Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
When people are asked what gives them meaning and purpose in life, you know, they don’t usually talk about the money.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Increasing GDP.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah, exactly. On my deathbed, I really wished I’d grown GDP by another two percentage points. That would’ve, uh, made my life meaningful.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Welcome everyone, and, uh, thank you for joining this Mishcon Academy Session, part of a series of online events, videos and podcasts looking at the biggest issues facing society today. I’m Dan Gray, I’m the firm’s sustainable business knowledge lead working in Mishcon’s dedicated ESG and Sustainability practice, Mishcon Purpose and I’ll be hosting today’s event. So to business. I am delighted to welcome on stage with me today, Ed Gillespie, uh, one of the UKs leading and most authentic voices on sustainability and someone who I’ve followed and admired, uh, for many years. A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist, Ed’s known for his unique brand of insultancy. The practice of being strategically and playfully rude, uh, with clients, combining wit and wisdom to inspire them to greater heights. A major focus of his work these days is using his nearly 30 years of experience to help organisations rapidly understand, prepare for and adapt to a world of complex and interconnected systemic risks. The so called metacrisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, deepening inequality, geopolitical tensions and the world view that underpins them. As I am sure we’ll cover in our conversation this necessarily involves unlearning a lot of received wisdom, asking often very awkward and challenging questions and being willing to accept and embrace the pace and scale of change that’s really required for businesses, societies and economies to operate sustainably that is equitably provisioning for everyone’s wellbeing within the means of a flourishing planet. Can we give a warm welcome to Ed please?
[applause]
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Thank you.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
So Ed, to get us started, uh, 30 years is a long time to have spent in any field, tell us a little bit about how you got started in the world of sustainability and how you’ve seen your work, your practice sort of evolve over that period of time?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah well I actually started out as a marine biologist so my first work was in fisheries but I very quickly realised that I was going to spend my whole career saying, if you don’t stop catching all the fish there won’t be any fish, um, and so I realised that I wanted to get into a kind of broader environment of campaigning, um, and it was the journey then has gone really from looking at environmental behaviours, you know, actually thinking we could shift some of our challenges by turning off a few lights, you know, and saving a bit of water and doing a bit of recycling. And that’s where we were 30 years ago I think, you know, you were starting to think, ah well if I just get everyone to do a little bit. And then I think my career had just been that creeping and then not so creeping realisation that actually the problems are much deeper, they’re much more complicated, um, and actually the challenge is much more demanding and intense, um, than we might have comprehended before. And, and I guess, I, I started a, a sustainability consultancy, I co-founded one. One of the world’s first ones, uh, in 2001 and I guess for 10 years of that I was really, um, I was really happy with what I was doing. I thought, you know, we’re doing a good job, we’re starting to bend the curve, you know, people are listening. When we first started out, you know, we were really pushing on a closed door, um, and then the door opened and suddenly you’re in the room but then you realised the conversation you were having in the room wasn’t quite the right conversation. Um, and then I went round the world without flying, um, which is what the book, ‘Only Planet’ was about and that was kind of like a climate change pilgrimage. I wanted to go travelling but I didn’t want to leave a planet stewing slew of carbon emissions in my wake, um, while I did it. Um, and that gave me the space to think and it was real.., I guess that was probably the start of me comprehending and understanding the world in a very different way and then, and then I really I think it was the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change report of 2018, um, which really knocked me for six, which I know for a lot of us who worked in the sustainability world, it felt like an epiphany, it’s like, it’s not only that I’m not solving this problem, I actually think I’m part of it.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
You’ve actually been contributing to it.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
I think, you know, I’m providing some polished positioning to some practitioners and to some corporates who are really not as committed to change as, as they are purporting to be.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah, yeah. And I think there is a lot of people in the profession who feel the same way and would chart a fairly…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
…fairly similar, um, path. But I mean one of things that we did, I didn’t mention in the introduction, uh, was your, uh, wonderful podcast with your fellow futurist, Mark Stevenson and comedian, John Richardson. Season six just landed folks, check it out. Um, but you, you use a framework in a lot of your conversations there, um, that I really and I want to steal.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Okay.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
For this one. I’m going to use slightly less colourful Anglo Saxon, uh, language than the Anglo Saxon stuff that you guys, uh, use but you, you have your conversations framed around three questions, right. How in trouble are we? Why are we in trouble? And how might we dig ourselves out of trouble? So, starting at the top with how in trouble are we? I’m very conscious that while we use words like polycrisis, metacrisis a lot in sustainability circles. Outside of that bubble, this idea of complex interwoven mutually reinforcing crisis isn’t something that people generally are aware of or fully appreciate the scale of, of the mess we’re in. How, how an earth do you begin to broach that as a subject when you’re, when you’re speaking with, with clients?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah so I mean for those of you who haven’t listened to the podcast, I mean it is quite sweary, uh, we, we call it systems change for people down the pub. Um, so as people can have accessible conversations about really important, um, interconnected and interdependent issue, uh, and that’s really the nub of it, is that all of these things are connected together, So whether we talk about the climate crisis, whether we talk about the biodiversity and the ecology crisis or whether we talk about inequality, there are, there are links between all of them. So you can’t just tackle them in isolation, you know, people would say, oh well if we could just solve the carbon problem, it’s like if we just wave a magic wand and solve the carbon problem then everything will be fine. It’s like, well it’s not because we’re still devouring, uh, the world ecology we have left on the, on the planet. We’ve still got the oceans acidifying,. We’ve still got a food waste and a food production crisis. You know, we’ve still got this, um, burgeoning inequality and, and division now with like the political febrile atmosphere, which is now forming around populism. So all of those things are in a big pot together and one of the reasons I think Governments really struggle and let’s face it, I mean our Government is really struggling right now to try and make sense of all of this, is because they lack the systemic view. It’s very difficult to tackle these things in isolation and if you pull a lever here or flick a switch there, it’s not enough. You know, you’ve got to actually understand that there’s a metacrisis, you know, and I’m using that word just to piss off Mark Zuckerberg. Uh, but, you know, it’s a metacrisis because it’s a, it’s a crisis of culture and it’s a crisis of perception and understanding about the way the world actually works which has, which we have put ourselves above nature and separate from it. We play ourselves off against each other. We treat the world like it’s just a utilitarian resource to be consumed for our benefit. Um, and if you like, there’s that perception of the planet, uh, and the other people on it and the more than human world, which leads us almost inevitably to the mess we’re currently in.