Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Environmentalist and director of Friends of the Earth, a leading figure in Britain's influential green lobby.
On the island
Eight records
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:58Are you forever exasperated by the image of environmentalists as bearded, sandal-wearing lentil-eaters?
I am a bit. It doesn't happen quite so much as it used to do, and I think, to be honest, most people now accept that environmentalists are normal human beings who have a range of human attributes that are not particularly eccentric, and I'm happy to say that those bad old days where it was so easy to stereotype us as weird and wacky have really passed away.
Presenter asks
4:41When did you first fall in love with the earth? How far back does it go?
It goes quite a long way back, really. I was very lucky when I was um growing up because we lived near Hampstead Heath and uh my parents basically allowed us three children, immense freedom to sort of roam over Hampstead Heath. And I think even then, although it didn't sort of look like it in those days, but even then I was in i immensely attracted by the business of being close to the earth, as it were, and just being out and having the usual kind of adventures that kids have at that age. … I've always believed that each of us has a potential relationship with the earth that is latent in in every single person, whether we live in cities or whether we have one educational background or another. … I was able to to think much more intimately and affectionately about the earth from a very early age.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Charles Dickens
I find Dickens totally absorbing, and I could disappear into his world whenever my world began to get rather boring.
The luxury
I would like to take a fountain pen ... which would not be functional, because I'd just be writing nice things and reflecting on the meaning of life.
What kind of boy were you at Eton? Can you describe yourself then?
Remarkably uncomplicated. Just life seemed to be incredibly easy. I enjoyed um working and I was very involved in in sports of every description and every minute of the day seemed to be full. And it's actually almost impossible now to imagine that life was just an uncomplicated flow of enjoyable experiences, which is what it was.
Presenter asks
18:07How surprised were you when the Prime Minister told the Royal Society that to have a cavalier attitude towards our planet was a dangerous thing?
I was genuinely taken aback, I must admit, because, to be honest, there hadn't been any indication that Mrs Thatcher was going to get involved in the environment up until then. In fact, on one occasion she'd described the environment as humdrum and boring, and so we didn't know that this great this political voltfast was going to take place.
Presenter asks
19:19You've called Mrs Thatcher an 'elastoplast environmentalist'. Should you be doing that? Why don't you just seize it with both hands and welcome it?
I think we do both, which may be confusing. We do welcome it with open hands, to be quite honest, because it is infinitely better to have world leaders of the stature of Mrs Thatcher out there saying the environment counts, indeed saying it is the greatest challenge we face between now and the end of the century. than to have her out there disregarding the environment altogether. I think scepticism, however, is still justified on the basis of the track record, and that we're still really waiting for a change of policy to match the change of heart. And you can only really judge someone in politics on the actions, not the words. The words come cheap. They're easy, basically. Green rhetoric is everybody's game these days. Green action is altogether another story.
Presenter asks
22:49Is the engine of destruction irreversible?
It's a very powerful engine, and there's no point underestimating its capacity for destruction, because it's wrapped everybody up in this great onward march towards what we call progress, which actually entails destroying all our life support systems in the process. So it is a powerful thing, there's no doubt about it. But I don't think it's irreversible. And what obviously we've all been engaged in doing is to slow down the engine and eventually to get a different vision of progress so that people stop bashing the earth in the process of trying to get richer. And I think what is happening now is actually much more hopeful than anything that's happened before, partly because more and more individuals are saying, Well, hang on a minute, I can actually make a difference here. It may be small, it may be a tiny little thing in comparison to the size of the problem, … I have a very strong belief that one ought to encourage people wherever they are, rather than kind of berate them for not being a darker hue of green, to actually encourage them step by step to see that there is more that they can do and the first step they've taken is only a first step towards a very different sustainable society.
“I am a bit. It doesn't happen quite so much as it used to do, and I think, to be honest, most people now accept that environmentalists are normal human beings who have a range of human attributes that are not particularly eccentric, and I'm happy to say that those bad old days where it was so easy to stereotype us as weird and wacky have really passed away.”
“I planted trees on this bit of scrub land in the north of um the North Island. And it is to me the closest that I've ever got to interpreting that relationship with the earth in a completely non intellectual way, i. e. just an ordinary living um relationship, which is very hard to do when you're sunk in the middle of London and surrounded by concrete and tarmac and vehicle exhausts and all the rest of the wretched uh delights of so called civ civilization.”
“I think we do both, which may be confusing. We do welcome it with open hands, to be quite honest, because it is infinitely better to have world leaders of the stature of Mrs Thatcher out there saying the environment counts, indeed saying it is the greatest challenge we face between now and the end of the century. than to have her out there disregarding the environment altogether. I think scepticism, however, is still justified on the basis of the track record, and that we're still really waiting for a change of policy to match the change of heart. And you can only really judge someone in politics on the actions, not the words. The words come cheap. They're easy, basically. Green rhetoric is everybody's game these days. Green action is altogether another story.”
“It's a very powerful engine, and there's no point underestimating its capacity for destruction, because it's wrapped everybody up in this great onward march towards what we call progress, which actually entails destroying all our life support systems in the process. So it is a powerful thing, there's no doubt about it. But I don't think it's irreversible.”
“Well, the funny thing is that having worried about it in abstract terms, it's amazing now to have a a sort of living embodiment of the future there in our midst, as it were. And it does make it very much more compelling. It really does bring it home in the most astonishing way. And I've often thought, to be quite honest, that the saving of the planet, and therefore for me, the saving of humankind, will come because people start putting their children, their grandchildren, above them, and they'll start realizing that some of the things which we apparently demand now are ruining the chances of the of the next generation. That's the only thing that is likely to provide a sufficiently powerful motivation to slow down the engine of destruction that we were talking about.”