Climate, Covid and Conspiracy

PETER TAYLOR has two Oxford degrees but left academia in 1978 and – ‘blessed with companions of a similar mind’ – set up operations to clean the oceans and atmosphere. His organization – the Oxford-based Political Ecology Research Group (1976–1992) worked for citizens’ initiatives against dangerous developments – some were stopped, like the Plutonium Economy, the dumping of nuclear waste at sea and Acid Rain. Other toxic policies were transformed through the instigation of Clean Production Strategies. He became an analyst of environmental science, and as an activist got to know the nodal points of influence of what he called ‘a long game through many decades’. He is a strong believer in the power of small groups of committed people and is a long-standing member of the California-based Environmental Studies Institute, a founding member of Cambrian Wildwood, a founding member and Associate of the Wildland Research Institute at Leeds University, and founding member of the Institute for Life-based Architecture in Germany. He has children and grandchildren – they are his ‘skin in the game’ – and is the author of Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory, numerous scientific papers on pollution, several books on conservation including Beyond Conservation and The Spirit of Rewilding, and an autobiography, Shiva’s Rainbow.