Blog > This green journo is $75k up

09.22.2011

Clare Saxon, Digital Content Editor for The Climate Group attends the Grantham Prize Award at Columbia University, NYC. 

Clare writes:

Now if there's one thing greater than being directly involved in the Clean Revolution, it's reading about what it's so far achieved. And what better way to celebrate first-class journalism on clean energy, the environment and fossil fuels' inevitable decline, than with an award for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment. 

The Grantham Prize is just that; an esteemed, annual recognition and honor of one journalist, or team of journalists, for their environmental reporting. The competition is stiff, and the prize is steep. 

Administered by the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting, and funded - quite impressively - at $75,000 by Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham through The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, it truly is a prestigious prize. 

Winning Grantham Awards of Special Merit was Jeff Goodell, an ex-Apple Sillicon Valley born-and-bred writer, intent on discovering and promoting technological innovation to help avert climate change. His book How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix the Planet is loved for its daring and ambitious look at largely unproven strategies set on manipulating the earth's climate, unearthing a whole set of previously unheard of scientists and experimental engineers with a green, groundbreaking way of cooking up a back-up plan for our planet.

Also awarded was Jeff Donn, representing the whole team for the "Breaking News Oil Spill Coverage" for The Associated Press. We all remember that striking, frightening image of the BP oil spill plume, suffocating our sky. And the AP had every last square mile covered. Their reporting ranged from a dedicated team investigating the physical environmental impact of the oil spill, to another group of journalists looking at specific parts of the previously hidden preventative process, unreported spills across the world and the legal implications of the Oil Spill.

Deservedly winning the mighty prize though, was James Astill, with his special report for The Economist, entitled "Seeing the Wood". This meaty, meticulous, eight-part report clearly outlines the stakes of the forests risky existence on a carbon-rinsing planet and illustrates ways to save the precious tropical forests we have left.

Having traveled to Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Uganda to interview local experts on the crucial role of tropical forests in saving our precious carbon, James Astill's report is applauded for its extreme breadth, and its rare skill in defining the usually misunderstood topic of forests - and making forest's importance blindingly and unavoidably clear. 

Generating enormous acclaim and impacting a huge range of people, "Seeing the Wood" has also impressed many for Astill's polar background - largely economics, politics and finance. 

Now well-placed as The Econmist's Energy and Environment Editor, Astill has set the bar as high as the ancient tropical treetops for a future in groundbreaking environmental reporting, with his even-handed, thorough and unquestionably enjoyable voice.

James Astill has certainly caught one new RSS subscriber in the Grantham Awards process, that's for sure.

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