Welcome to my portfolio website...
...a highlights reel of my environmental journalism, books and talks.
My latest book The Last Drop: Solving the World’s Water Crisis, published by Picador, is out now. My first book Clearing the Air: the Beginning and the End of Air Pollution (Bloomsbury) was shortlisted for the Royal Society's Science Book Prize 2019.
Check out the tabs (top left) to browse - and get in touch via my contact page or socials. My publications include: The Financial Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, and medium.com.
Why the ‘Paris Agreement’ of plastics ended in failure
I was on a beach when the latest global plastics treaty came and went in ignominy. At a remote spot on the South American Pacific coast, where all supplies and materials must come by small boat, and the locals make use of everything...
‘This feels like time travel’: has the ‘regen’ revolution begun?
When Andy Cato first got the call from Jeremy Clarkson, he thought he was just going to Diddly Squat for a cup of tea. As he arrived, the cameras for Clarkson’s Farm series 3 were rolling...
On climate, perfect is the enemy of good
The phrase “perfect is the enemy of good” (from Voltaire’s 1770 Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, in case you wondered) is a truism in climate action, if not in everything. We are fast approaching this year’s Earth Overshoot Day...
Economic growth and the search for abundance
A moment halfway through Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s recent book Abundance reveals something of their approach to building a net zero world. In 2023 a gasoline lorry exploded, causing Philadelphia’s I-95 bridge to collapse; Governor Josh Shapiro waived all the usual rules and regulations for public works so it could be rebuilt in record time. The project was of great benefit to the community. But during the works, the state secretary of transportation recalls encountering two workers using...
Don’t drain the swamp—refill it
As I walk across the newly pedestrianised Hammersmith bridge, London is as it should be—grey and rainy. Ordinarily, getting drenched on the way to an interview might be annoying. But today it couldn’t be more apt...
Why isn’t it raining?
When I was first asked to write this column, among the editor’s requests were that I serve as “a guide through the climate crisis”. To do so, I tend to look for solutions, be they nature-based or policy, seek out experts or dig through scientific reports. But sometimes you only need to look out the window...
The Benefits of Letting your Lawn Go Wild
I’ve always liked mowing the lawn. Perhaps it’s a childhood nostalgia thing, having watched my dad do it seemingly every weekend in summer. The smell, the neat intermittent stripes, the angry roar as the mower...
In Britain, we burn precious peatland for sport
“To keep this moor viable we have to raise 6,000 grouse a season, which we do by killing everything else that moves,” says Viscount Deveroux, the alter-ego of comedian Henry Morris. Walking a moor, dressed in tweed and with 12-gauge shotgun...
Copenhagen’s disastrous ski slope-incinerator
Just beyond the end of Nyhavn, Copenhagen’s colourful canal district, an ominously smoking chimney punctures the horizon between sailboat masts and a cyclists’ bridge. Most tourists in town for one day wouldn’t go much further...
To fight flooding, bring back the beaver—for good, this time
I thought I might cry. But the emotions that threatened to overwhelm turned more euphoric—a silly, wide smile, plastered across my face for hours. As the first beaver padded tentatively but fixedly out of its cage towards the water, I was witnessing history. The first of its kind to return to this part of central England for over 400 years...
The best science books of 2024
Books contemplating the human experience and some of humankind’s greatest challenges were among the Science News staff’s favorite reads this year.
We Need To Talk About Degrowth: Part II
“It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imagination.” ― Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time (1994)
We Need To Talk About Degrowth: Part I
“Is the Earth’s balance, for which no-growth — or even degrowth — of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system?” — André Gorz, social philosopher, 1972
Exposing the Waste-To-Energy Lie
Waste-to-energy incinerators are touted as ‘renewable’, attracting private investors and public subsidies. But is it all smoke and mirrors?
Book review: The Times Literary Supplement
Today’s water scarcity is only partly due to climate change, the journalist Tim Smedley explains in The Last Drop. The major culprits are humans, who, the
Water companies make us look like April fools
I’m writing this on 1st April. My eldest daughter has taped over the light switch in the kitchen. My youngest put pepper in my tea. One of them has drawn on the toilet roll. And my water bill went up by 31 per cent overnight...
Climate activism after Just Stop Oil
Rupert Read, who helped launch Extinction Rebellion (XR), has long had doubts about the tactics of climate activists. He pauses halfway through our Zoom call with Caroline Lucas, former Green MP, to reminisce about the early days of XR...
Book review: The Last Drop: Solving the World’s Water Crisis by Tim Smedley — how Britain’s taps could run dry
I read most of Tim Smedley’s book about the world’s impending water shortage while wallowing in the bath. It’s where I do much of my reading, happily turning the pages for hours until my flatmates begin to hammer on the door of our only bathroom. From that vantage, the thesis of The Last Drop: Solving the World’s Water Crisis felt utterly improbable. How can we be on the brink of a water shortage, not only elsewhere but in grey and soggy Britain too, when it flows so easily and cheaply...
The Guardian Long Read: ‘Drought is... the next pandemic’
During the summer months in the Oxfordshire town where I live, I go swimming in the nearby 50-metre lido. With my inelegantly slow breaststroke, from time to time I accidentally gulp some of the pool’s opulent, chlorine-clean 5.9m litres of water. I stand a bottle of water at the end of the lane, to drink from halfway through my swim. I normally have a shower afterwards, even if I’ve showered that morning. I live a wet, drenched, quenched existence. But, as I discovered, this won’t last. I am living on borrowed time and borrowed water.
Book review: The Last Drop by Tim Smedley
Tim Smedley’s The Last Drop is a smouldering indictment of the self-inflicted wounds we’re causing ourselves and Earth by careless exploitation of water.
The New Climate: a Publication Manifesto
Have you — like me — ever wondered why everyone isn’t talking about the climate crisis? It is clearly the most important, defining issue of our age. That’s why I’m attempting — proposing — a new publication that addresses the most important issue of our age, or arguably any age, head on: The New Climate.
Is air pollution causing us to lose our sense of smell?
For many people, a bout of Covid-19 gave a first taste (or rather a lack of it) of what it is like to lose their sense of smell. Known as "anosmia", loss of smell can have a substantial effect on our overall wellbeing and quality of life. But while a sudden respiratory infection might lead to a temporary loss of this important sense, your sense of smell may well have been gradually eroding away for years due to something else – air pollution.
The pollution causing harmful algal blooms
It is the "smell of decay and death", says Beth Stauffer, from the University of Louisiana. "It has a physical presence. This layer of very striking greens and blueish greens…when you put your paddle in it, you can feel it."
She's describing the harmful algal blooms (HABs) that used to be more associated with marine environments. But in recent years they've been moving further inland and affecting freshwater systems, too. And scientists such as Stauffer are trying to find out why.
She's describing the harmful algal blooms (HABs) that used to be more associated with marine environments. But in recent years they've been moving further inland and affecting freshwater systems, too. And scientists such as Stauffer are trying to find out why.
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