Rupert Read

Professor Rupert Read is based in the Philosophy Department at the University of East Anglia. He is widely known for having got the BBC to change its policy on the reporting of dangerous human-caused climate-change (in 2018), such that the BBC no longer features climate-deniers to ‘balance’ the facts. He has been a national spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (appearing on Today, Question Time, and many more), and for the Green Party, and was formerly a two-term elected Green Party local Councillor in Norwich. He co-convened Extinction Rebellion’s Political Liaison Group, meeting on several occasions with the UK Government in 2019. He is an expert on the Precautionary Principle, on which he has won AHRC grants and written reports for Parliamentarians. He is author of Philosophy for Life: Applying Philosophy in Politics and Culture (2007), This Civilisation is Finished: Conversations on the end of Empire and What Lies Beyond (2019) and Extinction Rebellion: Insights from the Inside (2020), and co-author with colleagues in Green House, the thinktank he co-founded, of Facing up to climate reality: Honesty, Disaster and Hope (2019). His next book will be Why Climate Breakdown Matters, with Bloomsbury Press.