Welcome to my portfolio website...
... a highlights reel of my environmental journalism, books and talks.
My latest book The Last Drop: Solving the World’s Water Crisis, published by Picador, was named one of The Times books of the year. My first book Clearing the Air: the Beginning and the End of Air Pollution (Bloomsbury) was shortlisted for the Royal Society's Science Book of the Year Prize.
Check out the tabs (top left) to browse - and get in touch via my contact page or socials. My publications include: The Financial Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, Prospect magazine and my own title The New Climate on Medium. Hire me as a ghostwriter on Reedsy.com.
The Guardian podcast - ‘Drought is on the verge of becoming the next pandemic’
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2023: While the world becomes drier, profit and pollution are draining our resources. We have to change our approachBy Tim Smedley. Read by Sid Sagar
Nepal’s flood has reignited the climate reparations debate
In Langtang, Nepal, a group of locals and glaciologists gathered to mark the demise of the Yala glacier, which had shrunk by 66 per cent since the 1970s; its death—which for a glacier is marked when it no longer flows—was said to be imminent due to global warming. More than 50 people took the high-altitude trek to the site for a Buddhist ceremony and the placing of memorial plaques. This took place on 12th May 2025. Much worse was to come. When a section of glacier cliff over half a kilometre wide...
Call this a hot summer? This phenomenon explains why next year may be worse
It’s the photograph of the summer. Maybe of the decade. Maybe of the Anthropocene. In July, as wildfires raged in Bordeaux, a middle-aged couple set up their sun loungers and parasol on the beach at Lake Lacanau. The man’s leg nonchalantly rests on his knee. The woman is seemingly reading her phone, or is it a Kindle, perhaps loaded with this summer’s must-read. A body board, beach bag and sandals lie casually next to them on the sand. People can be seen in the water. And ahead of them, on the f...
Britain deserves better than this botched plan for nature
Why did we leave it so late? The United Kingdom is one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth, according to the latest State of Nature report, and was ranked by a Natural History Museum study in 2020 as the 189th out of 240 countries and territories for biodiversity. We can’t blame our geography—our neighbour, France, ranks 5th best for biodiversity—instead, this is the consequence of British choices. UK terrestrial and freshwater species have declined by 19 per cent, and more than 40m b...
This is no time for climate complacency—let alone more drilling
Two frogs in a saucepan. “Nice warm water we’re getting, isn’t it?”, says one. “Yeah, can’t get hot enough for me, I say!”, says the other. A little while later, they’re cooked.Two people on Facebook. “We used to call it summer back in the day”, says Matt during last week’s record-smashing May temperatures. “Actually shocked it’s not been named something stupid like solar storm Glenda”. “It’s summer shop [sic] moaning”, says Vickie. Only, it wasn’t summer—it was still May. A May that was only 0....
Dirty Business: the True Story of the UK Sewage Scandal
I first met Ash Smith in June 2021. I was in the middle of writing a book, The Last Drop: Solving the World’s Water Crisis, to raise awareness about water issues. Having read about his work at Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, I emailed to ask: would he be up for meeting me, perhaps walking the river together, to tell me more?He generously obliged, and we met later that month near one of the jewels of the English Cotswolds: Bourton-on-the-Water. Here, the River Windrush runs through the chocola...
How green are Zack Polanski’s Greens?
In the run-up to every election in my Middle England market town, a light drizzle of campaign posters appears in windows. Mostly Labour, or “the Red Team”, as my youngest daughter calls them. Occasionally some for the “Blue Team”. And just one near neighbour who recycles the same “Vote Green” A4 poster, taping it each time to their ground floor windowpane.For years theirs was a lone voice. But this year, while the same Green sign reappeared as expected, several other houses followed—part of a wa...
Food could soon run short—and so will Trump’s luck
Donald Trump put all his political capital into one basket. Standing next to someone in an Easter Bunny costume at the White House on 6th April—just a day before he threatened the annihilation of “a whole civilisation” and a day after he said “Open the F**kin’ Strait, you crazy b*stards”—he bragged about eggs.
The case against data centres is growing
The energy Gods giveth: the world (excluding China) added 124 gigawatts (GW) of solar power to global capacity in 2025. And the energy Gods taketh away: 100GW of new data centres are planned between 2026 and 2030...
