'I wish environmentalism were as much a part of a woman's gender as shopping is'

Celia Walden talks to Tamsin Omond, the climate-activist grand-daughter of a baronet.

By Celia Walden Published: 7:00AM BST 13 Aug 2009

"I always apologise when I mouth off about the very things I campaign about," says Tamsin Omond, shaking her cherubic, peroxide curls. "God knows why."
It's true that the 24-year-old eco-starlet – one of a new breed of activists from her group, Climate Rush, who scaled the House of Commons last year and chained themselves to the railings outside Lord Mandelson's home on Monday to protest at the closure of the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight – has been mouthing off. A professional hazard, presumably.

"I never, ever thought I would end up as an environmentalist," she assures me, the desire to justify her beliefs coming from the same polite place as her compulsive apologies. But cynics and eco-loathers would say that being the Cambridge-educated daughter of a baronet – Sir Thomas Lees, a Dorset landowner – and called Tamsin to boot, provides her with the perfect pedigree to do what she does. Or at least, the perfect pedigree to fit the stereotype of the champagne activist.
The problem with stereotypes is that when you meet them, they often – gallingly – turn out to be real people, complete with senses of humour, cats, family photographs and beliefs that are not so easily rubbished in the flesh.
"It's really weird, the whole posh thing," she says, bemused. "Yes I have a baronet grandfather, but I was surprised by the focus that got. But I suppose it's easy for me to say that. Of course people do care. Still, the price of privilege, someone once said, is absolute integrity."
Sitting opposite Omond in the bedroom of her flat in the terraced house in Kilburn, west London, that also serves as the Climate Rush headquarters, taking in the student-digs like décor, I can't help but wonder if this is what a modern day Emmeline Pankhurst would look like.
Goofily sexy, lean-limbed and boyish, one knee hitched up to her chest, Omond has all the androgynous appeal of a Burberry advert, which may explain why she has featured in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar – and was last month named in the Pink List as "one of the most influential gays in Britain." Her eyes engage with mine in an intense, feline stare, while her low, rasping voice is broken up by fits of nervous laughter.
"It was because of Pankhurst that we decided to storm the Houses of Parliament last year, in honour of what thousands of the suffragettes did a hundred years previously. I thought it would be great to do something sassy and stylish, so we dressed ourselves up in Edwardian costume and demanded an end to airport expansion."
Unfortunately, the event meant breaking bail terms from a previous parliamentary protest, leading to Omond being arrested and incarcerated for twenty hours in Holloway prison. "Yes," she laughs, "that was frightening. But what was good was that the police were blind sighted by the fact that we were dressed as suffragettes and therefore not at all scary. They were actually very sweet to us."
Non-violent protests about all things ecological is what Climate Rush, the campaign group Omond founded last year, is all about. Some of their pranks are as inoffensive as blasting loud aircraft noise through the then Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly's letterbox, others are more perilous – notably storming Heathrow runways and handcuffing themselves to the front of private jets. "You do put yourself in danger. With the private jet, there was a big fuel tank above us and the guys had to saw through the handcuffs on our arms – there were sparks flying everywhere." Does she get a strange kick from that? "No," she insists. "I am quite boring about breaking the law, oddly." Her mother Sarah and painter father John, she admits, "were probably horrified at first, but now they are, weirdly, quite proud of me."
It is not so hard to believe. Grand ecological ambitions aside, and if only for the impressiveness of her convictions in a conviction-light world, Omond is a fascinating character. With her looks and background - she was at Westminster School before going on to get a first class honours at Trinity College, Cambridge - she could have chosen an easier path, even become an MP, and had the power to make a difference from within. She flinches at the suggestion: "I think I might be a bit too much of a loose canon for politics."
A nonconformist from the start, she trained for a year to be a priest at St Mary's Church in Primrose Hill, north London after leaving university. "It is still in my life plan to do that," she maintains. But one day Omond says she woke up "to where we are now and recognised that this was one of those crisis point moments which come after people have been walking around blindly for a long time."
I point out that hers is a luxurious moral position to take, reading out a few caustic lines by Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, deriding Climate Rush "for not understanding the basic facts about climate change" and accusing her and her group of "blue blood, posh names and limited intelligence" but she merely shrugs.
"There are so many different facts and figures out there but the bottom line is that nowadays, nobody can deny that climate change exists and that it is going to be a huge problem for our future. Thirty years ago environmentalism was all hippies up trees, Swampy and worthier-than-thou characters who you wouldn't want to be sitting next to at a dinner party. I'm a normal twenty-four year old girl, and I think it helps people to see that. I go to parties and spend a week worrying about what I'm going to wear like everybody else, but what I really want is for environmentalism to be as much a part of a woman's gender as shopping is. You don't have to change your identity to get involved with something like Climate Rush. There used to be this idea that ecological campaigning was for people who had the liberty to act in a certain way without having to care about the cold realities of life."
Which is exactly what lots of people still think about someone like her, I tell her bluntly. "Well look," she says warily, "I'm lucky enough that I can write a piece and then fund myself for two weeks. I wish I had lots of money – everyone thinks that I do but I don't. I get by and I'm very low maintenance but my parents don't give me any money, and the funding we get is less and less now that there's a recession."
Comparisons to another high-profile environmentalist and prospective MP, Zac Goldsmith, displease Omond. "If he could give us loads of money I wouldn't mind being compared to him, but we both gave talks at our old school two weeks ago and apparently he just completely disowned me in his, saying: 'I don't condone any kind of illegal action in the name of climate change and I'm really boring and a Tory... blah, blah, blah'."
In September, Omond and her group are starting a tour of Britain, Climate Rush on the Run, to spread their various messages. "It's crazy how ambitious I am," she says pink-cheeked with fervour. "Or rather how ambitious these projects are. I will keep doing this, and I will keep doing it because it's kind of working." And you believe that she believes in her beliefs implicitly.
'Rush! The Making of a Climate Activist' by Tamsin Omond (Marion Boyars Publishers) is available from Telegraph Books for £7.99 + 99p p&p. To order, call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk