I'm involved with EDF Energy and their Team Green Britain project, aiming to reduce Britain's carbon footprint, inspired by London 2012. People often ask me if it's not like a turkey working for Christmas – believe me, I'm aware of the paradox.

But I hope that by working together, writing a narrative together, we can come up with new ways of working. And it’s really exciting to see a company where senior people are really committed to making change – I've seen it with my own eyes.

Setting up Eden in Cornwall was a preposterous project – no money, situated miles away from anywhere. The way we went about building it was totally innocent. But just look what we achieved - not least, pumping £900 million back into the Cornish economy.

How did we do it? It was a process of constantly ripping the blinkers off people’s eyes: painful, but ultimately do-able. Once you liberate people to be who they are they come up with the answers for you.

So, as an example, we told our building suppliers we didn't want their waste on our site. We left them to work out how to go about making it happen – in the end, cutting materials exactly to the right specifications before it came to the site.

What's this got to do with London 2012 and Team Green Britain?

Well, I'm passionate about the Olympics and everything they might help us achieve. Words like 'Olympian' and 'aspiration' are tarnished at our peril. The Games represent the ultimate in terms of personal achievement – athletes achieving their best. It's about a whole bunch of people creating something that makes you feel uplifted; using that to find out what's best in YOU.

If we could harness that power of the Games think what we could achieve! If we can inspire people to rip the blinkers off their eyes and make a real effort to make a change in their lives, no matter how small, think what we can do.

We used Green Britain Day as a starting point. Let's see how much we can do to reduce our carbon footprint. And we're doomed if we’re cynical: great things are achieved by saying we CAN do it, we’re clever little creatures.

TGB day was important to create a sort of mock New Year's resolution to get people started with behaviour change. Put simply, once you've started it seems silly to only do it on one day so you continue. 

So, last Friday, as part of the TGB day, we hosted Paul Weller and Florence and the machine for a double event: the launch of Team Green Britain Day and the public launch of the Prince's Rainforests Project.

The initiatives can sometimes have the whiff of smug lifestyle choice. The Prince's project makes the threat to us all from deforestation blindingly stark. The plan to launch a Rainforest Bond to enable rainforest nations to earn a sum more than would be achieved by exploiting the rainforest is ambitious. But if we don't stop it we will irredeemably alter the world's climate, let alone erase huge swathes of biodiversity.

The project couldn't come at a more important and needy time, with Copenhagen in the wings and our carbon footprint showing no sign of reduction. Nor could it come at a worse time economically. We have to keep the pressure on.

To that end we invited the Hon Aslam Mohamed, The Hon. Minister for Housing, Transport and the Environment for the Maldives, to address the audience from the stage just before Paul Weller came on. He was superb and humbled all present with his simple words about the threat being so real to his country and how he felt sure we wouldn't wish the Maldiveans ill. If ever there was a call to arms with a sting in the tale...this was it, and it made the concert feel worthwhile and not just a celebrity puff, as is so often the case.

Meanwhile, the Big Lunch seems to have suddenly caught people's imagination with more than a million participants already logged to join in and Lord alone knows how many who simply haven't logged on.

The whole country seems to feel the urge to put two fingers up at the cynics and doomsayers and make a vote with knife, fork and handshake to say - hello neighbour. If this is a country passively going to hell in a handcart then I'm a monkey's uncle.

So, if you're reading this and have no plans for Sunday just knock on neighbours door and get out there. It doesn't have to be grand, it can be a mug of tea and a chat, just do it.