Fred Pearce
Fred Pearce has spent a lifetime exploring the geography of the planet as an environmental and science journalist. He has reported on environment, science and development issues from 80 countries over the past 20 years. Trained as a geographer, he has been environment consultant of New Scientist magazine since 1992. He also writes regularly for the Guardian and Mail on Sunday newspapers. He won a lifetime achievement award for his journalism from the Association of British Science Writers in 2011, and was voted UK Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001. Fred is a frequent lecturer and broadcaster, having spoken on all six continents in the past four years. His books have been translated into 16 languages and won numerous prizes, including the Peter Kent Conservation Book Award. When the Rivers Run Dry was listed among the all-time Top 50 Sustainability Books by the University of Cambridge’s Programme for Sustainable Leadership.
Reporting from the ecological front line he has always been unafraid to tell the scary truths — about runaway climate change in The Last Generation — to drill deep into his own environmental footprint in the award-winning Confessions of an Ecosinner, or to justify his guarded but determined optimism for our future. To investigate how nature can bounce back from our destruction (The New Wild) and how we humans can forge a “Good Anthropocene”.
Fred is consistently ahead of the mainstream environmental narratives. His best-selling When the Rivers Run Dry, published almost two decades ago, for the first time charted the onrushing global water crisis. Soon after, he wrote the first popular exploration of tipping points in climate change (With Speed and Violence). He has chronicled how the population bomb is being defused in Peoplequake and the legacies of the nuclear age in Fallout. His most recent A Trillion Trees explores the growing importance of ecological restoration, and lays out how we can fashion a planetary regreening by trusting in nature’s restorative powers and local communities. Nobody explains better why we should be very afraid of our crazed hand on the planetary tiller, but why we should never let go of the belief that we can also be its salvation.
