Finding hope in the climate emergency with Sir Jonathon Porritt

"We're just being outplayed when it comes to narratives about all of this. The devil has often had the best tunes..."

Our April 23rd xChange with Sir Jonathon Porritt, CBE, co-founder of Forum for the Future and author of eleven books including Hope in Hell, was both starkly honest and galvanizing.

Paul Skinner, founder of MarketingKind, interviewed Jonathon to understand his current work and motivations, the key leverage points we can pressure to create greater change and what a credible pathway to a more sustainable future may look like. And Jonathon also takes questions from the audience.

This discussion covered everything from carbon pricing, climate migration and the failures of CSR to direct action, the battle of narratives and what the economy of the future could look like.

We learned that Jonathon is currently focused on campaigning for the Green Party and supporting youth-led direct action groups such as XR and Just Stop Oil, because he feels political pressure is the only way forwards. He is disappointed with business, many of which are taking steps backwards.

We dug into his frustration with Unilever, why marketing and advertising are part of the problem and why Jonathon avoids terms such as degrowth and Net Zero.

And Jonathon reminded us that things most likely need to get much worse before they will get better and he hopes that that will happen quickly (so watch out Miami!).

At MarketingKind we will continue this important discussion including through our work with Bank.Green in our May 21st Coffee with a Cause and in our July 2nd xChange with Mike Berners-Lee and Lord Deben on how we can increase truthfulness in public discourse.

You can watch the replay below or listen here to the podcast version.