Sunday Telegraph Magazine (Australia)
June 3, 2007 Sunday

In my own words … JON DEE

by Elissa Blake

He’s spent his working life making the world a better place, but
there’s still plenty more to do. The 43-year-old co-founder and
chairman of Planet Ark has inspired businesses, individuals and rock
bands to each play their part

My dad was a fireman. I was so proud of him. The community values I
learnt from him and his colleagues left a real imprint on me as a
young boy.

I was always very entrepreneurial as a kid and I wanted to help
people. I grew up in a small town called Wem [in Shropshire, England]
and my paper round ended at an old people’s home. I loved my daily
chats with the residents, but I noticed that many of them were dumped
there by their families and spent their days staring at a blank wall.
To this day, that still angers me. So I started working as a
volunteer there and later started fundraising for charities at
school.

At 14, I became vegetarian. I went for a job at the local chicken
farm, thinking I’d be just collecting eggs. But there were eight
chickens to a small cage and one of the jobs was removing the hens
pecked to death by other hens. That’s when I decided not to eat meat
any more. Then I started to question all my other values. A lot of
the moral values I hold today were formed around that time.

The rock band Yes changed my life. I saw them live when I was 13 and
thought they were brilliant. I joined the fan club and later edited
the Yes fan-club magazine. I never told them I was only 17. I used to
put on a low voice on the phone so they thought I was in my 30s. When
I was invited to [drummer] Alan White’s wedding, the look of shock on
their faces was quite funny. I got very drunk with [Led Zeppelin’s]
Jimmy Page at the reception and met all my heroes. It made me realise
success often comes down to who you know. If you have a good idea and
a good network, you can make most things happen. You only need a
degree of confidence.

When I look back, the thing I’m most proud of is helping the Armenian
earthquake victims. In 1988, I got the first independent TV crew into
the quake zone where more than 100,000 people had been killed. I took
the footage and distributed it to newsrooms around the world – that
unleashed a firestorm of media coverage that helped kick-start the
massive international aid effort. The President of Armenia gave me a
medal for my work.

I talked some top rockstars into doing an album, Rock Aid Armenia. It
was the first charity album to go gold in Britain. To get them on
board, I showed them the worst footage. That’s when I realised if you
have a strong message and it’s about doing good, people will help. I
believe people inherently want to do good. It’s in our nature to look
after each other.

Climate change is our biggest challenge and it needs a huge worldwide
effort. When President Kennedy challenged Americans [in 1961] to put
a man on the moon by the end of that decade, everyone rose to the
occasion. We need a similar call to arms; we need to spend billions
from our resources boom to safeguard the future of Australia’s kids.
Look at Cooper Basin in South Australia. The geothermal energy in the
hot rocks could supply a huge amount of our needs. We could be a role
model to the world with renewable energy instead of copying outdated
ideas, such as nuclear, that are far too dangerous.

Pat Cash and I were 27-year-olds when we set up Planet Ark. I went
around to his place in London. He had two cartons of beer and the
more we drank, the more we talked about doing something for the
environment. We had the idea to help businesses do the right thing
and get the solutions out there to the average person as well. That
was 16 years ago and, together with the Planet Ark team, we’ve
achieved way more than we believed possible.

We set up Planet Ark in Australia because our small population can be
a good role model. That’s been proven by the ‘Ban the Bulb’ idea –
getting rid of incandescent globes over three years and replacing
them with energy savers. The government took that idea of mine,
committed to it publicly and now the whole of Europe has followed us.
We should be doing more of that.

Planet Ark is a passion for me, but I’m working on other projects.
Being the Australian spokesperson for the DVD launch of An
Inconvenient Truth was a real highlight. I now think of myself more
as a change agent. To me, sustainability is not just about a
sustainable environment, it’s also about having a more sustainable
society where big businesses are giving back to the community.

We need to get back to the Australian idea of giving people a fair
go. We need to look after each other more. We’ve lost a bit of that
ethos. Corporations are waking up to the idea; they’re starting to
see it’s not all about the bottom line. Australia has fallen
dramatically behind other countries in corporate responsibility over
the past decade.

I’d love to see people volunteer and give more to their communities.
I’ve started a company, Issues Communications, to help individuals
and businesses do that. One of the first groups I’d like to help is
elderly people. We rightly revere them on Anzac Day, but forget about
them the rest of the year.

I’m a big geek. I love technology that improves people’s lives. I
caught some of my daughter Estelle’s first steps on webcam, and my
parents in England saw it live over the internet.

One of my ambitions is to drive a fully electric car. I only got my
driver’s licence last year. I vowed not to drive until someone
invented a practical electric car. But when the [petrol-electric
hybrid] Toyota Prius came out, I decided to get one.

I’ve spent my working life challenging the status quo. I want to
inspire Australia’s kids to believe that they have the power to
create a better world. I want them to avoid making the same mistakes
that many of us adults have made.

On June 5, Jon Dee releases the results of a poll of 14,000 people’s
environmental attitudes in 14 countries. From next week, he will be
writing the Eco A-Gogo column on ‘Sunday Best’.