Hearing Sinclair’s story – from South London to San Francisco and from a bedroom evening venture to within a decade a global charity and tea (or whatever you drink there) at the White House – and Johnson’s description was no hyperbole. This guy is pretty amazing and he also come across as amusing, self deprecating as well as passionate and driven. How annoying is that?

Anyhow there were quite a few highlights from the lecture, some of which were captured on Twitter. Having the audience of largely young designers in the palm of his hands he urged architects to dedicate some time to the kind of work that his organisation has excelled in, ie. exporting ideas and expertise globally. “I would urge every single designer to spend four hours of you time to impact on other people’s lives” he said. A few main themes to emerge from that stood out for me:

• The American example: Sinclair powerfully drew out his organisation’s work in the southern states in the face of Katrina. As Sinclair was at pains to highlight poverty is not usually that far from our doorsteps in the so-called developed world. He desribed the “criminal neglect” from the Government in responding to the crisis and how Architecture for Humanity actually listened to people affected by Katrina.. and then acted. This is in contrast to those that present wildly ambitious masterplans for area, which rarely if ever lead to change. “If you elevate expectations in communities then walk away it’s worse than if you don’t turn up in the first place”. Sinclair is an arch doer and realised that in order for his organisation to make things happen it needed to get cash before fancy designs. “Ghandi said Be the Change. he was wrong: you have to be the Bank”. This approach allied with and open approach that brought together architects directly with the clients – the residents – bore remarkable fruit. Pretty much all of the East Biloxi was rebuilt without Government money, Sinclair explained. All this through a bottom approach to development, design and construction.
• Openness and agility: Sinclair is a self confessed geek and that has fed through to his organisation’s work, in particular with it’s Open Architecture Network site. It’s heartening to see some of the principles that you hear about – collaboration, open source, community-driven ideas – actually happening.
• Sustainability is survival: The title of his lecture, so not surprisingly a theme that Sinclair came back to. Sustainability means a lot of things to a lot of people for Sinclair it is absolutely integral to his clients. That could be adaptation to climate change that is happening now, to creating houses that are truly affordable in terms of upfront and operational terms for residents.

So all in all inspiring stuff. As many of us get increasingly gloomier about future prospects, whether that is economically, environmentally or socially, we need more Cameron Sinclairs.

If the event did anything it punched a whopping hole in the argument that our current economic plight, which figured heavily in the range of debates that took place, would put us squarely in the climate change camp. That seeing what a mess capitalism had got us in to in the past year and a half would throw us in to the arms of those arguing for a fundamental rethink of our economy and society. Out with financial services and in with the green new deal. Let’s scotch our flawed economy and save on CO2 in one go was the narrative. Well from what I heard today we’ve got a bloody long way to convince anyone of that.

And from a range of speakers today came a passionate and forceful argument against the environmental narrative itself. This came from some sources you would expect – step forward writer and wind-up merchant James Woudhuysen (touting his book Energise) – but others more unexpected. Attacks poured in from several Germans, who themselves are questioning their own Government’s policies on microgeneration and the green economy. And I was struck by comments from Brendan O’Neill, the editor of online magazine Spiked and author of Can I Recycle My Gran? And 39 other Eco-Dilemmas.

So here’s a selection of attacks on environmentalism from the sessions:

• Greenies are doing the human race down: This really stuck out for me. A range of speakers, from Woudhuysen to O’Neill, as well as Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, took environmentalists to task for painting an apocalyptic and miserable picture of us as a race. We’ve done a dreadful job in the history and if we don’t rein ourselves in now we’re doomed, was how they described the green message. “It’s like we shouldn’t aspire to have anything more on our gravestones than ‘he or she minimised his or her carbon footprints’” said Woudhuysen. “It’s the dumbing down of the human condition.” It’s anti-freedom as it tells us to restrict our behaviour and not to continue to progress as a race. German writer called Thomas Reichman, editor of NovoArgumente Magazin, called the energy crisis as a “crisis of ambition and trust”. It’s society that has lost confidence and trust in themselves to “continue civilisation”. And in a session on sci-fi and whether we’ll ever go to the moon again (where I posited whether we should be concentrating on our own planet to a room full of geeks, which went down like Obama at a BNP meeting) a man from the floor decried us for being so negative about our race. “We are incredible,” he said (not us in the room, us as a race).
• Technology not restriction: There is often the politically-driven split on how to cope with climate change between hairshirts and laptops (reduction versus technology). No exception here in a pretty fractious debate between Woodhuysen and Reichman on the anti-green side and three other panellists in a discussion on energy. The other three were your straightforward environmentalists (Friend of the Earth, leftie journalist and scientist). It was interesting to hear this played out as there were not too many howls of disbelief when Reichman suggested that a warming up of the planet could be a good thing. Is it me or is the apocalyptic talk on climate either not sinking in or just being ignored? Strange/disturbing, especially with only just over a month until Copenhagen.
• The economics of environmentalism: Again you heard the backlash in a discussion on the green new deal. Can the creation of an army of insulators and wind turbine manufacturers lead us into a bold new world of green growth? Well apparently not. We had another couple of German sceptics to quell our enthusiasm, as well as author James Heartfield, who reckoned there was a fundamental flaw with the green economy. Apparently you can’t reconcile green with growth. And later on Claire Fox called on a return to the idea that economic growth was good and anything that restrained us was an attack on freedom.
• I hate sustainability: O’Neill stepped up at the end to stick the knife in further. The word sustainability is one of his “big bugbears”. It’s dishonest and damaging as well as a “sly lazy word” which challenges anyone that criticises it. It implies that we are “pollutants and parasites” as a race.

