Peter Taylor (environmentalist)

Taylor's controversial reassessment of global warming theory in 2009 outlined his concern that the remedies for climate change might prove more damaging to the environment than the ailment itself. He claimed that his work with the CRI had given him a deeper insight into the impacts associated with powering a modern economy from renewable sources. The book received little publicity at first – but in the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, his views were widely publicized.

In networking ecological practitioners and land managers, Taylor worked to construct a political strategy for rewilding conservation through regional seminars, national conferences and in 2008, his colleague in the network Steve Carver founded the Wildland Research Institute at Leeds University.

His articles in BANC's journal ECOS contributed to the new wave of consciousness in conservation known as 'rewilding' culminating in 2005 with the publication of his book Beyond Conservation and the founding of the Wildland Network. In this work Taylor argues that conservation is too preservation-oriented and needs to be more creative and focussed upon wilder and larger-scale land management. Chris Baines, a British conservationist, described Taylor's book as important and brilliantly capturing the changing mood of conservation and Peter Marren gave it a one-page spread in The Independent. Alan Watson Featherstone, of Trees For Life endorsed the cover and Bill Adams, from Cambridge University, also endorsed it writing "Peter Taylor builds bridges between ecology, countryside policy and spirituality."

In the lead up to his work on climate change, Taylor developed strategies for the integration of renewable energy into countryside policy on community and biodiversity. Between 2000 and 2003, he was appointed to the UK National Advisory Group of the Community Renewables Initiative – a joint Countryside Agency and Department of Trade and Industry taskforce on community scale renewable energy. To aid this work he set up the design consultancy Ethos, which combined science expertise from Terramarès with graphic design and the use of computer virtual reality for visualising change and integrating development in the countryside.

Taylor moved from Oxford to North Wales to pursue interests in wildlife conservation and shamanism. As a member of the British Association of Nature Conservationists he organised the conference 'Wilderness Britain' in 1995 and a National Trust seminar on wilderness and wildland values at its Centennial Conference. He was a keynote speaker at the BANC/National Trust 1999 'Nature in Transition' conference in July 1999 and co-authored the National Trust's document "Call for the Wild".

In 1992, PERG evolved into an international network of independent experts on terrestrial and marine ecosystems – Terramarès – to carry out critical science policy analysis. This group worked collectively and individually behind the scenes in several important developments – with Jackson Davis helping to lay the foundation for the Framework Climate Convention, and in Clean Production Strategies and the Precautionary Principle with Tim Jackson (now Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey); and further work on energy strategies with Gordon Thompson who now leads the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts (ref IRSS). Taylor's work on ocean pollution culminated in 1993 with a critique of the UN's ocean protection system in the peer-reviewed journal Bulletin of Marine Pollution.

The work of PERG played a role in limiting the development of nuclear fuel reprocessing and the 'plutonium economy', particularly in Germany, cleaning up discharges to the Irish Sea, altering perceptions of the risks of ionising radiation and the consequences of reactor meltdowns. The group also produced the first study into renewable energy strategies in a report for the European Parliament in 1980; the first comparative study of organic and conventional agriculture, and the first UK study of forestry as carbon sequestration.

Taylor involved both of his brothers during the 1980s campaigns, with Ron infiltrating the US Nevada weapons test site and leading the Greenpeace climb of Big Ben and Robert heading the Greenpeace international strategy on chemical wastes.

Taylor became a public figure following the 1977 Windscale Inquiry into nuclear fuel reprocessing during which he exposed the risks of nuclear waste storage and mounted a successful campaign against radioactive discharges to the marine environment – his work was widely reported in the national press, New Scientist, The Ecologist and the New Internationalist. Between 1980 and 1992 he became an advisor to a range of organisations from government agencies to environmental NGOs, appearing on TV and radio on issues of nuclear risk and pollution. His work uncovered the health impact of the Windscale Fire in 1957 - in the PERG report RR-7, and in association with Yorkshire TV, the excess of childhood cancers around Sellafield - theory that later research debunked. He served on the government commission into nuclear waste dumping at sea (chaired by Sir Fred Holliday) which recommended the practice be banned. He also sat on a research advisory group on nuclear waste management set up by the Department of Environment – resigning when he felt the government were not allowing time for detailed comparative assessment of the options.

Taylor left his academic studies in anthropology in order to develop the Political Ecology Research Group (PERG) which he founded in 1976. Eschewing the academic elements of political ecology and the need for theory in favour of political involvement, the group pioneered scientific and legal support for environmental policy initiatives and worked closely with Greenpeace International, trade unions and, at times, government agencies. The group held the copyright on all its work, publishing over 20 research reports between 1978 and 1992. Taylor published an account of the anti-nuclear movement in The Ecologist - a text used by the Open University for its Control of Technology Course, an on assessments of nuclear risk in the science journal Nature.

Peter Taylor (born 24 January 1948) is a UK environmentalist, public activist on issues ranging from nuclear safety, ocean pollution, biodiversity strategies, renewable energy and climate change. He is the author of five books: Beyond Conservation: A Wildland Strategy (2005), Shiva's Rainbow, Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory (2009), Questions of Resilience: Development Aid in a Changing Climate (2010), and Rewilding: ECOS Writings on Wildland and Conservation Values (2011).

Born in January 1948, Taylor was educated at Cowbridge Grammar School in Glamorgan, Wales from where he won an Open Scholarship to St Catherine's College, Oxford University. He graduated with honours in Natural Sciences from the School of Zoology in 1970. As a student, he led an inter-university biological expedition to East Africa. After six years of what he describes in his autobiography Shiva's Rainbow as an adventurer and explorer, including a solo vehicle-crossing of the Sahara and climbing the Eiger, he returned to Oxford to study Social Anthropology under the linguistic anthropologist Edwin Ardener.