Rupert Read

In 2020, Read orchestrated the leak of the JP Morgan report saying Earth is on unsustainable trajectory, in which the major fossil fuel financier warned it's clients of the economic risks of human-caused global heating.

He is a reader at the University of East Anglia, specialising in philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and environmental philosophy, previously having taught at Manchester. He has authored many books, including: Kuhn (2002), Applying Wittgenstein (2007), Philosophy for Life (2007), There is No Such Thing as a Social Science (2008), Wittgenstein Among the Sciences (2012), A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes (2012), and A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment (2018). He blogs on environmental reframing at Green Words website and has two chapters titled "Making the Best of Climate Disasters" and "Geoengineering as a Response to the Climate Crisis" in the Green House think-tank book: Facing up to Climate Reality (2019). His book 'This Civilisation Is Finished, co-authored by Samuel Alexander was published on June 1, 2019.

Read has also given many talks to Green Party organisations including the Ealing Green Party in March 2019.

In April 2019, Read became the second candidate on the Green Party list for the Eastern Region in the 2019 EU Elections and spent time in May campaigning with Caroline Lucas across the region. Since the election, he has become special adviser to the Catherine Rowett MEP: the first candidate on the Green Party list for the Eastern Region, who was elected an MEP.

In 2019, Read spoke to the Bath wing of Extinction Rebellion in a talk entitled "Your money or your life" which focused on biodiversity, pollution, and climate change before exploring practical options around responding to the climate and ecological emergencies.

Read played a major role in the April 2019 Extinction Rebellion in London. In addition to joining and speaking to protesters across London, Read appeared on a number of news platforms as spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, putting forward their three demands not only to the New Scientist, but also to John Nicolson on talkRadio and the combative Nick Ferrari on LBC; as well as debating Extinction Rebellion's approach and fracking's impact on climate change during Jacob Rees-Mogg’s LBC show; and explaining the Rebellion's approach to Doug Henwood’s KPFA radio show in the USA.

In June 2018, Read triggered a BBC policy shift by publicly refusing to debate a climate change denier. This led to new policy that meant the BBC would no longer present climate change deniers' views as a counterbalance to scientific standpoints.

In October 2018, Read declared his support for Extinction Rebellion. Acting as Extinction Rebellion's spokesperson, he gave a number of interviews on national news programmes during the Rebellion's London protests in April 2019 (see below). Read was part of the five members of the group invited to meet with Environment Secretary Michael Gove to discuss their demands. The following day the UK Parliament declared a "climate change emergency"; part of Extinction Rebellion's demands.

In October 2018 Read declared himself a supporter of Extinction Rebellion, an environmental direct action group, becoming a signatory of their first and second open letters to The Guardian and taking part in at least one of their November actions in London. A month later, Read took part in a sit-in to disrupt the consultation stage of a link between two major highways across ecologically significant Wensum Valley in Norfolk.

Read stood as MP candidate for Cambridge in the 2015 general election. He came fourth, having received 8% of the vote.

In January 2015, Read apologised for tweets in which he was interpreted as describing trans women as "a sort of 'opt-in' version of what it is to be a woman", though he denied he did or ever had believed this and further stated: "I do not and never have believed that trans-women are not real women, or are any less women." He said he did not consider being a trans woman a choice. He said he did not stand by everything he had written two years earlier and did not consider being a trans woman a choice. His comments caused concern within the LGBTIQ Greens, who invited him to "engage with LGBTIQ Greens and listen to our deep concerns over his comments on trans people and of the phenomena that is trans."

Read's application of the precautionary principle in climate and environmental affairs underlies many of his talks and presentations, notably including "Shed a Light – This civilisation is finished: so what is to be done?" which was given at Churchill College, Cambridge and has gained success on YouTube with over 100,000 views.

