Articles by George Monbiot
We found 121 results.
Willing the End
George Monbiot - TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2022
14 Jul 2022 – On both sides of the Atlantic, powerful interests seem determined to trigger the collapse of life on Earth. Why? In the US last week, a highly partisan Supreme Court decided that the Environmental Protection Agency is not entitled to restrict carbon dioxide emissions from power stations.
→ read full articleCarbon Colonialism
George Monbiot - TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Feb 2022
31 Jan 2022 – Predatory corporations are making a mockery of natural climate solutions, as they grab land and bamboozle the public.
→ read full article
Wealth Curse
George Monbiot - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Nov 2021
12 Nov 2021 – Why do we tolerate the massive environmental impacts of the very rich? Most of our dysfunctions are caused by pandering to the rich.
→ read full articleLooting by Other Means
George Monbiot - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Nov 2021
10 Nov 2021 – The history of the past 500 years: A handful of European nations, which had mastered both the art of violence and advanced seafaring technology, used these faculties to invade other territories and seize their land, labour and resources. What the rich nations owe the poor is not climate aid or climate loans. It’s climate reparations.
→ read full article‘Try to Stop Me’ – The Mantra of Our Leaders Who Are Now Ruling with Impunity
George Monbiot – The Guardian,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Johnson. Across the world, flouting the law has become normalised. We have to stop it. It is not a sufficient condition for fascism to take root, but it is a necessary one: the willingness of political leaders not only to break the law but to revel in breaking it is a fatal step towards the replacement of democracy with authoritarian terror.
→ read full article
Killer Clowns
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
30 Jul 2019 – Everywhere the killer clowns are taking over. Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Scott Morrison, Rodrigo Duterte, Matteo Salvini, Recep Erdogan, Viktor Orban and a host of other ludicrous strongmen – or weakmen as they so often turn out to be – dominate nations that would once have laughed them off stage.
→ read full articleOwned
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
8 Jul 2019 – All billionaires want the same thing – a world that works for them. For most, this means a world in which they are scarcely taxed and scarcely regulated, where labour is cheap and the planet can be used as a dustbin, where they can flit between tax havens and secrecy regimes, using the earth’s surface as a speculative gaming board, extracting profits and dumping costs. The world that works for them works against us.
→ read full article(Português) Apenas a rebelião pode evitar um apocalipse ecológico
George Monbiot - ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais,
27 May 2019
A desculpa mais comum atualmente é a seguinte: “Aposto que os manifestantes têm telefones/viajam de férias/usam sapatos de couro”. Em outras palavras, não vamos ouvir ninguém a não ser que viva nu em um barril, subsistindo apenas em águas sujas. Claro que se você está vivendo nu em um barril, vamos dispensá-lo também, porque você é um hippie esquisito. Ou seja, todos os mensageiros e toda mensagem que eles carregam são desqualificados com base em impureza ou pureza por quem realmente tem o poder de fazer alguma coisa.
→ read full articleThe Problem Is Capitalism
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
30 Apr 2019 – It is a weapon pointed at the living world. We urgently need to develop a new system. For most of my adult life, I’ve railed against “corporate capitalism”, “consumer capitalism” and “crony capitalism”. It took me a long time to see that the problem is not the adjective, but the noun. Our choice comes down to this. Do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?
→ read full articleIntergenerational Theft
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
18 Mar 2019 – At the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy. You can purchase as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much meat and fish as you can afford, regardless of who might be deprived. If you can pay for them, you can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You can burn as much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain right over the world’s natural wealth. But why? What just principle equates the numbers in your bank account with a right to own the fabric of the Earth? Most people I ask are completely stumped by this question.
→ read full articleNeoliberalism – The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems
George Monbiot – The Guardian,
4 Mar 2019
15 Apr 2016 – Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is? Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?
→ read full articleRebelling Against Extinction
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Oct 2018
19 Oct 2018 – The foremost ambition among graduates in the 1950s and 1960s was, through government or the liberal professions, to serve their country. Today, the notion of public service seems as quaint as a local post office. We expect those who govern us to grab what they can, permitting predatory banks and corporations to fleece the public realm, then collecting their reward in the form of lucrative directorships.
→ read full article
Honourable Theft
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Sep 2018
17 Sep 2018 – Never underestimate the power of one determined person. What Carole Cadwalladr has done to Facebook and Big Data and Edward Snowden has done to the state security complex, the young Kazakhstani scientist Alexandra Elbakyan has done to the multi-billion dollar industry that traps knowledge behind paywalls. Her pirate webscraper service, Sci-hub, has done more than any government to tackle one of the biggest rip-offs of the modern era: the capture of research that should belong to us all.