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah. And you’re talking about Governments, but of course the same could be said of, of businesses and corporations. How, how often do we come across it that you’re in a situation where not only is ESG or sustainability strategy treated as something completely separate from business strategy. But even within that sustainability space, we might be looking at separate plans, separate strategies for, as you say, for carbon emissions, for biodiversity, for, uh, EDI, whatever, whatever it might be.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
And all of that is generally done as end of pipe. You know, it’s like here’s our business, here’s what we do, this is how we do it, oh we had some impact over there but we’re going to mitigate those, but we’re not going to change the main thing that we do. And I think that’s the problem, is like that, that business as usual, is so immune and resistant to change that actually the rest of the tinkering around the edges remains just that. It is tinkering around the edges. Uh, you know, and this is why it’s become so critical. So when I started my career 30 years ago, we are now experiencing some of the impacts of things like accelerated climate change that I thought I wouldn’t see until, you know, my dotage, you know, and when I was starting out I hoped that we would avoid them. Um, and obviously we’ve had such a glitteringly successful 30 years of trying to mitigate this problem. Um but, you know, those things are, are lived to experience now. And I think most people are really starting to get that. As you say, maybe people haven’t necessarily joined the dots and can’t see the connections yet but the people’s lived experience of a disturbed climate is definitely there. You know, The Lancet was saying, you know, one person a minute now dies globally of heat stress, you know, one person a minute. That’s over half a million people a year, um, and we know that our seasons are disrupted. We can see our growing seasons have gone weird. There was blossom on my apple tree in January, um, earlier this year. You know, I remember being on the allotment and just seeing this little delicate flower in January and going, that’s really not the right time of year for that to be happening. And so the world, the world is confused and we are confused with it.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And so how did we get ourselves…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Oh god.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
…in this mess?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah. Um, where do you want me to begin. I mean there are so many different elements to this but I mean, let’s start with like the current mantra of the day. So we, you know, we’re about to have a budget, we’re about to have Rachel Reeves talk about growth and how growth is going to get us out of all of our problems as we way, wage, the wave of the magic wand, um, and increase GDP. And it’s like, it’s the worst measure, the worst measure we can possibly be using, um, to, to try and measure our quality of life.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Well when, when the guy who actually came up with the metric…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah, sucks, yes.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
…says, don’t ever use this as a proxy for progress.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
No exactly. I mean, so we know that growth doesn’t equal progress. Um, growth also doesn’t equal happiness. We know above a certain threshold of income, it doesn’t make us any more content. And also, you know, we tend to argue the fact that we just grow the pie then everyone can have a bit more pie. But what we’ve really successfully done is trickle up economics where, you know, and I was talking to my taxi driver this morning on the way to the station coming here, uh, and I was talking about the talk I was going to give today and we were discussing this and I think people understand that, you know, the share of, of profitability and the share of productivity that goes to people in the workforce has, has diminished. You know, they get less for their labour now than they would have done 30 years ago, proportionally. And so, the people at the top have got much, much richer and that’s just exponentially accelerated in the last few years. So, you know, that burgeoning inequality is a real problem. We don’t have a wealth problem. We do have…
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
A distribution.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
…a distribution problem, and that is connected to environment. So it’s almost a linear relationship between your income and your carbon footprint. You know, the impact you have on the planet is pretty much in a linear relationship with how much money you earn. Because the more money you have, the more things you buy, the more holidays you take, um, and that’s why inequality becomes an issue because if you have a hugely disproportionate amount of wealth, you also have this vastly disproportionate footprint.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah, I mean, I know certainly from, from the stats when you look at them, the World Inequality report that came out a few years ago…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
…was, was very clear on this, right. So…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah and Oxfam talk about it as a sort of champagne glass distribution perversely because, you know, the top 10% of people in the world, emit 50% of the emissions. You know, uh, and, and the bottom 50% is only about 8%. It’s like, you know, it’s very, very skewed so inequality is linked to environmental impact.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Whereas the Oxford, Oxfam Climate Plunder report, you may have seen a couple of weeks ago, had some pretty mind boggling statistics in there.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
I think they said the top 0.1% emit more in a day than the entire bottom half of humanity do in a year.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah and also…
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And also someone in the, sorry, that’s someone in the bottom, some in the bottom half of humanity does in a year.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Well, and also we forget that, you know, economic growth is a kind of paradigm and focus for a, a cultural civilisation is probably only about 75 years old. It’s a, it’s a post, post-second World War idea you know, and actually humans have been trading and living in, uh, in cultures and contexts together, uh, for, you know, millennia.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Hundreds of thousands of years yeah.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Exactly and where, we didn’t have this focus. So this is very much a modern construct.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