Read has been awarded – as principal investigator – AHRC funding for two projects on "natural capital". The first in 2016 titled "Debating Nature's Value" has completed with a book being published of the same name (see above). Read is leading on the follow-up project titled "Taking the debate on nature's value to the valuers".

Read was one of 224 academics to sign an open letter of support for the School strike for climate – a movement where children walked out of schools to protest and demand action on climate change. In February 2019, Read joined school strikers at the Forum Library in Norwich and subsequently gained media coverage for his own personal open letter to schools in Norwich urging them to be supportive of action from students.

On television, Read appeared on Channel 5's 5 News in a performance described by Naomi Klein as "absolutely amazing", and BBC Politics Live where he notably successfully put pressure on Labour MP Jenny Chapman and Conservative minister Nadhim Zahawi to agree, live on TV, to meet with Extinction Rebellion, and additionally demanded that politicians stop spreading the myth – and misleading statistics – that the UK is a leader on climate change action. More recently during the October 2019 Extinction Rebellion, Rupert appeared of BBC question time along with secretary of state for transport Grant Shapps MP, Lisa Nandy MP, businessman Theo Paphitis and journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer.

Read took up this offer and spent time with trans people in an effort to fully understand their lives. In his subsequent apology, Read said that "most of the offence caused by my tweets is a result of misunderstandings generated by the fragmented and angry nature of so much debate on Twitter" and reiterated that "it is up to women, not anyone else – and certainly not me – to decide who gets let into women-only spaces ... All women have a right to be involved in making those decisions." He also said he "reject[s] transphobia completely". In a separate article he stated Read made a further apology in the Independent in which he said: that "trans people ... need our active engagement in the issues they face" and referred to some of the difficulties trans people face and his meetings with trans Greens. Peter Tatchell and Mary Beard were among the signatories to a letter to the Observer which criticised the "censorship and silence of individuals", and explicitly mentioned Read. Tatchell says he received thousands of critical comments in response to this, some of which were hateful or threatening.

Rupert Read has developed, on the basis of his research in political and environmental philosophy, a radical proposal for institutional reform, to provide a place in the UK's democratic system for a voice for future people. The proposal was launched at Parliament on 10 January 2012.

Having held a number of officer posts for the Eastern Region Green Party, at the beginning of 2007 Rupert Read was selected as Eastern Region Green Party's lead candidate for the European Parliament elections in 2009 and again in 2014. The East of England is one the Green Party's stronger regions in terms of support, and under the proportional representation system on which the European elections operate, the party was optimistic that he would represent them in the European Parliament. However, he was beaten to the last of the seven seats in the constituency by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in 2009, and similarly in 2014. For the 2019 European Elections, Read stood as the second ranked candidate on the Eastern Region list for the Green Party. He stood in the 2009 Norwich North by-election, as the Green Party candidate, and returned the biggest by-election vote share in Green history with 9.7% of the vote.

Read was one of 13 Green Party councillors in Norwich, where he was first elected in 2004 to represent Wensum ward and re-elected in 2007 with 49% of the vote. He sat on the Joint Highways Committee of the city and county councils, and was spokesperson on Transport for the Green Party city councillors. Read stepped down from local politics in 2011 and Wensum was retained by the Green Party.

His editorial experience includes The New Hume Debate (co-edited, 2000), Film as Philosophy: Essays on Cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell (2005), and the work for which he is perhaps best known, The New Wittgenstein (2000), which offers a major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein's thinking. He has also co-created other books including Debating Nature’s Value (2018).

Rupert Read (born 1966) is an academic and a Green Party campaigner and a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. Read is currently a reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia where he has been awarded – as Principal Investigator – Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding for two projects on "natural capital". His other major recent academic focus has been on the "Precautionary Principle" having contributed substantially to work co-authored with Nassim Nicholas Taleb on applying the principle to questions of genetic modification of organisms. In further work, Read has theorised the utility of the precautionary principle in a wide range of areas, including: climate change, the environment, as well as financial and technology sectors.