It is our mission on this podcast - and the wider membership community from which it arose -  to open doors and break down barriers, to bring forward the ideas and the actions of, and give voice to, the absolutely amazingly creative people who get that business is not usual, that the reality we have created for ourselves is misguided at best - and dangerously toxic at worst - and are doing their best to bring about change in a timescale that matters.

This week, we spoke with Pooran Desai, whose scope and scale and grasp of the nature of the problem is unmatched. Pooran is a serial environmental entrepreneur and it felt like a breath of fresh air, to connect with someone who sees the bigger picture and is working to affect change at all levels.

We explored topics that ranged from the building of Britain's first sustainable community at BedZED in London, to the nature of the meta-crisis and why measurement of single indices is one of the key factors in the emergency. On the way, we discusses the different natures of left and right brain thinking and how they apply to databases (and why databases are so critical to the way that business and so politics works in the world), the evolution of sustainable development goals (and why those started out well but have become yet another way of greenwashing business in its endless drive for profit), the nature of reality and how Daoist meditation can give us insights into our own delusions…and ways we could save the NHS 80% of its costs. This was a  hard-hitting conversation. We didn't mince words or step around ideas. I found it exhilarating, enlightening and inspiring and hope you do to.  

Bio:

Pooran Desai has been a neuroscientist, a property developer, and a technology entrepreneur, but all of it has been in service to a regenerative future. In 1994, he co-founded one of the world’s first sustainability organisations, Bioregional which is responsible for setting-up enterprises in sustainable forestry, organic farming, recycling and real estate development.

He assembled a wealth of environmental and sustainable talent to create the UK’s first zero-carbon urban eco-village, BedZED, which was completed in 2002. In 2004, he was awarded an OBE for services to sustainability - in the days when the word still meant something seriously worthwhile. 

Pooran led Bioregional’s One Planet Living®  initiative for 18 years, leading teams that created sustainability strategies in 30 countries creating a set of principles that served as inspiration for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). 

Pooran is author of  OnePlanet Communities: A Real-Life Guide for Sustainable Living, and is a trustee of the Design Council, supporting their 'Design for Planet' mission.

In 2019, Pooran founded OnePlanet, to create a software suite that helps people, companies, policy makers shift to networked thinking - to let go of the constraints of consensus reality and the linear thinking that got us into this mess, and move towards systemic thinking that might get us out of it.

Links

Alan Watts recordings https://alanwatts.org/audio/
Sharon Blackie Post-Heroic Journey https://open.substack.com/pub/sharonblackie/p/the-post-heroic-journey
Knepp https://knepp.co.uk/