This is, this is something that I find frequently very, very difficult to, to understand. That this is presented as utterly immutable.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And yet, as you say, it’s maybe that that GDP, profit maximisation is the central organising goal of policy and strategy is less than a century, probably what, 50?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
70, 90 years old depending on how you look at it.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
But it’s also when you combine growth and efficiency together, you know, because a lot of like my early years in environmentalism were like, oh efficiency is going to save us. You know, it will be energy efficiency and water efficiency.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And when did you discover Jevons Paradox?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah, well exactly. So William, William Jevon, um, was working in a, you know, the industrial revolution, um, when we were burning coal. And what he observed during that period was that when you increase the efficiency with which coal was used, you tended to increase the rate of its consumption because when you increase the efficiency with which it was used, you increase its availability and you decrease its cost. And so it became more available and more abundant and easier, easier to buy. And so people burned more of it and that pretty much encapsulates.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Right.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Like the last 150 years of energy use. Right, we, we basically, what every saving we make, we use elsewhere in this massive sort of rebound effect. Um, and we’re doing it now, you know, all the savings we make, we decarbonised a lot of our electricity grid. And like now we’ve finally got more renewables than fossil fuels on the electricity grid, um, which is an amazing achievement that’s been done.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And yet, fossil fuels on the whole remain, what about 80% of the global energy mix?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah. Globally.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
All the renewables are additional. So we’ve managed…
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
It’s an energy addition, not an energy transition?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah, so we’ve created all these incredible renewables and places like China install absolutely gargantuan amounts of, of renewable energy. But it’s addition. It’s not really eating back into that base line fossil fuel consumption. So we’re still burning as much fossil fuels as we ever have but our, our increased appetite has been met in a clean way. But that’s not enough. You know, you’ve got to get rid of the bad stuff. It’s not enough to do the good stuff. You’ve got to stop doing the bad stuff as well.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting, I’ve seen this come up a lot in conversations when I’ve been talking about ideas that are increasingly gaining traction, whether it’s people talking about degrowth, post growth.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Wellbeing, economics, uh, equally still, also talking about it’s a regeneration but seeing, seeing those things in some respects is two sides of the same coin. You’ve got to balance both sides of the, you’ve got to focus on both sides of the ledger, right?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah. And, and ask yourself the question, what is the growth for and what is the growth in service to. Because if our goals are to have meaningful, convivial and purposeful lives, where we connect with each other and the beautiful natural world around us and to preserve the Eden-like planet that happens to be called home. You know, then a growth that’s in service for that which is very, very cherry picked from the elements of what we kind of use as growth at the moment, because, you know, GDP, back to Kuznets, includes the cost of all the negative stuff, right. All the externalities. So when we use it as a measure for quality of life, we’re including the cost of treating cancer, we’re including the cost of environmental clean-up, we’re including the cost of environmental degradation. You know, it’s like those, those things aren’t benefits.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And equally excluding non-monetised things like…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Exactly.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
…care giving and non-financial…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah exactly, non-financial wealth. And, you know, when people are asked what gives them meaning and purpose in life, you know, they don’t usually talk about money.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Increasing GDP.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah exactly. On my deathbed I really wished I’d grown GDP by another two percentage points. That would have made my life meaningful.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yep and, and so I, I guess we’ve, we’ve sort of covered some of this to an extent but, you know, what do you say to people who, so, you know, we need growth to solve poverty, to pay for public services or, you know, technology is going to save us?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Well as, I think we’ve sort of covered some of the growth part. I mean, you know, you can use loaded terms like degrowth. I prefer to talk about it as like, the growth in service to something. So, you know, I can understand why you might want to grow renewable energy, you know, and particularly decentralised localised community lead renewable energy. I can also see why you might want to do something similar with community agriculture and food cultivation. You know, those types of growth make absolute sense. Um, I think growth which tends to centralise power and control is risky and increasingly fragile. Um, so it’s not growth per se, but it’s the quality of growth and what that growth is, is there for and to do. Um, and so.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
I think degrowth in fairness is quite nuanced in that respect as well, right?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
That it’s not, it is around de, degrowing the things that are non-essential and do not add to our wellbeing in order to create the space, the capacity to grow the things that actually are?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Well I, and I mean, if you get into the etymology of it, um, you know, we’re very hardwired to see growth as a good thing because we talk about personal growth, and inner growth and the growth that happens in Spring. You know, growth is a beautiful thing but it’s sort of that, the beauty of the word has been hijacked by the ugliness of the economic imperative, you know, and so that’s why when we start to talk about, you know, managed growth or degrowth, people, people go, urgh I don’t want to stop growing because the whole purpose of your life is to keep on growing; your compassion, your connection, your kindness.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Mm. But there is a distinction I think that perhaps to be drawn between, maybe between growth and development, because we’re not talking about growth in the sense of…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
…physical growth. There’s nothing, nothing borne of the, I mean, standing at six foot seven, I know this better than anyone. Nothing grows forever and thank god it does…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
No,
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
..doesn’t. Um, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t keep developing.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
No.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Constantly, developing, adapting, maintaining a sort of a dynamic balance with the, with the systems of which we are all embedded?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
As we did for hundreds of thousands of years, without necessarily, you know, we developed without necessarily having to kind of grow and aggregate all of that well. I mean, David Graeber, the late, great anthropologist rights very beautifully about the, the diversity of different models of the way that we could, and probably have, historically run our worlds. You know, and the very fact that we think we’re living in the best of all possible worlds, I think is a, is a bit of a delusion. You know, there are so many vibrant, colourful, different opportunities for running economies and societies which exist in some way, shape or form all over the world even now. But, you know, matriarchies, controversially, let’s get out of a sort of patriarchal one, you know, but decentralised, you know, democracies where, where citizen’s assemblies make decisions. There was so much rich fertile potential for doing things differently when you look at how broken so much of the stuff around us is, it’s hard not to be tempted to be looking elsewhere but the crucial thing that we often talk about in, in the work I do on responsible leader, uh, with my friend, Dr Kate Simpson who runs a programme around system craft, about system change. She said, the thing you have to remember is like, systems aren’t always all, all broken. The reason they perpetuate is because they’re working for someone, you know, and even in the disaster as you’re feeling like you’re heading towards the cliff edge and the precipice, that system is still working for some of the players. It may not be working for most of us, but it’s working for some. And that’s what keeps it going unfortunately.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah. So you started to touch on it there, I think, in, in some of the things that you referenced. How we might dig ourselves out of trouble. What are some of the design values, operating principles from those…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
…examples that we, that we, we, we might look to scale, uh, to get us out of trouble or at least to slow our, uh, approach.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah. Well I mean I think that’s the difference. I mean, are you wanting to do the same shit, slightly less badly? Uh, or do you want to do some different, better shit? You know, I think, you know, to put it bluntly, that’s the kind of the, the choice you have. Um, you know I’m all for like doing, up for doing things really radically differently because you can then divide that into a sort of a technocratic versus a more of a philosophical approach and I think I’ve talked about some of the philosophical, kind of underpinnings of what doing things differently would look like. As I say, you know, connection to each other, connection to the planet in a more than human world and living, let’s face it, in the reality of the context in which we find ourselves. So not in some kind of delusional constructive denial that everything’s going to work out alright but actually saying, this is the situation we’re in, you know, we’re at four hundred and something parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We’re already heading to somewhere between two and a half to three degrees of climate change on our current policies and actions and that really is an incredibly high risk and untenable strategy. Because the chances of the whole thing tipping over the edge, are getting increasingly high with every passing year. And then you get into the irreversible effects, you know, tipping points and cascades and feedback loops which are really, really, you know, deeply, deeply concerning. So.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
One of the first ecosystem tipping point the 24.22 coral reefs highlight just literally in the last couple of weeks.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah. Well, and as a marine biologist, you know, I’m someone who has dived on the great barrier reef and worked in the South Pacific and New Caledonia on coral reef fisheries, um, you know, I, I feel that deeply in my heart. And, you know, two inch column in the newspaper, you know, an article on the web. And it’s like, this is one of the most incredible, you know, collective cumulative living entities, like the coral reef is an extraordinary, uh, natural phenomenon and the fact that we now might be witnessing the gradual, progressive, cascading collapse of those globally as the oceans heat and acidify. I mean, that should be absolutely mortifying and yet, there’s something about the drip, drip, drip of the, the negative stories that, that pushes us away and gets us to look away from the problem rather than staring through it with open eyes and open hearts.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Mm.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
But we’re trying to do the, uh, I was going, I nearly said the ‘F’ word then, uh, because that’s what we say on the podcast but we’re trying to do the, how do we get through this. I’m, I’m not sure we get out of this and this is the whole point of, you know, this talk. Is like how do we face collapse without collapsing because collapse can happen in very erratic and non-linear ways. And it also happens slowly. You know, the coral reefs we just talked about but, you know, the, the drying out of the Amazon, um, and the shifting of rainfall patterns. You know, the Atlantic Meridional Current, otherwise known as the Gulf Stream, is weakening.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
You know, which could change the ability to grow food and our weather systems in, in North Western Europe, you know, and put us into a climate which is much more like New Finland.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yep.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
In terms of our latitude for colder and drier potentially. You know, these are the experiences that we’re going to live through. And my daughter is 8 years old, you know, she’s probably going to be here in 2100. So I am acutely conscious of the things that I’m involved in trying to change today, will absolutely impact that, the world that she grows up in after I’m gone.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah. And this is part of the thing I think, that we need to be thinking about here as well. Is, I know a, uh, Roman Krznaric in, in The Good Ancestor has a lovely phrase where he talks about cathedral thinking.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And actually being able to think ahead over multiple generations. I’ve also heard people say, you know, planting a tree under whose shade you will never sit.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yep. Yeah and it’s, you know, that’s the philosophical stuff. I mean some of the technocratic stuff is important. I mean, you know, I don’t think we get through some of this without measuring our impacts. I mean, one of the discussions that’s going on at COP at the moment is about trying to have a better measure, um, of impact and I, I saw a quote for I think, from the CEO of Exxon, you know, who was kicking back at some of the pressure, um, on trying to, to, um resist some of the measurements that were being imposed on them and he said, well this would be like McDonald’s having to take responsibility for the health and the diet of their customers. And I was like, yeah, it would. And wouldn’t that be a good thing, you know, who would argue with that. You know, and he said it as if it was almost like a complaint. And I was like, well no, that’s the reality. That’s what you should be doing.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
I mean, I was looking in disbelief almost, uh, was it last week, a couple of weeks ago.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Did you see this, um, carbon measures?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Oh god. Yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean. I mean that’s why I kind of, I, I knee jerk a little bit from some of the technocratic stuff because it’s so dry, where’s the emotion?
