Jonathon Porritt

Jonathon Porritt is a sustainability campaigner and writer (website, Twitter, Wikipedia). After years in the Green Party (while working full-time as a teacher), in 1984 he became director of Friends of the Earth in Britain and then co-founded Forum for the Future in 1996. (One of the other co-founders was Paul Ekins, who I interviewed for Powerful Times here. I worked with Jonathon when I was at Forum, 2003-2016.)

Jonathon was also Chair of the UK Sustainable Develop Commission for nine years (2000-2009) and Chancellor of Keele University (2012-2022).

He has been at the forefront of sustainability, in business and also government, for the last 30 years. We spoke in November 2023, just after he had, in his own words, extricated himself from the roles which had been very present in that time, including stepped back from any role in Forum.

For Jonathon, at the heart of sustainable development is this very simple, but massively powerful notion of intergenerational justice. That is still provides the rationale for everything that he does and allows him to envision ways in which 8 billion today and 10 billion people in the future could live reasonably good lives in the future.

One telling reflection: a focus on positive solutions for the last 30 years has put Jonathon's anger on hold, and he now feels that has been problematic. He's moving back into campaigning, being less reasonable with those who deserve our anger, and also still constantly absorbing in the solutions to the problems we face.

Links

Brundtland Commission definition of sustainable development:

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Jonathon's latest book, Hope in Hell.

Grist Imagine 2220

Timings

00:56 - Q1. What are you doing now? And how did you get there?

3:55 -Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?

7:35 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?

10:31 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?

14:00 Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?

19:37 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?

22:36 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?

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Thank you for listening! -- David

Transcript

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:07

Hello, and welcome to what we do in these powerful times. I'm your host, David bent, and I've been working in the field of sustainability and climate change for over 20 years, feels like the need for change is growing faster than the impact we're delivering. So I'm wondering, What can I do next that useful? That is useful, even speaking with others, they to have that same challenge, which is why I'm doing this interview series. In 40 minute bites, I asked some brilliant people what they're doing now and why, or to inspire and enable the audience which may just turn out to be me through stories grounded in experience. And today's guest is Jonathan portrait, co founder Forum for the Future campaigner, and author. Hello, Jonathan. So what are you doing now? And how did you get there?

Jonathon Porritt: 0:56

I am extricating myself from all sorts of things that have been very present in my life for the last 30 years or so in particular from form of the future which I co founded with our parking and for the kids nearly 30 years ago. Now. I successfully extricated myself from my role as Chancellor of Keele University and excused myself from being a non executive director of a company called Willmott Dixon. And, by and large, I'm kind of trying to put all of that to one side. So I can come straight up what I want to do next, in terms of how I got there, that's just too long a story, David, because I joined the party, as you probably know, back in 1974. And I really don't think this is the place to unravel the entire bloody history.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 1:47

But some of the highlights of the history being being a teacher in a central London school, being teaching, and then some

Jonathon Porritt: 1:59

friends the earth as director in 1984, after having also of course, spent 10 years in the Green Party is wonderful. They called I think I was at one stage of rotating co chair because they didn't use the dreaded word leader in those days. After friends the earth, I then went freelance for a bit and did a lot of stuff around the Earth Summit in 1992, then set up the forum in 1994. Then I was chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission between 2009 I was on the Board of Assessment Regional Development Agency, honestly, it's just play the banks been busy. It's been busy. Let's call it that.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 2:39

And and what would you say has been the driving force behind all of those choices you've made? And this was particularly the big moments from teacher to Friends of the Earth. That was that was a significant change. What was driving that for you?

Jonathon Porritt: 2:53

Well, I don't tell you this, the Green Party before that. So I was well into green politics, and thought it was much more in green politics than anyone in friends the earth was for sure. And I think I just felt I needed to have clarity. And it was, I couldn't have done the Green Party work mainly without having been a teacher. There's too many teachers who find this comment offensive, but it had it not been to school holidays, I would not have been able to do my Green Party stuff. So that's massively important. But I needed a single focus then because teaching angry in politics is getting difficult. So and I was not in a good state at the time, it was sort of fascinating position. And a really good moment for me to join and sort of start finding new ways forward for what was already then a pretty well established organisation.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 3:47

Yes. So then question two, what is the future you're trying to create and why?

