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). His book Chill claimed, contrary to the scientific consensus on climate change, that most of the recent documented warming is likely caused by natural cycles. He also suggested there is a potential for global cooling, and that adaptation not mitigation should be the priority. His views received widespread coverage in the media – with front page on the Daily Express, and articles in the online versions of The Times and an Al Jazeera video.
Education 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.
Political Ecology Research Group 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, and in assessment of nuclear risk in the science journal Nature. Taylor became a public figure following the 1977 Windscale Inquiry into nuclear fuel reprocessing during which he exposed the potential 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, and appeared on TV and radio in regards to issues of nuclear risk and pollution. His work highlighted the potential health impact of the Windscale Fire in 1957 - in the PERG report RR-7, and in association with Yorkshire TV, the potential 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 UK Government were not allowing time for detailed comparative assessment of the options. The work of PERG potentially influenced the limiting of 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. 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 topics of 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.
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