→ read full article
Plastic Soup
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Sep 2018
The problem is not plastic. It is consumerism.
→ read full articleButchery of the Planet
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2018
Defending the living world and its people requires a shift from meat to a plant-based diet.
→ read full articleUnprostrated
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Mar 2018
I have prostate cancer, but I’m happy. Here’s how… I will ride this out. I will own this disease but I won’t be defined by it: I will not be prostrated by my prostate. I will be gone for a few weeks but when I return, I do solemnly swear I will still be the argumentative old git with whom you are familiar.
→ read full articleEating the Earth
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jan 2018
17 Jan 2018 – We are facing an existential crisis. And it is caused, in large part, by the unsustainable ways in which we feed ourselves. While there is no single solution, by far the biggest one is switching from an animal-based to a plant-based diet. Why? Because a plant-based diet requires less land and fewer resources. When we feed animals on crops, we greatly reduce the number of people that an area of cropland can support.
→ read full articleThe Unseen World
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jan 2018
To be aware of the wonders of the living planet is to take on an unbearable burden of grief. What you see is not what others see. We inhabit parallel worlds of perception, bounded by our interests and experience. What is obvious to some is invisible to others.
→ read full articleEverything Must Go
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Nov 2017
24 Nov 2017 – Every Friday is a Black Friday, every Christmas a more garish festival of destruction. It is not attitudes that govern our impacts on the planet, but income. The richer we are, the bigger our footprint, regardless of our good intentions. Rich people who see themselves as green consumers mainly focus on behaviours that have relatively small benefits. We need to build a world in which growth is unnecessary, a world of private sufficiency and public luxury.
→ read full articleInsectageddon
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Oct 2017
The scale and speed of environmental collapse is beyond imagination. Flying insects surveyed on nature reserves in Germany have declined by 76% in 27 years. The most likely cause of this Insectageddon is that the land surrounding those reserves has become hostile to them: the volume of pesticides and the destruction of habitat have turned farmland into a wildlife desert.
→ read full articleThe Meat of the Matter
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Oct 2017
4 Oct 2017 – What will future generations, looking back on our age, see as its monstrosities? One of them will be the mass incarceration of animals, to enable us to eat their flesh or eggs or drink their milk. While we call ourselves animal lovers, and lavish kindness on our dogs and cats, we inflict brutal deprivations on billions of animals, which are just as capable of suffering. The hypocrisy is so rank that future generations will marvel at how we could have failed to see it.
→ read full articleHow Do We Get Out of This Mess?
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Sep 2017
11 Sep 2017 – Here are my proposals for a new politics, designed for the 21st Century… We know that, if we can mobilise such silent majorities, there is nothing this small minority can do to stop us… As we rekindle our imagination, we discover our power to act. And that is the point at which we become unstoppable.
→ read full articleUrge, Splurge, Purge
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Sep 2017
As Milton Friedman, one of the architects of neoliberal ideology, put it, “Ecological values can find their natural space in the market, like any other consumer demand”. But there’s a flaw. Hurricanes do not respond to market signals. The plastic fibres in our oceans, food and drinking water do not respond to market signals. Nor does the collapse of insect populations, or coral reefs, or the extirpation of orangutans from Borneo.
→ read full articleThe Lady Has Turned
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Sep 2017
Aung San Suu Kyi should lose her Nobel Peace Prize, as a result of her disgraceful complicity in genocide.
→ read full articleDon’t Look Now
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Sep 2017
2 Sep 2017 – It is not only Donald Trump’s government that censors the discussion of climate change; it is the entire body of polite opinion. This is why the majority of news reports on Hurricane Harvey have made no mention of the human contribution. The media avoids the subject of climate breakdown – to do otherwise is to bring the entire infrastructure of thought crashing down.
→ read full articleMissing Link
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jul 2017
How a Secretive Network Built around a Nobel Prizewinner Set Out to Curtail Our Freedoms – The Swedish Academy in 1986 awarded James Buchanan the Nobel Memorial Prize for economics. It is one of several decisions that have turned this prize toxic.
→ read full articleThe Fortifying Commons
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Dec 2016
In the first of a series of columns about possible solutions, I explore how commons could transform society and the distribution of wealth.