Jonathon Porritt: 3:55

I big thing is sustainability. Sustainable Development. We all know the definition since 1987 Brundtland Report. And that is the big idea much bigger than any other political stroke ideological idea out there at the moment, which is to create sustainable, decent lives everybody on the planet deck without burning it up for everybody who's still to arrive on the planet, not quite putting the burden on them to use

David Bent-Hazelwood: 4:28

that particular meat maintaining the options for future generations was giving generally.

Jonathon Porritt: 4:37

Gosh, David. At the heart of that is this very simple, but massively powerful notion of intergenerational justice. If you look at the debate about justice today, understandably nine to 5% of it is about justice, three countries and people alive today. And very often, the intergenerational bit is kind of relegating it to something unapologetic postscript for me the Justice agenda that really comes first not as an alternative to the intergenerational kind of justice story, but the intergenerational stuff comes first for me. And that's at the heart of sustainable development. It's what makes sustainable development. Such a difficult concept is why the politicians have made such a total pig's ear of it over 30 years or more. And that is still provides the rationale for everything that I do and allows me to envision ways in which 8 billion today and 10 people in the future could live reasonably good. daily lives in the future, can be a bit careful in my choice of adjectives as it gets harder and harder to define exactly how good that future life is likely to be. Yes.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 5:57

Yes, you can think about a dignified life, but also life in which people have choices about they choose their own version of the good life. That's possible.

Jonathon Porritt: 6:06

And absolutely, yeah. And do you

David Bent-Hazelwood: 6:09

have a sense of why it so you're saying that the focus on intergenerational justice is rare and difficult compared to entrap generational justice? Do you have a sense of why that is that you have a focus on that? Is there a reason why the intergenerational is something that you've resonates with you?

Jonathon Porritt: 6:34

Well, the reason why it's typical is that the young and the unborn don't. And they don't have much money to spend. So neither politicians nor businesses give a figure that, basically. So why does it matter so much to me, because I can't understand how we are so neglectful of the rights and interests of people who come after us. And given how much we know about the damage we've already done to their prospects, just how comprehensively we have stolen their future in order to maintain our heedlessly irresponsible, and unsustainable lifestyles, given all of that. Pretty logical, if thinks about whatever role we might be able to play that that's where the focus might be.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 7:23

So what are your priorities for the next few years, you're just you're extricating yourself from all of these things, which have been very important over the last couple of decades. So what now?

Jonathon Porritt: 7:35

Yes, so what makes or what now is important, I mean, apart from not going on doing the things I have done, that's often much more important, by the way, in terms of defining what one is going to do in the future. And people make that I need to stop doing a lot of things. For instance, I will come on to but what I am going to do, but I do need to stop doing corporate sustainability work, which I've done since the inception of the forum. I greatly admire what leading companies continue to do today. But honestly, it's not going to change things very much. Those companies are strictly limited what they can do, because of the current rules of the current capitalist game, their primary duty is to their shareholders, their fiduciary duties, governments don't change the rules of the game. And so companies that are doing what they should be doing, and that's a small minority, by the way, still in the world today, are strictly limited. And they certainly can't do what they need to do at the speed and scale that they need to do. So for me, the question becomes why spend a lot of time but a lot more time now that I can see what the barriers to change look like from that perspective. So start finish that and to address myself then more to a set of campaigning priorities to try and get the rules of the game changed more fundamentally, that's basically what I will be doing are basically doing that through campaigning work.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 9:08

And is there a focus to that campaigning work? Or is there a particular sort of leverage point that you're going to be working on?

