The GreenplanetFM Podcast with Tim Lynch

In 1983 Gerry started a ginger group, Engineers for Social Responsibility. The president of the New Zealand Institution of Engineers, Sir John Ingram (also chair of NZ Steel) tagged them ‘the lunatic fringe’, but his successor Alec Stirrat was kinder. He called them ‘the conscience of the engineering profession’.In the early days of ESR, some uninformed IPENZ members expressed their concerns;“that ESR is an activist group associating with non-engineers known to incite treason".This was initially concerned with the the possibility of Global Nuclear War and the conservative element in NZ, wanted NZ to remain within the Western Alliances's Nuclear Umbrella. In association with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA), ESR under the Chairmanship of Professor Jack Woodward prepared a series of 17 fact sheets. These sheets were designed to describe in a concise manner important facts from scientific and medical literature about the dangers of nucl