→ read full articleThe Golden Arches Theory of Decline
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Dec 2016
Why is there a worldwide revolt against politics as usual? Because corporate globalisation has crushed democratic choice. One of the answers is to rescue democracy from transnational corporations. It is to defend the crucial political unit that’s under assault by banks, monopolies and chainstores: community. It is to recognise that there is no greater hazard to peace between nations than a corporate model which crushes democratic choice.
→ read full articleThe Misinformation Machine
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Dec 2016
Donald Trump’s staff are drawn from an opaque network of corporate-funded thinktanks and fake grassroots campaigns. You cannot confront a power until you know what it is. Our first task in this struggle is to understand what we face. Only then can we work out what to do.
→ read full articleCarmageddon Beckons
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Sep 2016
There are plenty of brilliant plans for getting us moving without trashing the planet. So why aren’t they happening? It was a mistake, a monumental, world-class mistake. Cars for everyone was one of the stupidest promises that politicians ever made.
→ read full articleHere They Come Again
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Sep 2016
TTIP – the transatlantic trade and investment partnership – appears to be dead, booed off the stage. But another treaty, whose likely impacts are almost identical, is waiting in the wings. And this one is more advanced, wanting only final approval. If this happens before Britain leaves the EU, we are likely to be stuck with it for the next 20 years.
→ read full articleStock Answer
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Aug 2016
Why I Took the Plunge At Last and Converted (Almost) to Veganism – The world can cope with 7 or even 10 billion people. But only if we stop eating meat. Livestock farming is the most potent means by which we amplify our presence on the planet. It’s the amount of land an animal-based diet needs that makes it so destructive.
→ read full articleThe Judgement of History
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jul 2016
7 Jul 2016 – Little is more corrosive of democracy than impunity. When politicians do terrible things and suffer no consequences, people lose trust in both politics and justice. Justice is inseparable from democracy. If a prime minister can avoid indictment for waging aggressive war, the entire body politic is corrupted. In the Chilcot report, there is a reckoning, firm and tough and long overdue. But it’s still not justice.
→ read full articleMoney’s Reach: Brexit vs EU
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2016
The European Union looks thoroughly rotten – until you compare it to the alternatives. Without sufficient public scrutiny, all political systems degenerate into the service of wealth. All end up controlled by the few with the cash, not the many with the votes. So the question we at the UK face next week is this: “In which political unit can money best be resisted?” We do not release ourselves from the power of money by leaving the EU. We just exchange one version for another: another that is even worse.
→ read full articleThe Zombie Doctrine
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Apr 2016
Crisis after crisis is being caused by a failed ideology. But it cannot be stopped without a coherent alternative. So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution.
→ read full articleSacrifice: Meat Producing Worse Than Airplanes for Environment
George Monbiot - TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2015
A Kg of beef protein can generate the equivalent of 643 kg of carbon dioxide. A kilogramme of lamb protein can generate 749 kg. One kilo of protein from either source, in other words, causes more greenhouse gas emissions than a passenger flying from London to New York.
→ read full articleThe Dolphin Killers of Cardigan Bay
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Nov 2015
Why does the Welsh government propose this gratuitous act of destruction? It refuses to say.
→ read full articleHow to Build a Crisis
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Nov 2015
Banks and corporations are being liberated from the rule of law, and are ripping the world apart. Restraining the electorate, releasing the powerful: this is a perfectly designed formula for a multi-dimensional crisis. And boy, are we reaping it!
→ read full articleSurgical Strike: NATO’s Bombs Fall like Confetti, Not Containing Conflict but Spreading It
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Oct 2015
Syria, Isis, Iraq … there are no easy solutions. But killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan and elsewhere draws more people into insurgencies. The US bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan is just one symptom of comprehensive military failure.
→ read full articleBritain’s Mafia State
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Sep 2015
Where does legitimate business end and organised crime begin?
→ read full articleEurope: Disinventing Democracy
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jul 2015
8 Jul 2015 – The assault on Greece is just the latest episode in a long history of shutting down choice on behalf of the financial elite. Greece might be financially bankrupt; the troika is politically bankrupt. Those who persecute this nation wield illegitimate, undemocratic powers: powers of the kind now afflicting us all.
→ read full articleChina Syndrome
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jun 2015
We should stop recycling the old “Yellow Peril” myth. The people most hostile to action on climate change are American and British, not Chinese. China is the world’s excuse for cruelty and barbarism. If we don’t behave atrociously, politicians and columnists assure us, China will, so we had better do it first, before we are outcompeted.
