Rupert Read

Rupert Read (born 1966) is an academic and a Green Party campaigner, a former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, and the current director of the Climate Majority Project.

He is the author of several books on Wittgenstein, philosophy, and/or climate change, most recently Why Climate Breakdown Matters, Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos, and Do You Want to Know the Truth?

Until 2023, Read was a reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia where he was awarded – as Principal Investigator – Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding for two projects on "natural capital".

His other major recent academic focus has been on the precautionary principle, having contributed substantially to work co-authored with Nassim Nicholas Taleb on applying the principle to questions of genetic modification of organisms.

In further work, Read has theorised the utility of the precautionary principle in a wide range of areas, including: climate change, the environment, as well as financial and technology sectors.

Read's application of the precautionary principle in climate and environmental affairs underlies many of his talks and presentations, notably including "Shed a Light – This civilisation is finished: so what is to be done?"

which was given at Churchill College, Cambridge and has gained success on YouTube with over 200,000 views.

His editorial experience includes The New Hume Debate (co-edited, 2000), Film as Philosophy: Essays on Cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell (2005), and the work for which he is perhaps best known, The New Wittgenstein (2000), which offers a major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein's thinking.

He has authored many books, including: Kuhn (2002), Applying Wittgenstein (2007), Philosophy for Life (2007), There is No Such Thing as a Social Science (2008), Wittgenstein Among the Sciences (2012), A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes (2012), and A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment (2018).

Read was one of 13 Green Party councillors in Norwich, where he was first elected in 2004 to represent Wensum ward and re-elected in 2007 with 49% of the vote.

He sat on the Joint Highways Committee of the city and county councils, and was spokesperson on Transport for the Green Party city councillors.

Having held a number of officer posts for the Eastern Region Green Party, at the beginning of 2007 Read was selected as Eastern Region Green Party's lead candidate for the European Parliament elections in 2009 and again in 2014.

The East of England is one of the Green Party's stronger regions in terms of support, and under the proportional representation system on which the European elections operate, the party was optimistic that he would represent them in the European Parliament.

However, he was beaten to the last of the seven seats in the constituency by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in 2009, and similarly in 2014.

He stood in the 2009 Norwich North by-election, as the Green Party candidate, and returned the biggest by-election vote share in Green history with 9.7% of the vote.

Read stepped down from local politics in 2011 and Wensum was retained by the Green Party.

Read stood as MP candidate for Cambridge in the 2015 general election.

He came fourth, having received 8% of the vote.

The first in 2016 titled "Debating Nature's Value" has completed with a book being published of the same name (see above).

Read then lead on the follow-up project titled "Taking the debate on nature's value to the valuers".

In June 2018, Read triggered a BBC policy shift by publicly refusing to debate with a climate change denier.

This led to new policy that meant the BBC would no longer present climate change deniers' views as a counterbalance to scientific standpoints.

In October 2018, Read declared his support for Extinction Rebellion.

He has also co-created other books including Debating Nature’s Value (2018).

Read was one of five contributors, including Nassim Nicholas Taleb, to a paper entitled "The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms)"; this paper has been downloaded approximately a quarter of a million times.

Read has been awarded – as principal investigator – AHRC funding for two projects on "natural capital".

Acting as Extinction Rebellion's spokesperson, he gave a number of interviews on national news programmes during the Rebellion's London protests in April 2019 (see below).

Read was part of the five members of the group invited to meet with Environment Secretary Michael Gove to discuss their demands.

The following day the UK Parliament declared a "climate change emergency"; part of Extinction Rebellion's demands.

Read commented regularly through the Eastern Daily Press "One World Column" for five years.

In his regular appearances in the local and national press, he speaks on sustainable transport, green economics, and social justice.

He was formerly chair of the Green House thinktank, a former Green Party spokesperson for transport and former East of England party co-ordinator.

Read left UEA in the Summer of 2023, citing his dissatisfaction with current academia's failure to adequately confront the climate crisis, as well as its tendency to over-appreciate the sciences and under-appreciate the arts and humanities, coupled with the opportunity for Read to spend his time building the Climate Majority Project which he believes is a more vital use of his time.

Read studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Balliol College, Oxford, before undertaking postgraduate studies in the United States at Princeton University and Rutgers University (where he gained his doctorate).

Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy, his PhD involved "a Wittgensteinian exploration of the relationship between Kripke's 'quus' problem and Nelson Goodman's 'grue' problem."

He is a reader at the University of East Anglia, specialising in philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and environmental philosophy, previously having taught at Manchester.

He has two chapters titled "Making the Best of Climate Disasters" and "Geoengineering as a Response to the Climate Crisis" in the Green House think-tank book: Facing up to Climate Reality (2019).

His book 'This Civilisation Is Finished, co-authored by Samuel Alexander was published on 1 June 2019.

For the 2019 European Elections, Read stood as the second ranked candidate on the Eastern Region list for the Green Party.

Read has also given many talks to Green Party organisations including the Ealing Green Party in March 2019.