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Donnachadh McCarthy FRSA

Biography


Donnachadh is an author, broadcaster and journalist on environmental issues. He is the founder of the award winning environmental consultancy 3 Acorns Eco-audits.


He was Deputy Chair of the Liberal Democrats during the two years leading up to the Iraq War and an elected member of its Federal Executive for 7 years.  He was a founder and a leader of the “new radicalism” Lib Dem campaign group for six years. During this period he was one of the party’s most successful developers of conference policy proposals.


His home in Camberwell was London’s first carbon negative home. It has solar hot-water, solar electric, wind-turbine (useless!), rain-harvester, wood burner and solid-wall insulation.

Picture by Robert Taylor


He served as a councillor in Southwark during the 1990s, stood as a Parliamentary candidate in Peckham in 2001, where he came second to Harriet Harman and was elected to be a European Parliament candidate for London.  He was twice short-listed to be the party’s London Mayoral Candidate.


Donnachadh resigned from the party after 12 years in 2006 after the Party President Lord Dholakia demanded his resignation from the platform at conference over his efforts to ban Lib Dem Peers from selling his services as lobbyists and threats of legal action from Charles Kennedy over his criticism of the Party Treasurer being a lobbyist for the Cayman Islands.


He is currently not a member of any political party.


Donnachadh was the on-screen eco-auditor for the hit BBC 2 TV series, “It’s Not Easy Being Green”, ITV’s “How Green is Your House” and Sky’s Green Britain Week.  He has appeared frequently on national TV and radio, including The Today Programme, BBC Breakfast News, Radio 5 Live , BBC World Service, CNN, Sky News, London Tonight  etc


He is the author of two books “Easy Eco-auditing” and “Saving the Planet without Costing the Earth” and has written for The Guardian, Resurgence Magazine, Permaculture Magazine and Sunday Times. He wrote the regular green column “The Home Ecologist” for The Independent.


Donnachadh has worked with a wide range of organisations to help them green their operations, including Ealing Film Studios, the BBC, Royal Opera House, RNID, City Bridge Trust, MotivAction, RIBA, The British Council, Brunswicks, Novartis and The Body Shop, as well as smaller charities and businesses.  


He became a passionate campaigner for environmental action when an accident whilst dancing with the Royal Opera Ballet led to spending time with the Yanomami Indians in the middle of Amazon in 1992, where he encountered the destruction of the rainforest first-hand and its disastrous consequences for the Yanomami.