridge of the vessel - declaring that it to be soybean-powered. Inside, posters informed passengers that this was in aid of reducing greenhouse emissions. But soybeans aren't an unadulterated Good Thing for environmentalists. Quite apart from the GM issue which has disrupted the soybean trade to the EU, at the WWF conference in Vancouver last week they showed satellite photographs of Amazonia - with peculiarly patterned bites being taken out of the rainforest by new soybean farms. Apparently much of the production goes to feed livestock, used to satisfy the growing appetite for meat in Asia.
THE BRITISH INVASION
The Edgewater Hotel
Even in its revamped state, The Edgewater Hotel - where I am staying in Seattle - has struck me as a little odd. It juts out into the sea, atop one of the old piers, but its decor is like something from Twin Peaks. That said, had breakfast there this morning with Mark and Valerie Lee (he co-directs SustainAbility's US business) and Maria Eitel of the Nike Foundation (http://www.nike.com/nikebiz/nikefoundation/home.jhtml) - and Maria told me something that made me feel slightly differently about it all. Apparently The Beatles stayed here in the Sixties, during 'The British Invasion', and their fans took to the waters around the hotel in a flotilla of small boats - or even tried to swim in the chilly waters of Elliott Bay. Checked: it was 1964 - and the nearby Experience Music Project ran an exhibition last year to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of America's descent into Beatlemania (http://www.edgewaterfabfouroh.com). Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end.
Maria and Mark
Friday, June 03, 2005
ROOM WITH A VIEW
My room on the Seattle waterfront looks out both onto an endless parade of ships and boats plying in and out of the harbour - and onto the take-off and landing lanes for Seattle airports. Looming in the foreground, a huge cruise liner. When Mark and I first see it this afternoon, I comment that it reminds me of the vast ships that I have seen docking and loading in Freemantle, Australia. They carry live sheep for slaughter in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. The smell - indeed the insult to all the senses - was beyond words.
In the midst of it all, late this afternoon, a roiling in the waters and something animate surfaces briefly. With my normal glasses still somewhere in Beijing - and new ones being constructed somewhere a continent or two away - I can't make out what this life-form is. But there's reasurrance in the mystery.
Docked
RATS
Fly down to Seattle in time for Mark Lee and I to have lunch with Chip Giller, founder and President of Grist (http://www.grist.org/about/). Then across to the hotel to drop bags and out with Mark to have a beer downtown and discuss future plans. As we leave the hotel, we pass a protest by plumbers and pipelayers, featuring a display of rats, one of which (not shown here) is the size of a small T. rex.
When I walk back, it strikes me that the dock next to the hotel is where Elaine, the girls and I saw Jacques Cousteau's weird vessel the Alcyone in the mid-1980s. If you're interested to see what the strange creature looked like, go to: http://www.cousteau.org/en/cousteau_world/our_ships/alcyone.php
Rats 1
Rats 2
TBL IN BC AND OZ
My visit this week to British Columbia has persuaded me that there is still a great deal of life in the old triple bottom line concept - indeed, it seems that in many places it is only just beginning to 'break'. And this week I was also notified by CSIRO of the launch of Australia's first set of TBL accounts.
The island continent's first triple bottom line account at a whole-economy level offers a full life cycle analysis of each of 135 economic sectors using ten macro-indicators. The financial indicators are profits, export propensity and import penetration. The social indicators are employment, income and government revenue (taxation). The environmental indicators are greenhouse emissions, energy use, water use and land disturbance. These macro-indicators are expressed as intensities per one dollar of final demand.
The report highlights the low export performance of the services sectors, relatively good outcomes for basic mining, the many challenges faced by domestic manufacturing in the face of globalisation, and the resource intensity of food and fibre industries. While one dollar might look much the same as another, where it is spent, can have vastly different outcomes for social and environmental issues.
The work is based on the integration of the financial input-output tables in the Australian national accounts with key social and environmental indicators. Both a summary and the full report in four volumes can be accessed at http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/balancingact/
Thursday, June 02, 2005
WHISTLER
As something of a reptile, I don't like getting up early, so a 05.00 start to today wasn't particularly welcome - except that there was already light in my eyrie-like, glass-walled 17th floor room. Picked up at 06.00 by Linda Coady (Vice-President for Sustainability, 2010 Winter Olympics) and Coro Strandberg, we drive north towards Whistler, where the Games will be held (http://www.tourismwhistler.com/about/2010_wintergames.asp).
Also with us: Jon O'Riordan, formerly Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management in the British Columbia Provincial Government. It's the first time we have met, though he is the twin brother of someone I have known for decades, Professor Tim O'Riordan of the University of East Anglia, who is also a member of SustainAbility's Faculty - like Linda and Coro.
When we get to Whistler, we have a wonderful session with the Mayor of the town, Hugh O'Reilly, and some of the key people from the 2010 Winter Olympics team. Interesting to live in London, which is bidding for the 2012 Olympics, and to have visited in quick succession both Beijing (which is hosting the 2008 games) and now Whistler. Most sports leave me cold, but am increasingly interested in the potential of major sports events to either create positive economic, social and environmental regeneration or, at worst, to leave a trail of white elephants in their wake.
After a snatched sandwich lunch, I do a public lecture. Then back into the van and off south for several commitments in Vancouver, notably a public lecture which I do at the Robson Square Media Center. Capacity audience, Linda chairs and a most enjoyable evening. Then film a sequence for a couple of people who had heard me on the CBC programme a couple of days back and are making a film on idleness and productivity. By the time I get back to the hotel, a life of idleness is beginning to seem quite appealing.
Vancouver dawn
Whistler
Homeward bound: Elizabeth Bowker at wheel
Blue blur
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
ANOTHER DAY IN VANCOUVER
Started off day with a media interview, then my keynote at the WWF conference on 'Mobilizing Millions', followed by energetic discussion session, then lunch with Jorgen Randers (one of the authors of The Limits to Growth), then an afternoon discussion panel, then a wine and cheese discusion with around 40 people at the amazing studio home of Joel and Dana Solomon. He is a sustainability-focused venture capitalist involved in e.g. the Tides Foundation (www.tidescanada.org), the Endswell Foundation (www.endswell.org) and Renewal Partners (www.renewalpartners.com).
Among many other interesting people I met today were Dr Claude Martin, the outgoing Director-General of WWF International; Chief Eleazar Anyaoku, President of WWF International and Chair of NEPAD; WWF-UK Chairman Christopher Ward, who it turns out was responsible for the section in the Daily Mirror in 1961 which triggered my first fund-raising venture, for the fledgling WWF launched that year; Monte Hummel, President Emeritus of WWF Canada; Mark Achbar, a producer of the film The Corporation; Tzeporah Berman, Program Director of Forest Ethics (www.forestethics.org); and Gregor Robertson of Happy Planet Foods (www.happyplanet.com), now in political office here.
Then - having somewhat regretfully handed back my complimentary tickets for the Barenaked Ladies concert this evening, I went off with Coro Strandberg to a dinner with a dozen or so people from business in the Vancouver area. Discussion whether a sustainability cluster could be developed in Vancouver or the wider British Columbia area. Dining room overlooked Vancouver's famous steam clock. Inside the room a mouse was slowly dying, presumably poisoned. Encouraging ...
Steam clock
Catatonic mouse at the feast