Jonathon Porritt

Jonathon Porritt: I was born in 1950. The next couple of decades flowed by effortlessly at Eton, Magdalen College, Oxford, and messing around planting trees and farming in New Zealand and Australia.

I first got involved with environmental issues in 1974, at the same time as I became a teacher in a West London comprehensive, which I absolutely loved. Ten years later (during which I was also very involved in the Green Party),  I left teaching to become Director of Friends of the Earth where I stayed until 1991, just prior to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 – which for me, was a life-changing experience.

In 1996, we set up Forum for the Future, which remains my ‘home base’ in terms of all the different things I do today. I was Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission between 2000 and 2009. I got married in 1986, and we have two daughters Eleanor and Rebecca.
At the moment, I’m on the world tour for my latest book, The World We Made.

Art not Oil

Saying No to BP and Shell Today: Hard Choices Have to be Made

The priority now has to be actively to support all divest/invest initiatives (in the arts, in our universities, in the financial services sector etc), and to ensure that our own pensions are invested accordingly. In a Climate Emergency, nothing else will suffice.

July 5, 2019

Falter

The Climate Emergency Continuum: from Bad to Cataclysmic

So it was with something of a sinking feeling that I decided to read both David Wallace-Well’s ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ and Bill McKibben’s new book, ‘Falter’, in the same fortnight. But I’m ever so pleased I did – not least because they’re both beautifully written, utterly compelling in their analysis, and, surprisingly, useful antidotes for premature despair!

June 7, 2019

Society

Banana drama

Declining oil reserves will impact hugely on energy prices and the way we eat and farm. Is Britain ready for a new agri-culture?

January 24, 2007

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