Jonathon Porritt: 9:17

Well, I mean, I've been involved with so many organisations over the years, and I haven't really been able to do justice to a lot of those. Those campaigning causes and I want to put that right. So I do want to be much more involved in the actual campaigning around nuclear power that for me is, is one of the most egregiously awful wasted time and money in terms of the energy mix today. I want to get much more involved in population family planning, campaigning, I despair of my colleagues in the green movement who still can't make any connection to the state of the planet, the number of people on it, what's wrong with them? I don't know. Dammit, whatever the hell, I'm gonna go after that it's a campaign priority, deeply involved in electoral reform, particularly proportional representation through an organisation called make votes matter. Personal conservation volunteers and I want to do a lot more for them if I can. And then there is the whole story about climate and the work I already do with a number of young climate campaign organisations. And increasingly, with organisations like XR just

David Bent-Hazelwood: 10:31

great. And if somebody was inspired to follow those priorities, so there's I mean, there's a mix for the people to choose from their nuclear power, population, electoral reform, conservation, volunteering and climate campaigning. What would they do next?

Jonathon Porritt: 10:55

Oh, God, the number of times that I mean, it's, I've almost reached the point where I can't bother to answer that question.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 11:06

Because it's so obvious.

Jonathon Porritt: 11:09

I do mean that dismissively? Because if anybody is still in the position of asking that question, then they're there. They're not awake, or they're lazy. And by lazy, I mean, they're not doing the work for themselves. I mean, start with the climate emergency, if you want your to be doing about that, then don't ask, don't waste people who are trying to do something about it by asking them really stupid questions. So I'm being a bit harsh, because I'm fed up with people who say, Well, gosh, this sounds really serious. 40 years on, I need to do something about it. What should I do? I'm very much at the school of thought here. What George Martin, who describes all of this lifestyle stuff as micro consumers bots? Yeah. And that's pretty much where I find myself now, when it comes to people who are still working out, turn off the light switch. It's about politics. It's about engagement at the community level, but still with political mutations of engagement, the national level engagement International, but all with politics behind it, because unless the politics is Saudia, none of these, these lifestyle changes are going to make a difference.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 12:23

And just to be clear, I wasn't saying lifestyle changes. I was saying your priorities. So the campaigning priorities, if somebody wanted to follow the campaigning priorities, what should they do next?

Jonathon Porritt: 12:37

They get into politics.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 12:40

And he said, I know a lot of people

Jonathon Porritt: 12:41

will figure it

David Bent-Hazelwood: 12:43

out. I was gonna say, is that only the Green Party? Or is it possible to get involved in any of the political parties and potentially do something useful?

Jonathon Porritt: 12:53

No, it's definitely possible to get involved in political parties, especially if you have a propensity for wasting your time. For me, it will be Green Party. I mean, I've been a member of the Green Party since 1974. And I will be much more involved in Green Party issues over the course of the next year. So I'm already doing more work with Green Party candidates, I will get much more involved from September onwards. It's a little bit following the Green Party in electoral systems such as ours, and of course, we've just heard that currently, Lucas has decided to step down as the meantime 70 Mt. Brighton pavilion, which is obviously going to make a big difference to the party. But I'm doing quite a lot of work with her. So for me, it's the Green Party. But i That's why I stress local politics, because a lot of people can actually be much more influential at the local level. And then there are all sorts of different ways of doing that.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 13:57

Right. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?

Unknown: 14:07

I would be advising us to get angrier earlier. I, although party and friends, yes. There was a lot of very deep concern and anger about the ways in which people were doing it and other people. Even back in those days, it wasn't, it wasn't anger born of the full realisation of the spirit of the damage we would do. And for me, now, anger is a pretty critical mix in the whole story about emotional resources to address the predicament we're in now. And I sometimes think that when I came back from the Earth Summit in 1992, and was determined to try to find different ways of tapping Due to people's creative energies emphasising solutions morning, they will miss David through your involvement in the forum. And indeed the work a lot of the work you've done since then I know that the emphasis on that positive side solutions oriented was really important for me personally, and I think for an organisation like the forum, but it meant that I put my anger slightly on hold for the best part of 30 years. And I feel that been problematic. It's not that I wasn't aware of what was happening at every point. And the people that are going one might direct that anger. But now one confronts the two emergencies, climate and ecological emergencies in the fully advanced state they're in at the moment. And boy, it is despairing that this has happened on our watch. So for me thinking back to my time as a, as a campaigner, I was always very reasonable night, basically. And I think I should have been a bit less unreasonable and slightly nastier. So