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Right.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
You know, when you are in an existential crisis, you don’t need more data. You know, you need more feeling. You need to look at the world and feel the grief. And you need to feel it in your heart and in your gut. Not just be calculating the numbers in your head, although they have a role. But, you know, you need to be able to have that, that compassionate understanding and connecting with what is going on. Which is why when you see politicians and business leaders where they look like they’ve had their kind of life blood sucked out of them, you know, and it’s why, um, people like Zach Polanski, uh, have, have obviously struck a chord with people because they come with an authenticity. They don’t shy away from the, the problems and the challenges and they are able to articulate it in a way that people can emotionally connect to. And we need more of that, you know, and it’s not about becoming hysterical, you know, but it is absolutely about being emotionally embodied and feeling it, you know, corporally in our bodies because otherwise we’re just brains on sticks, you know, uh, and we’re not going to be able to step up in the way that’s required.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And how would you suggest that lawyers tap into those feelings, because we were talking to, back stage, you were saying something about the, um, uh, climate protests…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah. Well I mean, I mean law is emotional. I mean, we might not think it is and we might argue that, you know, the law is dispassionate, um, and is objective, you know, and rigorous and gives us frameworks we can rely on. That’s absolutely true but, you know, we make law from emotion, when we are outraged about something, you know, if there’s a disaster or a mistake. Well we must have a law, we must have a new law to try and manage that. We also use it to control our, our worst impulses, you know, and perhaps our more, you know, problematic tendencies. But I mean right now I think the law is in absolute crisis because to my earlier point, it’s not connected to the reality in which we find ourselves. You know, and the law if failing us at all sorts of levels. And it, and it doesn’t have to but, you know, you have the International Court of Justice which is now, has ruled around States obligations to protect their citizens and, you know, and prevent the worst impacts of climate change and to regulate the corporations and the companies that might sit within their jurisdictions to do the same. Because right now the law is not protecting us. It’s not, it’s manifestly not saving us from harm. You know, it’s not fulfilling the most basic elements of the social contract because we’re going off the edge of the cliff and the law is expediting that. You know, particularly the worst elements of contract law which are underwriting fossil fuel expansion, uh, and, and new fossil fuel infrastructure, you know, and that’s diabolical. That’s, that’s properly Ponchius Pilot, hands dirty kind of culpability when, when you look at it like that. And you know, the systemic denial that sits around that, that fossil fuel sector in particular is, is almost unimaginably appalling. You know, we know that we have probably about seven or eight times more carbon in the form of fossil fuels as known reserves in the ground that we can actually burn if we want to fulfil the Paris Agreement of one and a half degrees. So 90% of that carbon is unburnable and has to stay in the ground. And yet…
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And why the IEA for example, no need for new exploration…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
...and yet.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
And yet you have all the banks, you know, merrily writing, you know, billions of pounds worth of financing and all the lawyers merrily, because this is, this is legal, you know, it’s legal to do this at the moment. And all the lawyers merrily underwriting those contracts. So we’re facilitating, you know, the very problematic thing we should be absolutely stopping. You know, so that’s where the sort of systemic denial comes in and worse than that, I think, you know, particularly under, under this Government and increasingly around the world, and this has been called out by all the UN Special Rapporteurs on environmental defenders but the law is now being weaponised against the very people who whistle blow, who raise the protest, who raise the alarm, who say, this has to stop. You know, we are absolutely clear about the risks that are in place here, and right now the law is enabling and facilitating this and we’re going to break the law to draw attention to that fact. And then we’re coming down on them like a tonne of bricks and we’re looking the up. You know, Just Stop Oil protestors getting extended and lengthy prison sentences, you know, and the chilling effect around things like Palestine Action, basically trying to annihilate protest is almost without irony. I mean, where does the Labour Party come from? You know, the Labour Party was formed by protest, repeated, disruptive, protest defending worker’s rights. So the very administration that is now doubling down on the authoritarianism and control, was formed by the very thing it’s trying to annihilate. You know, you can’t make it up, I mean it’s, it’s almost mad. And yet these are, people are the heroes, you know, these people are the bonds who are prepared to stick their head above the parapet, to call it. You know, and they’re paying for it with their liberty, and with their careers. And it’s wrong and the law is being weaponised against them and I think, you know, that’s, that’s truly appalling.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
But you were saying also there, there’s some interesting examples of where that’s kind of being flipped.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Right in terms of public nuisance?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Well it has to, well I mean, so, you know, the law of public nuisance has been used against protestors, you know, um, for, for doing what protestors do. You know, which is like go out and be disruptive and, and a bit annoying, um, but, you know, that’s the only thing that ever changes anything, uh, unfortunately. And, so that law of public nuisance, the citizen’s arrest network have now taken that law and are using it against, uh, corporate CEOs and senior corporate executives. Initially in water companies but oil and gas companies as well, um, and, and taking the evidence, compiling like properly, um, researched dossiers of evidence to provide proof that when a water company has been repeatedly discharging shit into our rivers, you know, which is a public outcry, which should not be tolerated at all. You know, these people are the criminals and so, the citizen’s arrest network is drawing the attention to the fact that the law should be applied to these people because they are the real public nuisance. The criminals are inside the boardroom, you know, not the people outside raising the protests that are legitimate.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Interesting. I am just keeping an eye on time because I know we’ve need to keep a little bit of time open for, uh, questions from the floor. Has anybody got any, uh, questions they’d like to ask? If you could wait for a mic, uh, think maybe to get to you so, you know, people online can hear.
