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Jonathon Porritt on doom scrolling, direct action and finding hope in a crisis
“Bristol is my go-to green city,” says Jonathon Porritt as he gears up for an evening at the Trinity Centre on May 5, the next in a long line of events to launch his latest book. “I’ve always been very mindful of its vibrant, green independence and a determination to do things its own way.”
The environmentalist who became a leading figure in the Green Party – known first as the People Party, then the Ecology Party before it rebranded in 1985 – in the 1970s and went on to direct Friends of the Earth before moving into advising business, government and King Charles, has now returned his attention to grassroots action.
Love, Anger and Betrayal centres the experience of 26 young Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists who mounted civil disobedience actions as a tactic to force political action on climate, including blocking motorways and disrupting major sports events.
“At their age, the sense of desperation they must have felt to persuade them that the only thing they could do as proportionate to the crisis was to break the law. It is an extraordinary thing,” says Porritt, describing the activists’ bitter disappointment with current inaction around the emergency and suggesting “not enough people are empathetic about how hard it is for young people to try to make sense of all this”.
Interviewing his “co-authors” was transformational for Porritt in reminding him that “it’s possible for anybody to take action of a different kind.”
He has since been arrested four times for displaying support for Palestine Action, provoked by witnessing the horrors of “a full on extermination programme… We’re living through a genocide. Working with young campaigners reminded me of the importance of acknowledging that sometimes conventional tactics don’t work.”
Porritt was arrested for the fourth time in Bristol in November 2025. “I’ve supported the notion of a free Palestine for decades, but hadn’t stepped up to that recognition of needing to do more,” until the conversations with JSO activists, he said – photo: Jonathon Porritt
The young activists also surprised him with their depth of knowledge of climate science:
“They all knew the science of climate change better than many of my friends in the green movement. That for me is enormously important because we have to have a solid basis for doing what we’re doing.
“They could see that the gap between what the politicians were saying and what the science was telling us was getting bigger. They felt no choice but to take these actions. It was humbling to see the way in which the logic drove them to it.
“The mass media love to describe them all as emotionally-driven, self-interested spoilt brats, but that’s the most astonishing misrepresentation and character assassination that you can imagine.”
Porritt sees a vital role for science in breaking public complacency around climate action, with half this new book dedicated to providing a simple factual account of the crisis along with the solutions that are “waiting if we just wanted to take advantage of them and make them work properly, instead of in the half-hearted way we’re doing things today.”
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He approves of the Public Emergency Briefing, a film documenting a Westminster briefing given by ten leading climate scientists that hopes to provoke action with its authoritative fact-led approach. 2,000 screenings are planned nationally, including more than ten in Bristol over the next three months.
It’s an approach that contrasts what he calls “phony solutionism”, an attitude that implies positive stories “are sufficient in themselves to break the stranglehold of the fossil fuel incumbency and the political corruption on people’s lives.”
While remaining positive is essential – Porritt himself is disciplined with his news input and strictly rations his “doom scrolling” in order to maintain an optimistic outlook – we should be in no doubt, he says, that systemic change is the only way forward.
“We’re in a revolution now, essentially to rid the world of fossil fuels as fast as we possibly can, which means political action as well as action on the ground, as well as local schemes and community solidarity and all the things we might do in our own lives.
“Without the political action, that cannot add up to enough to change the world in the way that we need to. Without the politics, the local and personal actions won’t amount to enough.”
With political attitudes around climate currently mixed, a landscape Porritt describes as “vexatious”, he takes hope from the rise in the Green Party’s popularity, seeing straight-talking Zach Polanski as “an outstanding leader”.
Porritt was “so delighted” when Carla Denyer was elected in Bristol in 2024 as one of the Green Party’s four MPs, and appreciates leader Zack Polanski’s direct approach as “motivating” people to reclaim politics’ role in climate action – photo: Robert Browne
And, while he finds the turbulent global situation difficult to reckon with, he sees it as a wake up call for the wider populace who are making connections between the country’s interests and our reliance on fossil fuels, hopefully spurring a comprehensive alternative energy transition.
So, while he is always aware of things “getting worse faster”, Porritt currently has enough to keep him hopeful – for the foreseeable future at least:
“We know what we need to do and we’re capable of doing it in such a way that we would avoid some of the most awful predictions of the future.
“I hang on to that. That little window of time is is still just big enough for me to keep smiling!”
Jonathon Porritt’s book tour event at Trinity Centre from 7-9pm on May 5 is free to attend. Find out more at trinitybristol.org.uk/whats-on/2026/jonathon-porritt-love-anger-betrayal
Main image: Jamie Bellinger
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