David Bent-Hazelwood: 16:03

this one clarification question want to ask him and one thing about it, so the clarification the two emergencies? And then at the moment, you said the second emergency, something happened, and I did ecological immersion, so climate and ecological emergencies, and then just so anger, there's a positive side and a shadow side, there's the motivates but it also burns through people and can also it can get in the way of the mass movements that we need. How do you imagine you will, so if putting your anger to one side during the time of forum, the forum was problematic? Could there be anything problematic about taking on that have you thought about how you would be inhabiting the anger in a way that sustains you and the wider movement

Jonathon Porritt: 16:58

it's I live in that zone of anger. I mean, my life is sort of nicely balanced between the anger and constant absorption in the solutions to the problems we face. I mean, that's been the greatest privilege over the last 30 working years, has been exposure to and knowledge of the writ large solutions agenda, as people call it. And I have spent most of that time working with people who are amazingly positive, strong, committed in their ethical stances around different things, and constantly looking to the future stack various disappointments that knock us all back from month to month, as it were, so I don't. So seething with anger, it's not like that I spend much of my day actually working with people who are very positive about the opportunities ahead and what we need to do now. So I hope I can keep that balance going. For me, that's going to be pretty important. Psychologically speaking, I've always been able to do that in the past Touchwood, I'm burnt out as yet 50 years of involvement in this and I do think my lucky stars about that, frankly, because I've lived worked with and loved people during that time, and for some, there's been a possibility of return to whatever frontline it might have been, that they go out on. For others, there's been no return, there's been a choice to take a different path, a different route. So I know in a way, maintaining these psychological equilibrium factors is absolutely critical. I want to be very alert to that. Which is probably why I spend so much time on hugging trees. I make light of this. I only liked obviously, because one bit me thinks I've got ridiculous but actually being well on can be close to nature and feel a different policy with one of them and different timescales. This is really important. So there are all sorts of mechanisms, which I think will stop me turning into an extremely angry old man who shouts at people very loudly from a distance and never does anything useful. Again, that's not the kind of who is more that way where it is that helps the fires alive. Great.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 19:37

Last few questions. So firstly, who would you nominate to answer these questions because you admire their approach

Jonathon Porritt: 19:47

and that's a difficult one. i It's funny because a lot of the my closest colleagues are colleagues that go right back to the start, as it were. So I've particularly good relationship with a guy called Colin Heinz, who you may not know, but was very involved in the early days in these other organisations. And he is the most successful advocate for the use of humour as a way of making this life possible and good. And he's obsessed with the Rolling Stones. He's fascinated by all sorts of different artistic periods in history, particularly Art Deco, he's got a, he's got a wonderful irreverent sense of humour. And I have always loved working with people like that, because they are very good at taking the piss out of other people, and taking the piss out of themselves. And that's pretty important, as well. So someone like Colin Heinz has been a companion in literally for the best part of 50 years. And he wouldn't know about his work, but the work is still really important, pretty good. In terms of younger people, I am lucky I do, I do work with quite a lot of younger people today. But I think the passing there would be any kind of recommendation about how to make this stuff move forward now. It's, it's something I want to do a lot more of, when I can, I enjoy it a lot. And it's quite a it's quite a challenge to keep those energies in young people as vibrant and focused as they them to be, whilst giving a bit of a perspective from, you know, five decades of campaigning, it's very easy to turn and boring old sock Frank,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 21:53

is there an order that younger generation that you'd suggest I talked to

Jonathon Porritt: 21:59

to Clover Hogan, force of nature?