Audience
Thank you so much. Brilliant. Thanks so much. I, I did want to jump in with a question because I think it builds on what you’ve just been talking about but on, um, a slightly bigger scale, the way the law is being deployed and things like the, was it the Mariana Dam in Brazil in this recent decision. Um, and I, I, I don’t really have much of a sense of what the long-term impact of decisions like this have. And I wonder if, over your career, is, is, because I’m worried that, you know, I’d like it to be a chilling effect that would force businesses to bring their practices in line and be compliant. Or is it a kind of, this is an aberration, everyone else is getting away with it sort of situation. So how does that, how did that play out in your experience? What’s the long-term? Is, is it useful to pursue this kind of case in the national Courts?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah, well they take a long time. I think we’ve, we’re increasingly finding that the, the kind of, the, the links between actions and the harms are being tightened because obviously that’s the kind of, you know, the, the legal proof. And one thing that the ICJ did was begin to bring that link between emissions and harm closer together which I think potentially opens up the possibility for a new era of accountability. You can’t deny, um, the responsibility and the culpability, um for those particular actions and then we’ve had that, um, the case with the Peruvian farm and, and RWE, you know, where, I mean, I think it took ten years to finally get to Court and they didn’t win the case but what they started to prove was that, you could bring those things closer together, um, and actually then build a case on top of that.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah I think they found it. Well, the, the, the case didn’t succeed on the basis of…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
No.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
…the immediate harms to the farm but it did set out in principle, in principle that, that corporations, that companies could be held liable.,,
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
...for the, for the harms that their emissions caused.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah and I think, you know, I’m, I’m not necessarily advocating this for the employees of Mishcon but, um, you know, that but there’s also a role for, for lawyers to be conscientious objectors. To refuse to work on contracts, you know, to actually say, I don’t think I should be working on this because actually it contravenes my particular beliefs around climate change or to be whistle blowers, or indeed, to, to be able to, to stand up and protest without losing their livelihoods. You know, those are the other protections that need to be in place but I mean, I think this new era of accountability is about bringing the frontline closer to the boardroom. You know, and, and stopping this, this obfuscation and the blurred lines where, you know, like the citizen’s arrest network are trying to do, to saying, no there is a direct accountability here and we can prosecute it.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And maybe especially when, you know, particularly you look, you look across at what’s going on in, in Europe right now, the deregulatory pressure.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yep.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Around things like whether it’s their corporate sustainability, reporting directive, due diligence, deforestation, you know, for someone who actually spends a lot of their time trying to keep, uh, track of, uh, key regulatory developments. I mean the passage of the EU deforestation free products reg, it’s enough to make you want to chew your own foot off.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah well again, this comes back to the philosophy doesn’t it. It’s like, how do you turn the scientific consensus into legal liability.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Right.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
How do you create that because that’s what the law should do, that is the, the responsibility of the law in the context of the social and environmental contract that we all have, you know, unspoken together and I think, you know, that’s, that’s the kind of gap that needs to be closed. There’s two and a half thousand live climate litigation cases globally now. You know, the momentum is building on this but it’s not happening fast enough, you know.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And more and more of them being actions against corporates.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah. Well exactly, exactly. So we’re building these cases about protecting human rights, you know, upholding the right to protest, protecting civil liberties and to keep us safe from harm, like I said with the kind of, with the health impacts but also, I think, where the law has a huge role to play and, you know, and I was friends with Polly Higgins, the dear departed, Polly Higgins who pioneered, you know, the idea of ecocide, um, and it’s responsibility and potential liability of, of corporations and governments for destroying whole habitats and whole ecosystems in one go and we, and, you know, what we haven’t done is align ecocide and genocide as kind of, you know, the crimes. Uh, and, and it’s, you know, it’s hard not to be kind of concerned when we’ve failed to arrest under International Law an ongoing genocide, uh, in Gaza and yet we have an ongoing ecocide at the same time. And in Gaza you arguably have both. You know, a destruction of the, the kind of, the living environment as well as the destruction of the physical environment as well as an annihilation of the people. You know, and so International Law is totally failing because you have players who are now acting with absolute impunity, um, and perpetuating the worst of all possible crimes.
Audience
Hi everyone. I’m not quite sure what my question is yet but it might come out as I, as I speak.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Just start talking and see what happens.
Audience
Yeah. I think it’s to do with anti-wokeism, um, and I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that really because I think what you are saying is digging us out of this, is about hearts and minds and compassion and I suppose, um, something, I don’t know if I’ve thought about but I suppose the link between those two things, so how is compassion getting caught up in potentially that anti-woke debate?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Oh yeah, well I mean, anti-woke debate. Do you know where the word woke comes from? The word, kind of the meaning of the work woke? Because it comes actually from, um, the civil rights movement in the States, you know, and it was basically a code amongst the young black men at risk of lynching, uh, who would say to each other, you know, you’ve got to be woke in this context or in this town because, uh, you know, there’s people out to get to you. So it has a very deep and quite powerful original meaning, um, and like so many of these words has been absolutely bastardised and used as a kind of derogatory term as if you are somehow hyper sensitive or a snowflake or unable to cope with the world as it turns up, or trying to police everything. Um, I mean, I think part of this is also a legacy of our, our culture of individualism, you know, which has broken down community level connections and social connections and the atomisation which has also happened digitally and the fact that we can argue with each other without ever having to look each in the eye and say appalling things to each other. Um, that we would never do if were sat in the same room. I always think about the comedian, Ben Elton, he used to say this about driving, you know, he said, you know, you would never walk up behind someone on the pavement and start shouting at them and saying, get out of my way, you’re going so slowly. Uh, but you do it in your car because you have the degree of separation and, you know, and that was the sort of precursor of like the online atmosphere now where everyone hates each other and can’t wait to kind of get one over on each other. I mean, well I don’t know if there’s a simple answer but leadership would be a good thing. And again, I’m not blowing too much smoke up Zach Polanski’s bum but you know, I think he demonstrates that compassion and so you could hold a lot of these conflicting things and you can see the humanity and you see the Court humanity. We have got leaders who are absolutely useless at talking about shared humanity. You know, and you see it and like the new asylum stuff that Shabana Mahmood, uh, and Kier Starmer are now trumpeting. You know, this is all about othering and it’s all about alienating and it’s all about dehumanising people in desperate struggles, uh, and, you know, it’s abhorrent. And, and so you need a leadership which starts to build that bigger heart and I think it’s there actually. I don’t despair of, of humanity. I think people have it in them but unfortunately the discourse and the narrative can be swayed by, by misguided and malevolent players, um, and we need to fight that back, you know, we need to claw it back. And a lot of that comes from us having to step up. I mean, so I work a lot on responsible leadership but bystander leadership is important. It’s risky but you have to step up and speak out against things you don’t, you don’t like. You know, and, and that you think are problematic. And I think on climate, on, on migration, on, on so many of these issues we don’t speak out enough, um, and as a consequence we let the demons run amok.