→ read full articleHow a Corporate Cult Captures and Destroys Our Best Graduates
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jun 2015
Universities should defend students against lovebombing by banks and consultancy firms – before it ruins their lives. Undergraduates must rely on their own wavering resolve to resist peer pressure, the herd instinct, the allure of money, flattery, prestige and security. Students, rebel against these soul-suckers! Follow your dreams, however hard it may be, however uncertain success might seem.
→ read full articleFowl Deeds – Faeces, Bacteria, Toxins: Welcome to the Chicken Farm
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2015
The astonishing, multiple crises caused by chicken farming. Whether it’s welfare standards, environmental impact or the emerging threat to human health, we’ve got to change our insatiable greed for this meat. Nor does free range solve the feed problem: the birds are usually fed on soya, for which rainforests are wrecked.
→ read full articleMegadeath [Rhino-Elephant-Hippo Extinction]
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 May 2015
The destruction of some of the last of the huge animals that shaped us inflicts a great wound in our lives.
→ read full articleA Hole in the [Capitalist] System
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 May 2015
The outrageous, untold story of how big business dumps its costs on us. Corporations ream the land with giant holes, extract a stack of money, then clear out, leaving other people with the costs. There’s a briefer description: legalised theft.
→ read full article(Português) Baleeiras Japonesas: Um Choque para o Sistema
George Monbiot – ANDA-Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais,
2 Mar 2015
Uma das maiores piadas na área de conservação é a afirmação vinda do governo japonês de que está praticando “pesca científica de baleias”. Todas as mortes causadas por sua frota de lançadores de arpões acontecem sob o pretexto de serem “pesquisa”, já que esta é única justificativa disponível sob regras internacionais.
→ read full articleA Shock to the System
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Feb 2015
One of the biggest jokes in conservation is the Japanese government’s claim to be engaged in “scientific whaling”. All the killing by its harpoon fleet takes place under the guise of “research”, as this is the only justification available, under international rules.
→ read full articleMessenger of the Gods
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Jan 2015
Our ‘Impartial’ Broadcasters Have Become Mouthpieces of the Elite – The illusion of neutrality is one of the reasons for the rotten state of journalism, as those who might have been expected to hold power to account drift thoughtlessly into its arms.
→ read full articleTrade Secrets*
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jan 2015
Why will no one answer the obvious, massive question about the TTIP-Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership? The UK government, like that of the US and 13 other EU members, wants to set up a separate judicial system, exclusively for the use of corporations.
→ read full articleAnimal Overgrowth
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
Every child should visit an abattoir. What can you say about a society whose food production must be hidden from public view? In which the factory farms and slaughterhouses supplying much of our diet must be guarded like arsenals to prevent us from seeing what happens there?
→ read full articleA Vision for Nature
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Dec 2014
As governments tear down the rules that defend our wildlife from extinction, here’s a positive attempt to stop the wreckage.
→ read full articleGrowth: The Destructive, Insatiable God That Can Never Be Appeased
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Nov 2014
The blind pursuit of economic growth stokes a cycle of financial crisis, and wrecks our world. Another crash is coming. We all know it, now even David Cameron acknowledges it. The only questions are what the immediate catalyst will be, and when it begins.
→ read full articleTransatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership-TTIP: A Gunpowder Plot against Democracy
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Nov 2014
This bill of rights for corporations will blow up the sovereignty of parliaments. So outrageous is this arrangement that even the Economist, usually the champion of corporate power and trade treaties, has now come out against calling its investor-state dispute settlement “a way to let multinational companies get rich at the expense of ordinary people”.
→ read full articleDeviant and Proud: Sick of This Market-Driven World? You Should Be
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Aug 2014
The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure … whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers. So if you don’t fit in; if you feel at odds with the world; if your identity is troubled and frayed; if you feel lost and ashamed, it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.
→ read full articleThe Impossibility of Growth
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jun 2014
The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth’s living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence. We live obsessed with fame, fashion and the three dreary staples of middle class conversation: recipes, renovations and resorts. Anything but the topic that demands our attention.
→ read full articleDestroyer of Worlds
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Mar 2014
New research suggests there was no state of grace: for two million years humankind has been the natural world’s nemesis.You want to know who we are? Really? This article, if you have any love for the world, will inject you with a venom – a soul-scraping sadness – without an obvious antidote.
