Stephen Tindale 1963-2017

I learned earlier this week of the sad passing of Stephen Tindale.  Stephen was one of the most thoughtful environmental thinkers of his generation and a skilled campaigner.

Stephen was director of Green Alliance (1996-97), and from there moved to be Special Advisor for Michael Meacher (1997-99) when Michael was an environment minister in the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions. This was at a time when the environment movement achieved a ban on the use of lead shot (1999), when the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000) was being dreamed up and thought about, and when genetically modified crops were the big issue in town.  Stephen headed up Greenpeace for six years after Peter Melchett left in 2000.  In recent years Stephen has worked for a variety of think tanks and as a consultant for industry, but always on the side of environmental progress towards solving the issues of climate change.

Stephen was a friend of mine and we met a few times each year, talked or emailed many times a year and happened to share our birthday, so that was a time when we would both, almost always, wish each other well.

I count Stephen as a friend although we once had quite a strongly-voiced row with raised voices: the subject was Greenpeace’s support at the time for a massive proposed wind farm on the Isle of Lewis. Stephen told me that the problem with the RSPB was that we were good on wildlife but climate change illiterate, and I told him that the trouble with Greenpeace was that they were good on climate change and wildlife-illiterate.  On that evening in an Islington restaurant, neither of us was fair to the other, and I’m glad to say that we patched it up very soon afterwards, and Greenpeace withdrew its support for the windfarm.  That put us in Stephen’s debt and the two organisations worked more closely together after that, to our mutual advantage, as a result of clearing the air.

It’s perhaps a little odd to mention that disagreement in this appreciation of Stephen because for most of our working interactions we were very much on the same page. Stephen’s focus was always more on energy and climate change than on wildlife, but he was a keen advocate for the countryside and for the natural environment as well.

And in his chosen area of expertise he was an independent thinker. After Stephen left Greenpeace he ‘came out’ as being in favour of nuclear energy as a vital component of fighting climate change alongside renewable energy and reducing demand – I’d always had that position but Stephen knew that he would be attacked by some former colleagues in the environment movement for breaking ranks on this subject. But he said what he believed.

More recently, Stephen challenged the green movement’s orthodoxy on being totally anti-fracking – he saw it as a more complicated issue.

Stephen occasionally involved me, as an independent voice, in issues such as tidal power (see blogs here, here, here) and was realistic about how enthusiastic I could be about a potentially valuable technology, which if done badly could be very damaging.

Throughout, Stephen was a pragmatist, seeking progress from wherever, and however, it could be stitched together. He was a clear and deep thinker about the environment, knowledgeable about the economics of energy production and a skilled and well-connected political operator.

Stephen suffered for many years from bouts of severe depression.

He once wrote a guest blog here about the need for the UK to remain in the EU (To protect the environment, the UK must stay in the EU). And here are some links to some of his more recent blogs (The UK and European energy co-operation post-Brexit, The patriotic case for climate change).

It goes without saying that Stephen will be missed by his friends, and he will, but he should also be mourned by all those involved in combatting climate change for he did more than most, and we owe him more than most.

And he would have wanted it to be mentioned that he was a Spurs supporter.

 

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