Return of the beaver
As I glance down, the water is perilously close to spilling over the top of my wellies. But, despite it being late January and the water freezing cold, I push on. This is something I’ve waited a long time to see...
Forget heat pumps—this is how to heat our homes
I write from a garden office looking back at my Victorian mid-terrace house. At this time of year, that means I’m often cold—in fact I am currently looking through glass cross-hatched by ice crystals. I’m often struck by the fact that my home would have been warmer for the Victorians...
It’s time for COP’s next chapter
It didn’t bode well for Belém. Bill Gates undermined the UN climate conference, held in a city that is the gateway to the lower Amazon, with a Trump-appeasing essay before it had even begun. Swedish scientist Johan Rockström suggested delegates be “honest with the world and… declare failure” on Paris...
Scientists want to block out the sun. How worried should we be?
Ricken Patel comes to geoengineering with a heavy heart. The former president and CEO of global activism network Avaaz was recently praised for his “enormous contribution to the Paris Agreement” by Christiana Figueres, who led the Paris negotiations. Neither the Patel nor Figueres of 2015 would have contemplated geoengineering...
The great 2025 solar boom
In 1978 President Jimmy Carter gave a speech praising a new National Solar Energy Research Institute, and extolling the sun’s “inexhaustible sources of energy. No cartel controls the sun.” He even installed 32 solar panels on the White House roof...
Why the ‘Paris Agreement’ of plastics ended in failure
I was on a beach when the latest global plastics treaty came and went in ignominy. At a remote spot on the South American Pacific coast, where all supplies and materials must come by small boat, and the locals make use of everything...
‘This feels like time travel’: has the ‘regen’ revolution begun?
When Andy Cato first got the call from Jeremy Clarkson, he thought he was just going to Diddly Squat for a cup of tea. As he arrived, the cameras for Clarkson’s Farm series 3 were rolling...
On climate, perfect is the enemy of good
The phrase “perfect is the enemy of good” (from Voltaire’s 1770 Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, in case you wondered) is a truism in climate action, if not in everything. We are fast approaching this year’s Earth Overshoot Day...
Economic growth and the search for abundance
A moment halfway through Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s recent book Abundance reveals something of their approach to building a net zero world. In 2023 a gasoline lorry exploded, causing Philadelphia’s I-95 bridge to collapse; Governor Josh Shapiro waived all the usual rules and regulations for public works so it could be rebuilt in record time. The project was of great benefit to the community. But during the works, the state secretary of transportation recalls encountering two workers using...
Don’t drain the swamp—refill it
As I walk across the newly pedestrianised Hammersmith bridge, London is as it should be—grey and rainy. Ordinarily, getting drenched on the way to an interview might be annoying. But today it couldn’t be more apt...
Why isn’t it raining?
When I was first asked to write this column, among the editor’s requests were that I serve as “a guide through the climate crisis”. To do so, I tend to look for solutions, be they nature-based or policy, seek out experts or dig through scientific reports. But sometimes you only need to look out the window...
The Benefits of Letting your Lawn Go Wild
I’ve always liked mowing the lawn. Perhaps it’s a childhood nostalgia thing, having watched my dad do it seemingly every weekend in summer. The smell, the neat intermittent stripes, the angry roar as the mower...
In Britain, we burn precious peatland for sport
“To keep this moor viable we have to raise 6,000 grouse a season, which we do by killing everything else that moves,” says Viscount Deveroux, the alter-ego of comedian Henry Morris. Walking a moor, dressed in tweed and with 12-gauge shotgun...
Copenhagen’s disastrous ski slope-incinerator
Just beyond the end of Nyhavn, Copenhagen’s colourful canal district, an ominously smoking chimney punctures the horizon between sailboat masts and a cyclists’ bridge. Most tourists in town for one day wouldn’t go much further...
To fight flooding, bring back the beaver—for good, this time
I thought I might cry. But the emotions that threatened to overwhelm turned more euphoric—a silly, wide smile, plastered across my face for hours. As the first beaver padded tentatively but fixedly out of its cage towards the water, I was witnessing history. The first of its kind to return to this part of central England for over 400 years...
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