Beautiful Alignments: walk this way

Today, I stumbled upon a slice of my history. That's me, in red sat behind the then CEO of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn. We are in the car park of the Los Angeles Dodgers Stadium which was only 'slightly' more glamorous than it sounds...

Back in 2010, along with a handful of car journalists from across Europe (I was the only environmental writer) I was invited by Nissan to join them for the launch of their Leaf, the first serious player in the electric vehicle market.

Back then, the Leaf was a sexy little lone fish, backed by a passion-fuelled development team. They recognised and actively planned for the inevitable shift away from fossil fuels by eco-conscious travellers. Nissan did all they could to own the EV market and own the market, they did... for a while anyway.

(FYI: The EV uptake continues to grow rapidly and as at the end of May 2020 there were over 128,500 pure-electric cars driving around quietly on UK roads, Leaf drivers - myself included - making up a fat slice of them.)

I had some very interesting conversations with Carlos and his team about where ethics, sustainability and environmentalism really sat on their agenda. They were undoubtedly doing an amazing thing for the planet, being the first proper runners out of the trap and all that, but it was eye opening to observe and dissect their attention to eco-detail: the devil really 'does' reside within it.

I dug this event out of my memory because at The Word Forest Organisation, we're trying to raise the stakes, particularly with our major donors and corporate partnerships. It's a complex process and it's taking lots of human hours to drive it but we're working out how best to express our love and respect for things like the United Nations SDGs (sustainable development goals) and our ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance).

They extol the virtues of the people and planet-friendly values our environmental charity has been built on and its green team, hold dear. We welcome relationships with individuals, businesses and authorities who feel the same way and who want to understand 'why' they need do more to heal the big squishy blue ball we all live on.

With kind assistance from my good mate Rachel at Brand New Story, I've been trying to look at the world through the eyes of our ideal partners and it's quite different to ours. Our team are fully immersed in the chaos that climate change is thrusting upon us. We're keeping our finger pressed firmly on the pulse of global news and quite frankly, it paints a pretty scary picture! However, fear can cause inertia and we definitely don't want that - we need action!

I'm an environmental optimist and if you're open to the idea of dramatic positive change through immediate action, our charity can help you become a more conscious and impactful global citizen. We can enable you to become the Hero of the Day, attracting other people and clients who are also taking more responsibility for their footprint. It's lovely finding people who want to leave the earth in a better state than it was, when they were born.

I don't know about you, but beautiful alignments give me a deliciously warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Recently, I've been feeling that feeling quite a lot - I'm no big consumer of anything but I definitely want more of that in my day.