Yorkshire Post

Packham takes editor’s chair for Earth Day edition of The Big Issue

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ENVIRONMEN­TALIST and broadcaste­r Chris Packham has brought together powerful voices on climate change in a special Earth Day edition of The Big Issue magazine that he has guest-edited.

Packham said the magazine was a constant reminder that inequality, and sometimes ignorance and intoleranc­e, remain an “inescapabl­e insult to our intelligen­ce and our all-too-insular lives”.

He added: “But the reality is simple – any little privilege you might find comfort in now will be gone tomorrow unless we all act to make a difference, a difference there is still time to make. Just.”

Teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, Professor Brian Cox, writer Emma Mitchell and former Cop26 president Claire O’Neill are among those interviewe­d for the magazine.

In an exclusive interview, Ms Thunberg tells The Big Issue that despite the scale of the crisis she remains hopeful, saying: “We can sit and do nothing and that may feel very hopeless, but as soon as

we start taking action, there is hope.

“So that’s the mentality I’m trying to live off. And just imagine if we started to actually take action – I mean, we don’t know what that could lead to.”

Big Issue editor Paul McNamee said: “There is no more vital time to welcome this week’s guest editor, Chris Packham, one of

Britain’s best, boldest and most influentia­l broadcasti­ng and environmen­tal voices.

“Chris doesn’t do things by half. As well as the world’s leading teenage influencer Greta Thunberg and the best spaceman of all, Dr Brian Cox, he has assembled a collection of creators, thinkers, agitators and changemake­rs who have lit a beacon for change.”

 ?? PICTURE: SIMON HULME. ?? NATURAL CHOICE: TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham paying a visit to Fairburn Ings, near Castleford, in July 2018.
PICTURE: SIMON HULME. NATURAL CHOICE: TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham paying a visit to Fairburn Ings, near Castleford, in July 2018.

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