Environment Editor

As “The World’s” environment editor, Peter Thomson works with the program’s reporters and hosts to bring clear and compelling coverage and analysis of global environmental issues to the program’s 2.5 million listeners.

Peter got hooked on radio journalism listening to (and interning with) Danny Schechter the News Dissector while in high school outside of Boston. After failing in careers as a housepainter, waiter, bike messenger, oyster shucker and DJ, he eventually found his way back to radio news at WFCR in Amherst, Mass., where he was lucky enough to be taught and mentored by some of the best in the business.

A lifelong interest in environmental issues took full flower when Peter was hired on as the founding editor and producer of NPR’s new environmental news program Living on Earth, in 1991. In nearly 10 years at the program, Peter helped establish Living on Earth as the preeminent broadcast source for environmental news and helped the program earn numerous awards and honors. He also reported for the program on issues from oil and natives on Alaska’s North Slope to solar power development in rural Morocco.

Peter’s 2007 book Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal, was dubbed “superb” and “compelling” by the New York Times, but his favorite work to date is his radio documentary on a hot dog stand in Oakland, California .

Peter has worked for NPR, WBUR, Boston, and Monitor Radio. He’s been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy and is a member of the board of Directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists and the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting.

Peter lives in Boston with his wife, Edith, and daughter, Eleanor Rose.