FM4 Presenter: Radiohead's Thom Yorke is bringing stars [unintelligible] to a new climate-protection campaign called the Big Ask, which was launched today by Global2000 and Friends of the Earth in Brussels. Well, I spoke with Thom earlier on this morning and asked him to explain the background to all this.

Thom Yorke: Launching a campaign to try and get 17 countries within the EU to commit to binding targets to reduce their carbon emissions year-on-year with strict penalties if they don't. And we try to encourage people to sort of basically get involved in writing their MPs in the traditional use of democracy [smirks] and getting them to, like, encourage their governments to take this on. And it sort of stems from a campaign that started in the UK which has been working quite well and we're about to pass a bill in the next few months which commits us to some pretty serious targets with a very powerful committee of non-business stooges who can look after it. So, what we're hoping is that it's an inspiration for people within Europe who are concerned about climate change to follow suit, you know. Unless we have legal structures in place we're gonna be basically picking and choosing and any sort of firm commitment are gonna unravel. I think it needs to come from the ground up, really.

FM4 Presenter: Most by now agree with this issue but it still doesn't appear very high on anyone's political agenda. Airport runways are still being expanded, governments seem to look the other way at polluters. I'm just wondering why is this issue still being ignored.

Thom Yorke: Well, I think what's interesting is that when you start to have the mayor of California, the mayor of London and from Paris and Barcelona and all these places committing firmly to action to the extent that they can do, and you have people on the ground demanding action, and you have the media talking about it, the last people are left are government. And I think personally that the reason for that is that government is lobbied heavily by polluting industries and so on, and obviously it's in their interest for things to stay as they are, but that's a denial of the situation. So, what we have at the moment is a lot of empty talk and not much real sort of action, you know.

FM4 Presenter: You are today lobbying in Brussels, helping to launch this campaign. Clearly, these kinds of issues to do with climate are something that are hugely important for you personally, aren't they?

Thom Yorke: Yeah, they still – like many of my friends and anybody I know who has – have kids – it's a difficult thing to – you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it, you look into the eyes of your children and you hope that they grow up in a future that doesn't have riots for fuel and environmental – constant floods and infrastructure collapse. You hope that, as an adult, the last opportunity – this little window of opportunity – that you can say in your heart of hearts you've tried to use that constructively and make this happen so that your kids have got a future.

FM4 Presenter: Politicians and governments greenwashing themselves, talking the talk but doing very little as far as climate's concerned –

Thom Yorke: Well, obviously it's a bit issue, as far as I'm aware, in the UK. Politicians in the UK were getting very adept at saying they're doing something when they're doing nothing. But I think the truth of the matter is a law is still a law. If you pass a law in a country then people are committed to it. And, apparently, we have functioning democracies in Europe, so therefore, if a law is passed demanded by the people then governments must follow that law. And it would also very much counterbalance the level of lobbing that is going on, generally speaking, within the EU, against watering down targets and so on. So, the thing that I must mention is that, you know, if people wanna know what they can do personally, they're supposed to go to bigask.eu, and that's got all the info. And it's very much like – you know, the idea is a grassroots thing from the ground up, you know. Not like big publicity stunts apart from launching thing. The idea is [unintelligible] people's concerns. I know for a fact that in Britain it's become a complete national obsession. I think – I assume that's the case within Europe, to varying degrees. And I think that people rather than having a dull sense of panic that there's nothing that can be done. I think – the positive thing, I hope, about the campaign in Europe is saying to people, look, if we put structures in place now, if we embrace this now, then it's like setting up a structure that we can build on, you know. If we don't set up a structure we can build on – well, yeah, forget it. It's never gonna happen. I think we will have to sort of delve into our consciousness and say, well, if it just means writing a few letters and meeting my MP – A, that would be a novelty and B, maybe something will happen positively from that. It's a relatively simple thing to do but the ramifications of having these laws are huge, you know. It means that them business and stuff gets to look to the future with some understanding of what's occurring other than this sort of constant sense of dull panic and doom.

FM4 Presenter: Thom Yorke. And we'll hear more about this particular campaign that's being launched today in Brussels called the Big Ask. We'll hear from Martin Rocholl, who's the president of Friends of the Earth. He's coming up in a short while. In the meantime, if you wanna find out a little bit more about what the campaign's all about, there's a website address I can give you as well, it's www.thebigask.eu.