Welcome

This is my own personal website, and everything on it is here to help illustrate the breadth of all the work I do in the world of sustainability. 

I’ve been in the world of sustainability for a very long time (having joined the Green Party in the summer of 1974), but I genuinely can’t recall ever feeling the same intense combination of despair and hope!

Reasons to despair are ever more present in our lives today, but the last few months of climate-related disasters, and incredibly disturbing new climate research, makes it harder and harder to keep that despair at bay. By contrast, hope often seems very fragile against such a backdrop, but it still permeates my life as an incorrigible advocate of a solutions agenda that gets more and more substantive by the day.

And that’s exactly what I hoped would happen when myself, Sara Parkin and Paul Ekins set up Forum for the Future back in 1994. Nearly 25 years on, the work we do through the Forum still generates more reasons to be hopeful than all the rest of my multifarious activities put together!

But I’m grateful I still have such a diverse portfolio – not least to give full rein to my campaigning instincts (working against Brexit or the insanity of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, for instance, or in support of progressive family planning, electoral reform and a host of other critical causes). And I remain a Member of the Green Party! (And Chancellor of Keele University, which is a real privilege.)

I know I’ve said this before, but I can’t help but think we’re nearing an inflexion point – ecologically, politically and economically. So there are some very turbulent times ahead!

(On the hope front, you might like to get hold of an electronic copy of my 2013 book, ‘The World We Made’ – the printed version is sadly out of print. But TWWM tells us that a pretty good world is still available for us by 2050 – if we get a move on!)
 

Jonathon Porritt