Teargas, trees and oil: my life in the greatest job on earth

(Rob Gell (left) was one of three speakers at a Shepparton forum in 2013 aimed at apprising Goulburn Valley people of the implications and threats of climate change. In posting this story by John Vidal on Facebook, the former TV weather presenter, who is now an environmental and communications consultant, with a rich understanding of dynamics of climate change, both academically and anecdotally, urged people to actually read the story, not simply “share it”.)

In September 1989, Guardian editor Peter Preston took me to one side. “Environment? Your idea. You do it,” he said. I was on the arts desk and had quite forgotten that, two years earlier, I had proposed that we cover this fast-emerging issue in more depth and with new pages.

We had a great correspondent in Paul Brown, but no single journalist could keep up with events. This was the height of Thatcherism, the old Soviet Union was collapsing in ecological ruin, and there had been serious nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. That year, more than two million people in Britain had voted Green in the European parliament elections.

 John Vidal on an Arctic ice floe in 2012. 

If that wasn’t enough, the Great Storm had just blown down 15m trees in southern England, the Exxon Valdez had spilt 11m gallons of crude oil off Alaska, and the French government had blown up Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in a New Zealand harbour.

Read John Vidal’s piece in The Guardian - “Teargas, trees and oil: my life in the greatest job on earth.”