Headlines
Joss Garman (Environmental Activist): Former Student Hits the Headlines
20th November 2007
Joss Garman (former student), an environmental activist working with Greenpeace, is one of the co-founders of Plane Stupid, the group which set up the Climate Camp at Heathrow Airport, protesting about the expansion of London’s airport. Consequently he has been very much in the news of late.
Joss is also in demand as a speaker at universities around the country, where Plane Stupid has engendered encouraging support.
The public dimension of his belief in the planet and his concern for its welfare first came to the fore when he was 14 and volunteered to hand out anti-GM leaflets for Greenpeace outside Sainsbury’s, as well as writing to MPs.
At that time Greenpeace had a policy of not allowing anyone under 18 to get involved in direct action and so, a couple of weeks after his 16th birthday in 2001, he got himself arrested after breaking into Faslane naval base, home port of the Polaris submarines which carry a nuclear war-head. Not everyone’s idea of a birthday present, for sure, but it proved Joss’s commitment to speak out on behalf of his fellow men and women on environmental issues.
A couple of years later he tried to stop bomber aircraft taking off for Baghdad from Fairford airfield by protesting on the runways, and was arrested again. That was around the time of his ‘A’ levels and, at one time, he feared his protest might mean being in a police cell rather than the exam room.
Today his efforts are focussed on tackling global warming created by air travel and, specifically, that which results from airport expansion, and in encouraging others to take up the green challenge – before it is too late.
His work, and the causes he supports with action, bring him into the public domain and he has featured frequently in the media, not least in some of the weekend newspapers’ magazines.