David Bent-Hazelwood: 22:04

Is that is that both a description of her and her organisation

Jonathon Porritt: 22:09

as the organisation she set it up. And she's pretty remarkable, is already in conceivably significant number of things in a relatively short life and as a kind of take on how to work inside systems as well as to confront systems from outside which is pretty sophisticated. So she's been pretty colleague. Yeah.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 22:36

Great. And then just last question, is there anything else important you feel you have to say?

Jonathon Porritt: 22:46

My problem will be to stop doing the things that I know I shouldn't really be doing. So I do kind of always have an itch to get to doing books. I do love the act of writing. I pen is never far away from my and I find writing, I find writing nonfiction. Easy. This guide is not only flow, but seem to come together quite helpful. But in that regard, sort of comes to the intuition that we don't need any more bloody books about what's gone wrong with the world and what we do about it. So although I can feel myself now because it's HOPING TO HELL came out in 2020. Lemmings tend to be launched in the pandemic, but I'm sort of feeling I don't need to go back into any of that territory again, even though a little bit of me wants to. But what I am now intrigued by is the possibility of learning this very advanced stage in my life, to write fiction, right. And like any person things are nonfiction that's that I'll have a crack at something different. I have had a crack at fiction in a very small way and wonderfully difficult, right in terms of doing things like dialogue and characterization and plot to them. So if I go anywhere in the writing sense, I hope that I have enough discipline not to go back on fiction, but to force myself to do the difficult stuff of fiction.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 24:28

Well, and if you go down, keep on going down the fiction route. This may be a little bit too close to home, but there grist for the last couple of years have been running a climate fiction competition. And in there in which things called if it started with African or imagined 2200 That it was called, and when it first when it was first set up two ish years ago, just over two years ago. In advance of that I set up a little small climate fiction writing Group, which has been meeting every month since then. They still need to do Oh, yes, we I don't think any of us have actually managed to write any entries for Grist. But we have, we have been other things. One person is writing a book on klaserie, for instance. And one person inspired by the thinking they were doing for the writing, has bought a patch of land in Sweden with a deliberate approach of making a refuge in advance of any disasters. that happen. So it's been it's been a bit of a I mean, I think writing as a way for people to process what they think is really important. And writing fiction, also. So you could be submitting something to the next Grist. Yeah,

Jonathon Porritt: 25:49

no, I know that I love I love operas do that. That's something

David Bent-Hazelwood: 25:55

that so the first one at least was speculative fiction write a world in 2200. That is, it was like a positive with how things might be in 22. Under that,

Jonathon Porritt: 26:06

yeah, I've done that been there I did. The world we made in our hands off my to do list. That was, that was the most exciting, most enjoyable book I ever wrote was the word we made, because I could fit every single hour the day that I was writing it in Happyland. Yeah, that was fantastic.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 26:27

The other thing, a friend of mine, who you know why I won't say the name, because I'm not sure it's public, yet. They're writing a history of the corporate responsibility, movement for for and their experience of it. So they're doing something which is trying to be like a catalogue or a living history that can then be provided to the next generation, like, these were the mistakes we made that you can avoid. So there's a different kind of nonfiction, which could be a gift to your campaigning, younger generation, which is his lunch on the way.

Jonathon Porritt: 27:04

Yes, right. So very good history of corporate responsibility and corporate sustainability and ESG, CSR and more acronyms than possibly consumed before breakfast. It is actually really important to do that, because it's relatively short. It's a short period of time, it's 1990 to 2023. That's what it is. And it's a fascinating glimpse into the, into the corporate mind that needs to be done for that, which is great. Yeah, I look forward to that.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 27:38

And I'll tell you who it is after we finished. I won't say anything is public. But thank you very much, Jonathan. Um, you've been listening to what we do in these powerful times. And for the next couple of years, Jonathan's answer is campaigning. So good luck with all of that. And we'll be back very shortly with our next interview. In the meantime, thank you, Jonathan. Thank you