I’ve simplified the arguments a lot but you get the gist. In spite of many misgiving about what was said today I think there is a nub to the backlash. The problem for me is where’s the humanism in environmentalism? When will it turn from a critique of what we have done or will do and tell us where it fits into our interests as humans? Not what we must stop doing or give up but where we can embrace a new idea of what it is to be human? How to control our urges to a degree but embrace our instincts to progress, explore and innovate. This is going to be bloody hard. Can we combine some seemingly contradictory ideas or thoughts around progress which can seek technology and progress but allied to responsibility? Have space travel but also compost? Turn a desert into a giant solar factory (the Desertec idea) but also have a solar thermal panel on the roof?

Are there some examples where stepping back from the so-called advanced technology does not really advance us as a race (cars for short journeys when bikes are better for us physically, socially and for urban spaces)? Or that deciding that as individuals taking more responsibility for areas we have previously outsourced (energy, food) could again bring positives rather than fitting in to the critique that environmentalism equals backward-ism?

Random thoughts but ones that need to be addressed as more and more thinkers begin to hit back on what had become a broad consensus that green is good. Today green was made to look pretty bad.

So now on to Sustainability and Education Now events in December. Registration opened for the former at the end of last week and I’m keen to bone down a programme for it towards the end of this week. Any ideas you have for the event – which coincides with the Copenhagen conference let me know: either comment below or send me an email phil.clark@ubm.com. My video intro to the event gives an overview but I’m also planning to look at issues such: the Code and zero carbon; waste and recycling; and global green standards.

But more and more it seems to me thay established forms and plans are breaking up and the way to keep afloat in these times is to embrace new things that come through in an unprepared, unplanned way.

Actor and director Mark Rylance in the Evening Standard.

Independence has been the thing for hundreds of year, but being dependent on someone is good. All the freedome we have enjoted in the last few deacdes has left us with almost toom many options

Erlend Øye, Kings of Convenience, programme notes for concert at the Barbican on Wednesday

The Holy Grail in carbon reduction is sorting out our existing stock, as recognised this week by the government’s Climate Change Committee. Many of our 25 million homes are leaky gas-guzzlers that would be put in the scrapyard if there were an MOT for houses. But government policy relentlessly pursues expensive carbon reduction in new homes.

Roger Humber, Building online

Having always had an innate distrust or cyncism about joining movements or pledging support to things I’ve shied away from collective action. Hence a wariness about the 10:10 campaign or even endeavours such as Blog Action Day itself. But rather than picking holes in these we’re going to have to sign up and act. Not to grand gestures or unachievable targets (zero carbon anyone) but real steps now.Without any evidence of movement from us how’s anyone else in the world going to believe us or follow us? let’s not hide behind the recession (to be honest it’s easy to do it) and step up. In the spirit of action I’m going to team up with my fellow UBM blogger and try and get us as a company signed up to 10:10. There my 17 minutes are up.

(the other UBM blogger are Grahame Morrison, Matt Parsons, John Welsh Rob Enslin Ron Aalouf and Anthony Hildebrand)

For a rough visual run through the virtual event experience see this video I created using a system called Screenr which captures your desktop:

This is only the start of my virtual event fun as the winter nights creep in. Towards the end of 2009 we are also running the old favourites, Sustainability and Education Now. For more info on those, and to see a video from yours truly on what this year’s Sustainability Now is all about, go to our virtual events site.

So it was clearly a relief to be sat in the Royal Court on Monday to see Enron.

