This has nothing to do with Top Gear, but touches on Jeremy Clarkson's dislike (OK, deap-seated loathing) of environmentalists. We have a genealogy programme which traces the ancestors of well-known people who participate in the programme. Jeremy Clarkson did one a little while ago. One of his ancestors on his mother's side was the founder of an enormous industrial empire for the time. At its height, it had several factories in the north of England and two warehouses in central London. It manufactured 3000 different products and exported them round the globe. They employed 15,000 people, had their own railway station and by the 1870s were using telephones to communicate with each other. Their most famous creation was the Kilner jar (family name was Kilner), a screw top glass jar with a rubber seal that was used to store jam and preserves.
Jeremy Clarkson has always been fascinated by engineering and industrial history, so was keen to find out more about that branch of his family. He also wanted to know where his millions went. He knew from his mother that the Kilners had a car very soon after their invention, so they were obviously very wealthy. He couldn't understand how a business that big could simply disappear.
So can you imagine his annoyance when he discovered that one of the reasons for the failure of the business was due to a court case. They were taken to court in 1871 by a local landowner who claimed that the smoke from the chimneys was killing his trees and crops. He won his case and the company was forced to invest in highly expensive gas-powered furnaces. It was one of the first environmental cases in British legal history.
The Kilners survived the court case and the business went on, but eventually went under in the 1930s. I think Jeremy is now convinced that his dislike of environmentalists is genetic.
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