John Ashton

John Ashton is a Common Room Member at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. John is an independent writer and speaker. He recently returned to the northeast of England, initially to care for his late mother and then with his family, after a career in diplomacy and environmental politics.

From 2006 to 2012, under the Labour and Coalition governments, he was the first UK climate change envoy. Before that he co-founded and was Chief Executive of the think tank E3G. He will always be grateful to Green College (as it was then) for enabling him, as a Visiting Fellow from 1997 to 1998, to develop his growing interest in climate change.

He now lives in Gosforth, not far from his childhood home in Jesmond.