Audience
Thank you so much, that was a really interesting talk. Uh, I’ve got a question about sort of UK politics particularly, um, where it seems that the Government’s response to, to any, um, any grievance of this kind is, well our hands are tied, you know, there’s, there’s a budget deficit, if we raise tax, uh, or spend more or whatever, you know, our, our borrowing rates are going to go up and the debt problem is going to get worse. Um, there’s, there seems to be a terrible fear of scaring off foreign investment. Uh, what’s your answer to that?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
(laughs).
Audience
What did your answer to the Governments sort of, you know, stop response, that, well we can’t really do anything other than tinker around the edges as you said?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
I think it’s really unimaginative. I think the response of the Government is really unimaginative because I think, and this comes back to the point that I was making about technocracy, you know, where you’ve got to take people with you and, and a technocratic managerial approach to politics just does not cut it in our populist age. Um, I think one of the most important things about like, reinventing and reimagining democracy is through the citizens assembly, is actually bringing people back into the participatory nature of the decision making process. As has been done to great effect in various different places, you know, most famously in Ireland, um with the national vote around abortion. Now I think that’s where we can make much better, tougher decisions because all the evidence shows that when you bring a representative cross-sectional, um, group of the populist together, so democratic, demographically representative and you give them the information and you allow them to have informed debate and make informed choices. They are far more radical than where we ever get to through our supposedly elected representatives.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
This is something that really isn’t well understood isn’t it.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Because we were talking, mentioned earlier, we said, you know, terms of degrowth, post growth, and people say, politically unfeasible.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
But actually when you look at the results of citizens assemblies, I mean I remember looking at one in Scotland, uh, just a, just a few years ago and Scotland as some of you may know, is one of the founding Governments of the Wellbeing Economy, uh, Alliance alongside Iceland and New Zealand. Now, when people are directly exposed to the evidence, exactly as you say Ed, you know, it turns out that they are way more radical…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
…than people give them credit for and actually there was a result coming out of the, the Scottish citizens assembly that said actually moving away from, uh, GDP and economic growth as the, as the central sort or organising principle.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
So I mean…
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
I think, I think it’s trusting but with more power. And, and again, I think our system is very reluctant to do that at present, um, but I do think that’s where the opportunity for doing things radically differently lies, um, and we’ve got to trust ourselves. You know, and, and of course those are biters of national discourse at the moment which is a lot of the media outlets which are, you know, whether it’s GB News owned by Paul Marshall, you know, or Robert Myers in the Daily Mail, you know, these dominant voices in the discourse which, you know, seem to be horrified at the thought we might actually make some decisions collectively ourselves because that reeks of communism or socialism or whatever it is and they want to denigrate us with, um, I think that’s where the, the really exciting power potentially lies, for, for making better decisions, uh, and being more radical.
Mishcon online
Sorry this is a bit of a follow on from your, the last question but Bella, online, has said, given your influence Ed, could a meaningful way forward to be, would be to invite UK Government ministers especially business and DCMS, not just environment ministers, could this engage radical solution?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
To invite them where? To my house?
Mishcon online
To your house. For drinks. Yeah, with us. To join the conversation.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
To join the conversation?
Mishcon online
Yeah so it’s not, you know, it’s not an echo chamber I guess.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah I mean, absolutely and when I, you know, existential crisis kind of justify a national conversation don’t they? I mean, you know, we have already had a kind of citizen’s assembly, um, on climate with the people but we, we didn’t make the outputs or the recommendations of it legally binding. So that’s the problem, you know, you get this wonderful discourse. People go with a whole bunch of policy ideas, politicians look at them and go, ah that’s nice and then just carry on, um, as, as normal. So, no I agree absolutely. I mean I think, the, the worst thing that has happened actually in the 30 years that I’ve been working on this is the politicisation of it which has only happened in the last three or four years.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Yeah.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
You know, we did have a very broad consensus, you know, it was the Conservative administration which brought in the climate change bill, you know, it, we did have, and now it seems to have gone bat shit crazy, which is a technical term. Um, you know, so you’ve got, you know, Kemi Badenoch saying we’re going to pull out of the Paris Agreement and get rid of the climate change bill, you know, god knows what Farage would do, you know, but I mean these are absolutely insane positions given the context of where we are. So, you know, we’ve seen this before, I mean Brexit was the politics of divisionism and look what happened when we ended up divided, you know, ten years on we’re still reaping the whirlwind of that particular disaster. And it will only be worse if we don’t rebuild a political consensus on the climate and ecology crisis. You know, and, and law is absolutely fundamental in that.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Ed, thank you very much.
