Linked with The Forum for the Future.
Jonathon Espie Porritt, CBE, (born 6 July 1950) is a British environmentalist and writer. Porritt appears frequently in the media, writing in magazines, newspapers and books, and appearing on radio and television regularly. Jonathon has recently started his own blog. (full text).
He is also Programme Director of Forum for the Future and Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission. (full text).
He says: « We’ve made this assumption that it’s the next generation that is going to have to deal with climate change. For a politician it is classic not-in-my-term-of-office stuff. It is absolutely right now, not one generation versus another. And it’s our generation that needs to start ». (full text).
Read: Victor Manuel Ochoa, an environmentalist on the front line, Honduras, July 5, 2007.
Jonathon Espie Porritt – England
Download: SDC submission to the DTI Energy Review: Meeting the challenge, energy policy for the 21st Century, 36 pages, April 2006.
He says also: « I didn’t really come into environmentalism through a love of nature; I came into environmentalism through looking at what happened to children whose lives were blighted by there being no nature ». (full text).
Read: The Great Global Warming Swindle, July 13, 2007.
And he says: « What makes sustainability such a big issue is that it goes right to the heart of what it is that makes us human – a we learn to articulate our esssential human-nes in and through nature, rather than by continung to wage war on nature. And that’s what crativity means for me ». (full text).
Read: The human rights page, It could have been me.
Then he says: » … If you are anything like me, you will be thinking of where you will be in 2026. In my case I will be 76 years old, which I find difficult to imagine, but none the less that’s what it will be. I would be thinking about impact on my own personal life, on my family, friends, community – assuming that I’m still living in the South West of course – and trying to work out if that really gives me, us, genuine hope for the future … « . (full long text).
Read: Rude awakening, Interview with Sir Jonathon Porritt.
Porritt-speak acknowledges no inescapable conflicts. So, he tells us that we need the « entrepreneurial dynamism of market based capitalism, but we also need the balancing effect of governments coming in and redistributing wealth ». He does not think disaster is inevitable, as long as « capacity » is available. Porritt- jargon about « capacity » is something of a one-man industry – and a revealing one. By this, he means « scientists, businesses, politicians, civil servants, academics ». (full text).
His bio / profile: on allbiographies; on BBC; on wikipedia; on University of Greenwich; on NewStatesman; on SouthWest of England.
His publications: Capitalism As If The World Matters, Earthscan, 2005; same, revised Edition, 2007; on wikipedia; on amazon;
Read: Sustainability is central to survival.
Finally he says: « I’d hate to be a farmer right now. They know the old order is on its way out, and a new order on the way in. But neither the speed nor the scale of the transition is clear – and in the meantime, spirits are low, incomes even lower, and hope for the future all but non-existent ». (full text).
Read: Blair’s nuclear error: the government’s energy review is underpinned by shortsighted and paternalistic policymaking.
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