Peter Taylor (born 24 January 1948) is a UK environmentalist, public activist on issues ranging from nuclear safety, ocean pollution, biodiversity strategies, renewable energy and climate change. He is the author of five books: Beyond Conservation: A Wildland Strategy (2005), Shiva's Rainbow, Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory (2009), Questions of Resilience: Development Aid in a Changing Climate (2010), and Rewilding: ECOS Writings on Wildland and Conservation Values (2011). His book Chill claimed, contrary to the scientific consensus on climate change, that most of the recent documented warming is likely caused by natural cycles. He also suggested there is a potential for global cooling, and that adaptation not mitigation should be the priority. His views received widespread coverage in the media – with front page on the Daily Express, and articles in the online versions of The Times and an Al Jazeera video. Education Born in January 1948, Taylor was educated at Cowbridge Grammar School in Glamorgan, Wales from where he won an Open Scholarship to St Catherine's College, Oxford University. He graduated with honours in Natural Sciences from the School of Zoology in 1970. As a student, he led an inter-university biological expedition to East Africa. After six years of what he describes in his autobiography Shiva's Rainbow as an adventurer and explorer, including a solo vehicle-crossing of the Sahara and climbing the Eiger, he returned to Oxford to study Social Anthropology under the linguistic anthropologist Edwin Ardener. Political Ecology Research Group Taylor left his academic studies in anthropology in order to develop the Political Ecology Research Group (PERG) which he founded in 1976. Eschewing the academic elements of political ecology and the need for theory in favour of political involvement, the group pioneered scientific and legal support for environmental policy initiatives and worked closely with Greenpeace International, trade unions and, at times, government agencies. The group held the copyright on all its work, publishing over 20 research reports between 1978 and 1992. Taylor published an account of the anti-nuclear movement in The Ecologist - a text used by the Open University for its Control of Technology Course, an on assessments of nuclear risk in the science journal Nature. Taylor became a public figure following the 1977 Windscale Inquiry into nuclear fuel reprocessing during which he exposed the risks of nuclear waste storage and mounted a successful campaign against radioactive discharges to the marine environment – his work