Audience
Um, there’s tension I think in some of what you say about need for compassion and conversation and the need for, um, campaigns, protests and the enemies, all the criminals being in the boardroom. Um, how, how do you square that. How, how do you create an inclusive conversation and dialogue that seems to be sorely missing? Um, at the same time as enabling the pressure of protest to come to bear?
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Yeah I mean, and that is an excellent question and, I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive. I mean, you know, there are ways of doing protests. I mean, I think, you know, in many respects the way that Extinction Rebellion approach a lot of the protests which was with love, you know, it was love and rage but it was trying to build human connections, you know, without necessarily identifying specific enemies, uh, and I talked about the citizen’s arrest network. If you watch, watch some of the video clips online of those arrests taking place, they are the opposite of confrontational, you know, they’re smartly dressed women presenting dossiers of legal evidence to, usually fleeing male, um, executives, you know, who can’t quite handle the fact that this is not the typical, in your face, protest, it’s, it’s actually quite cool headed and, and calm and collected. I mean I think some anger is justified. I mean, I think, you know, we, we shouldn’t necessarily dismiss our anger but it’s how we manifest that. It’s about the quiet power and I think you see that in the sign holding for Palestine Action. You know, when you’re accused of being a terrorist and, and you sit quietly holding a cardboard sign there’s something about the tension there. Because anyone looks at that and goes, well these people aren’t terrorists, that law is insane, how can that possibly be true? Um, especially when those people are pensioners, you know, retired doctors, priests, you know, the very last people, again, the very best, best of us who are of a generation which was often dismissed as self-indulgent boomers are the ones who are actually stepping up and taking the risks with their liberty because they don’t have the same risks in their careers of having to carry a terrorism charge, to try and get that law dismissed. So, I agree, there is a tension in how we challenge but I don’t think our challenge always has to be about blind fury, we have to channel the anger and, and connect with the human beings who are also making these, these difficult decisions. And often, often getting through to them via their children is not a bad way. I mean I, for example, I had a conversation, uh, with a woman who was working on a solar project once and as we were having the discussions he said, oh my dad works for BP and he’s a, he’s a petrochemical geologist, um, and he looks for new fields, looks for new oil fields. I said, that’s interesting, you know we’ve got like, you know, seven times more fossil fuels than we can actually burn and most of what we already know we’ve got, has got to stay in the ground and she went, really. She went back, um, two weeks later I saw her again and she said, oh I asked my dad about that over Sunday lunch, and I said, what was his response? She goes, I’ve never seen him go so quiet. Because, again, this is the constructive denial, you know, and we were talking beforehand, I mean, one of my favourite quotes is from the American Environmentalist, Edward Abbey who wrote, The Monkey Wrench Gang, which I recommend, um, as, as a book but he also said, better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion. And right now I think we like to sit in our comfortable delusions, um, and we need to be able to sit with a bit more cruel truth.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
And on that bombshell I think.
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
Well yeah, I mean, I wanted to end on, I wanted to end on also the role of humour because it can all get very serious, you know, and you listen to a Futurenauts Podcast and the way I usually talk about this in front of audiences is with a bit of dark humour, some gallows humour because I think it’s really important, um. and we were talking about the power of humour to disarm people, to, uh, to get them to think differently, to build connections with other people, um to laugh at themselves and to laugh at some of the ridiculousness and I think that’s absolutely essential and, you know, if I wanted to leave you with something more positive it’s like, we often say in the old adage, you know, if you can’t laugh, what can you do? Well in the context of where we are now, if you can laugh, maybe we can do anything.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
Brilliant. Thank you so much Ed, um, to everyone in the room and online, I hope you’ve found this informative, insightful, perhaps even a little bit consciousness altering. If you have, uh, people in the room, Mishcon people, I invite you please to check out other resources that we have on the Academy, uh, the Sustainability 101 session that’s on there which we will be adding to over the course of the next, uh, month or so. Um, if you’re in the room and you have further questions for Ed, you’d like to takeaway a signed copy of his book, Ed has very kindly agreed to, uh, hang around for a wee while and, and continue the conversation. Um, which just really leaves me to say, massive thank Ed,
Ed Gillespie
A writer, consultant, serial entrepreneur and futurist
My pleasure.
Dan Gray
Sustainable Business Knowledge Lead
For, for sharing your wisdom with us today. Um, and for folks in the room and online for your, your curiosity, your openness to receiving what I think is, you know, is a pretty challenging, uh, message, uh, around the, the state of our world but everything that you were saying about finding the emotion in all of this, I think hopefully that will give you an idea of why we entitled this session, ‘How to face collapse without collapsing’, which we did with very good reason. You know, when you’re confronted with the reality, with the knowledge that we are critically disrupting the systems that all life, and all economic activity, depend upon, it’s entirely natural for that to lead to feelings of sadness, confusion, hopelessness and, and more. But I think it’s really key that we don’t push those emotions away, which is often our tendency. On the contrary, we need to lean into them, we need to hold them close because maybe that sense of grief, despair is actually what we really need right now as the fuel for mobilising transformational change. Once we stop staving off that reckoning, the energy that becomes available to us is huge and there’s a lot that we, as lawyers and the law, can do to help accelerate a just and sustainable transition. So on that final thought, Ed, please, let’s have one final round of applause to show our appreciation please.
[applause]