Unlike many who knew him for decades, I only met Paul in 2022. He was passing through Oxford after presenting a paper at a conference, and we conspired to meet up for dinner. I think his interest in meeting was due to my work in the eNGO sector at the time, but we soon found that we had much more in common; Paul was working on developing a wave energy system, a project that he had picked up from the original inventor who passed away some years before. I had worked as an engineer in the past, so agreed to take a look and see whether I could suggest any potential partners here in the UK. We corresponded occasionally afterwards, and realised we also shared a mutual love of Ivan Illich, exchanging recommendations for further reading. We had both come to very similar conclusions about climate breakdown too. Only a couple of weeks before his passing, we had exchanged emails, and his prognosis of our plight was characteristically bleak. With some prescience perhaps, he shared that “the only motivation I retain is the desire to return as a human, preferably where there is dharma”. I loved Paul’s directness, and his wonderfully dry humour. His forensic assessment of our planetary problems didn’t dampen his enthusiasm to try and fix them. It seems fitting that he was attending Kalapa Conference at the time of his passing, surrounded by dharma. May his wishes be fulfilled.