My only memory of Chernobyl is the Geiger counter going off the scale
Eco Eye veteran Duncan Stewart on retirement, environment, and that fall...
ARCHITECT, environmentalist and TV personality Duncan Stewart has revealed he is still ‘constantly in pain’ following a near-fatal accident in Chernobyl almost 20 years ago.
In an interview with the Irish Mail on Sunday, Stewart – who presented the final episode of Eco Eye this week after a marathon run of 21 seasons – says he recalls little from the horror fall in Ukraine that almost took his life.
Unsatisfied with his footage while making a documentary on the Chernobyl disaster in 2003, the daring presenter ‘broke into the exclusion zone through a fence’ alone with his camera and a Geiger counter (which reads radiation levels) to get a better shot.
‘I don’t remember anything more except
‘All my ribs were broken and I burst my lungs’
that the Geiger counter went off the scale,’ he said. ‘I have no memory of what happened, but I was found in the dark and brought to hospital and was unconscious there for three days.’
The Russian driver/translator who discovered him beside a broken branch suspected he had climbed a tree for a better look and crashed to the ground when the branch broke.
‘All I know is I was found, and all my ribs were broken and I burst my lungs in three places,’ he recalled. ‘And I’m still in pain all the time, I’m constantly in pain. But I wouldn’t even talk about it
[day to day]. I’m just not interested in indulging the pain.’
The veteran activist said his family believes the accident changed his personality.
‘[They say] it made me a much more serious person than I was before,’ he admits.
‘They would have said I was more positive and fun to be around. I was seen as very carefree in my attitudes, but now I’m much more... serious.’
With or without the accident, a solemn demeanour might be expected after a lifetime on the frontline of environmental issues – and a lifetime imbued with frustration over political inaction as emission rates continue to go the wrong way.
‘I read a lot of science on it, and it just gets more and more depressing,’ he said. ‘It’s not easy but I can’t back away from it. I kind of feel like, who’s going to do it otherwise? It’s not going to come from government.’
After starting out lecturing on environmental issues in the 1970s, the former About The House presenter now counts environmental education in schools among his several green projects that ‘aren’t making money, but I’m enjoying them’.
And the father-of-five expects schoolchildren of today will be ‘very angry’ when they have grown up and are considering starting families of their own.
Born in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, to
an Army officer father from Galway and a mother from Cork, the Stewart family relocated to Wicklow during Duncan’s childhood, where he was ‘reared on the mountains’ and his passion for nature was ignited. His parents were ‘very committed to nature and wildlife
and living with nature and growing our own food’.
‘We grew all our own vegetables and fruit, and we had hens, ducks, geese and turkeys. We had a Kerry cow for milk, and we had a few horses. And my mother wrote over 300 songs, most about nature.’
Stewart, now 75, could not be accused of hypocrisy around the environmental issues he has spent his life examining. He never eats beef and has chicken or fish ‘once every fortnight at the most’, although he insists he is, ‘not a fanatic on this at all’.
He is, however, appalled at the continued level of carbon-heavy beef and dairy farming in Ireland, although he doesn’t blame farmers, who ‘depend on government policy and have to make a living’.
‘They have no choice but to follow what is being pushed by the Department
and by agri-business and the big exporters, the big meat farms and the big dairy farms, the Irish Dairy Council, Bord Bia and these people… they all have a vested interest.’
The environmentalist doesn’t own a car and usually cycles for transport. And he describes the rise in motor-fuelled emissions as a ‘much more serious issue’.
‘It seems to go over people in the Department of Transport – Government ministers, people that should know. They don’t seem to make the connection with the fact that our emissions in transport has gone up by 153% since 1990.’
He blames this on successive governments adopting ‘the American style of living of everybody having their own car and having the freedom to live wherever they want’.
‘Allowed a system of planning that sprawled’
‘Politicians went along with it and allowed a system of planning that sprawled out everywhere, which makes it very difficult for public transport to service.’
Eco Eye was not funded by the national broadcaster for the vast majority of its run, leaving Stewart and his family-run company Earth Horizon Productions to shop around for support every year.
He hopes to make more programmes in the future but accepts RTÉ’s wish to take their environmental coverage in an as-yetunclarified new direction.
‘We had good ratings, and I don’t think there was ever any criticism of our programmes, but I think they feel it needs something new.’