George Marshall (environmentalist)

For other people named George Marshall, see George Marshall (disambiguation).

George Marshall (born 1964) is a British environmental campaigner, communications specialist and writer. He is the founder of Climate Outreach and is a specialist in climate communication. He is the author of Carbon Detox (2007) and Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change (2014).^[1] He lives in mid-Wales.

Life and work

Environmental campaigning

From 1988 to 2000, Marshall worked on campaigns for tropical forest conservation and defence of indigenous land rights with the Australian-based Rainforest Information Centre and The Ecologist magazine,^[2] specialising in the exposure of corruption and illegal logging in Papua New Guinea.^[3][4] Marshall subsequently worked as international campaigns director for the Rainforest Foundation^[5] and the director of the forests campaign for Greenpeace USA.^[6]

In 2004, he co-founded (with Richard Sexton) Climate Outreach, a UK charity that specialises in increasing public engagement in climate-change related issues.^[5] He is currently the Director of Projects^[7] at Climate Outreach and leads on a range of projects applying the latest research in climate communications.

Eco-renovation

In 2000, George Marshall took a year's sabbatical to renovate a terrace house for his family as a model low energy retrofit^[8] that reduced energy and water use by two thirds.^[9] His website on the project won a Millennium Award^[10] and led The Ecologist to list Marshall as one of their Ten Green Visionaries in 2009.^[11]

Research

Marshall has spoken and written extensively on the need to engage new audiences on climate change, especially conservatives^[12][13] and people of religious faith.^[14]

Published works

Marshall is the author of Carbon Detox (Hamlyn Gaia, 2007) on personal action to reduce emissions. This subsequently became the basis of a stand-up one man show.^[15]

His second book, Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change (Bloomsbury 2014), explores the underlying social and psychological obstacles to accepting climate change.^[1] The book has been widely praised^[16] and was described by the journalist George Monbiot in The Guardian as "the most important book published on climate change in the past few years".^[17]

See also

• Flight Behavior