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TRINITY TODAY 36 BIG IDEAS
Don’t drink the water The Tom Lehrer song Pollution is one of the first songs the founder of Clean Air in London remembers. The lyrics are etched into Simon Birkett’s memory, perhaps subconsciously driving him on his chosen career path.
BY K ATE EL I X
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fter supporting a local traffic campaign in London in the early 2000s, Simon Birkett (TC 1978) decided to start campaigning on something he felt even more strongly about – air pollution. In 2005, Simon says there was no one campaigning assertively for clean air in the smoggy UK capital, so he wrote letters to the Lord Mayor of London and the European Commissioner for the Environment. It was bold for someone with very little experience in the field. But it paid off. ‘What was surprising was that because I was operating in a vacuum, whenever I asked people to do things, they just said, “Yes”.’ The encouragement he received
was all the motivation Simon needed to press ahead. He created the Clean Air in London campaign, aiming to meet World Health Organisation (WHO) air quality guidelines across London (and elsewhere) by building public understanding of the issues and enforcing air quality laws. Investigating the extent of London deaths from air pollution led to the discovery of shocking statistics that helped Simon’s campaign gain traction. He questioned then Lord Mayor Ken Livingstone’s assertion that 1031 Londoners died each year as a result of air pollution, and after pushing the government for answers, found the number of estimated annual deaths, in fact, to be more than 4000. ‘I put in a letter to one of the parliamentary select committees saying
that the government had covered up or failed to publish this estimate for the number of deaths from long-term exposure to air pollution,’ he says. ‘And it turned out I was right. The government was forced to start publishing this number. Asking for the calculations and reports led to the discovery of some fairly extraordinary things.’ Among the many accolades bestowed upon the environmental activist was the label ‘force of nature’ by London’s Evening Standard, with Simon included among the newspaper’s ‘Progress 1000’ list of the most influential people in London every year from 2014 to 2019. But he feels the policy changes his campaign has prompted are more important than awards. This includes influencing the
