Mark Lynas

Environmental activist and climate change specialist; author of Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

Mark Lynas is the author of two major books on climate change – High Tide: News from a warming world (2004) and Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet (2007). High Tide was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award for Non-Fiction, and short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. Six Degrees was long-listed for the Orwell Prize in 2008, and won the prestigious Royal Society Prize for Science Books in the same year. Six Degrees became a TV hit for National Geographic, whose Six Degrees Could Change the World – voiced by Alec Baldwin – has been watched by tens of millions around the globe on the National Geographic Channel. The book has now been translated into 22 languages around the world.

In November 2009 Lynas was appointed advisor on climate change to the President of the Maldives, His Excellency Mohammed Nasheed, and is involved in the Maldives’ effort to be the first carbon neutral country on Earth by 2020. He is a frequent speaker around the world on climate change science and policy, focusing in particular on how carbon neutral targets can break the international logjam on climate mitigation, and how emissions reduction should be seen as an opportunity not a sacrifice. He is also a Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment.