In 27 years as environment editor at the Guardian, I have seen both devastation and progress. Now I’m retiring – but I still have hope for the future of the planet
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.
I breathed teargas in five countries (Italian is the sweetest, American the worst)
In 27 years, the population rose by 2.25 billion, the equivalent of another China and another India, or 10 more Americas
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