Lucy Prebble’s text and Rupert Goold’s sparkling production bring capitalism to life: the madness, the emotion, the energy the ideas and philosophy that underpins it. The production does do what theatre can do when it’s at its best: bring an intensity to a topic but also a completely new way  of looking at something. Hence viewing the accountant from Arthur Anderson as a man with a puppet that spouts the truth and the Lehmann Brother as tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum offered sharp and comic takes on how badly out of control things got in the Enron rise and demise.

Comedy and farce play their part in proceedings but it is towards the end that for me it became chilling. As the play progresses it narrows its scope on to the central figure of Jeffrey Skilling, played brilliantly by Samuel West (below). He emerges as a tragic Shakespearan figure in the play and his final speech is part misguided self-justification, part accurate commentary on capitalism itself. The speech and play point to the guiding principle of markets and companies: beefed or pumped up by confidence, but always on the verge of collapse. It breeds invention, but also failure.

Skilling points to a graph of the Dow-Jones index over the last century and says:

That’s our mirror. Every dip, every crash, every bubble that’s burst, a testament to our brillaint stupidity. Tjis one gave us the railroads. This one the internet… And if we hope to do anything about saving the environment or getting to other worlds, we’ll need a bubble for that too. Eberything I’ve ever done in my life worth anything has been done in a bubble; in a state of extreme hope and trust and stupidity.

It was fascinating then hear eerily similar rhetoric from businessman and Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson two days later at a conference. Speaking at the AOP digital publishing summit Johnson pledged allegience to capitalism as a way of solving our problems. He chided us for blogging and thinking too much about things – “action is key – doing something means more than talking about it” – and asserted that capitalism can inspire both confidence and invention and the thought that “anything is possible”.  Anything could involve triumph or disaster as Enron clearly proves. So what are the odds with our climate then?

So what was the event actually like you cry. Well, as a non-scientist I tend sit in front of one and dutifully take notes and pretty much believe everything they say – within reason of course. So this is simply a report of what he says rather than any kind of critique.

Lovelock appears to have an almost legendary status. From the atmosphere of expectancy amongst the audience and the reaction to his words the man is viewed as a seer, a wise  scientific witch doctor of our times, if that is not completely mixing metaphors. Given that he’s just made it to his tenth decade his gait and appearance do nothing to dispel that – not to say that his brain appears any less sharper or spry than in previous decades.

There were familiar message from Lovelock that I’m sure have been published before: that it’s pretty much too late for us to mitigate against climate change, that we must focus at least as much on adaptation; that the global population will likely fall back to 1bn; that geo-engineering solutions are unlikely to save us. There is clearly a bleakness about his apocolyptic view of how he sees the century unfolding. Regions such as the Indian sub-continent and China that will be hit by either ctastrophic floods or prolonged droughts, which will leave us in our relatively more temperate climate with the agonising dilemma at some stage of when to refuse entry for any further climate refugees.

All these predictions were made at the same time as he laid into science itself for failing to respond adequately or quickly enough to an emerging crisis. His criticism was structural, that science too often divides itself into fields or specialisms that don’t talk to each other, but also practical. In his view too many scientists, especially in the field of climate, sit behind computer screens rather than getting out there in the field. Too often they have relied on climate models and have “ignored proper data”. Hence:

The earth doesn’t behave like model predictions. I find it extraordinary that climate scientists put their names against such predictions (of future temperature changes) when there are such great uncertainties… What makes them persist with wrong climate models? Perhaps they had no option, given how much Government rely on certainties… They (climate models) are the battleships of climate changeand the scientists have to sail in them

What was striking was Lovelock’s take on us as a species. Two points he stressed: one that we should not be bedevilled or torn by guilt by what we have done: apparently other organism have caused event more damage to the planet during its 3.5bn history. The second overlapping one is that it is not our place to take it upon ourselves to save the world:

We have to concentrate on saving ourselves. It is hubris and false pride to think we can save the planet

Looking beyond the next century Lovelock hoped that we could evolve to become more “integrated” and in tune with the planet and “what a future that will be”.

Unfortunately the climate doctor’s prognosis for us for the near future (ie. in Gaia terms) does not appear to too rosy, to say the least. A final question about the prospects at and after Copenhagen was met with the sigh of someone that thinks it’s powerless for us to be able to respond collectively and quickly enough (especially given that the change that are happening are quicker than we thought, according to Lovelock). It’s the “utter complexity of CO2″ that is confounding us, and that “it’s not just about emissions”. “When you farm anything you are using land. That land was regulating our climate. That to my mind is just as important as emissions in the case of climate change.”