→ read full articleAll Give and No Take
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Mar 2014
Do those negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership have any interest in democracy? Here’s a test. Nothing threatens democracy as much as corporate power. Nowhere do corporations operate with greater freedom than between nations, for here there is no competition. With the exception of the European parliament there is no transnational democracy, anywhere.
→ read full articleThe Lies behind This Transatlantic Trade Deal – Managing Transparency
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2013
* Politicians and officials are desperately seeking to justify their transatlantic assault on democracy.
* Plans to create an EU-US single market will allow corporations to sue governments using secretive panels, bypassing courts and parliaments.
It’s Business That Really Rules Us Now
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2013
Lobbying is the least of it: corporate interests have captured the entire democratic process. No wonder so many have given up on politics. Nothing will change until we confront the real sources of power.
→ read full articleThis Transatlantic Trade Deal Is a Full-Frontal Assault on Democracy
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Nov 2013
A global ban on left-wing politics: That’s what the new rules being smuggled into trade agreements are delivering. Brussels has kept quiet about a treaty that would let rapacious companies subvert our laws, rights and national sovereignty.
→ read full articleElite Insurgency
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2013
The real threat to the national interest comes from the rich and powerful. Subversion ain’t what it used to be. Today it scarcely figures as a significant force. Nation states are threatened by something else. Superversion: an attack from above.
→ read full articleAge of Unreason
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2013
The governments of Britain, Canada and Australia are trying to stamp out scientific dissent. Shut up, speak through me, don’t dissent, or your behaviour will ensure that science becomes irrelevant. Note that the conflicts between science and policy are caused by scientists, rather than by politicians ignoring or abusing the evidence.
→ read full article(Português) Neonicotinoides: Que São e Como Podem Afetar Você
George Monbiot – Outras Palavras,
16 Sep 2013
Como no caso do DDT, ameaçaram pessoas que se mostraram preocupadas, publicaram argumentos enganosos e fizeram de tudo para ludibriar o público. E, como para garantir que a história segue o velho roteiro, governos colaboraram com esse esforço. Entre os mais (ir)responsáveis está o do Reino Unido.
→ read full articleObama’s Rogue State Calls on Other Nations to Abide By the Treaties It Violates
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Sep 2013
The US. You could almost pity these people. For 67 years successive US governments have resisted calls to reform the UN Security Council. They’ve defended a system which grants five nations a veto over world affairs, reducing all others to impotent spectators; abused the powers and trust with which they have been vested; collaborated with the other four permanent members (the UK, Russia, China and France) in a colonial carve-up, through which these nations can pursue their own corrupt interests at the expense of peace and global justice.
→ read full articleThe Self-Hating State
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2013
Devolving policy to “the market” doesn’t solve the problem of power. It makes it worse. States now operate at the behest of others. Deregulation, privatisation, the shrinking of the scope, scale and spending of the state: these are now seen as the only legitimate policies. The corporations and billionaires to whom governments defer will have it no other way.
→ read full articleThe Spark of Hope
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2013
Any movement which seeks to challenge the power of the elite needs to ask itself what it takes to shake people out of this state. And the answer seems inescapable: hope. Those who govern on behalf of billionaires are threatened only when confronted by the power of a transformative idea. A century and more ago the idea was communism.
→ read full articleCardinal Sins
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2013
How a modern Inquisition, with the help of Pope Francis, stifled the movement protecting the poor. “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” So said the Brazilian archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara. His adage exposes one of the great fissures in the Catholic Church, and the emptiness of the new Pope’s claim to be on the side of the poor.
→ read full articleFrozen Assets
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2013
Why are we exploiting unconventional gas when we can’t afford to burn existing supplies?
→ read full article‘Bug-Splats’
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Dec 2012
Some dead children are mourned; others are dehumanised. Barack Obama’s tears for the children of Newtown are in stark contrast to his silence over the children murdered by his drones.
→ read full articleWolfbane
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Nov 2012
So much for Norway’s eco-friendly image. Canada has mutated from a liberal, pacific, outward-looking values country to a thuggish petro-state, ripping up both international treaties and the fabric of its own nation. Another country, whose green and humanitarian principles were just as well-established as Canada’s, is undergoing a similar transformation. Again, it is not the people who have changed – in both cases they remain as delightful as ever – but the dominant political class and its destruction of both national values and international image. I am talking about Norway.
→ read full articleThe Art of Dissuasion
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Oct 2012
A letter to the editors of Media Lens. As you know, journalists whose politics are broadly in line with yours, and who are hostile to big business and the corporate domination of politics and the media, have become, following your attempts to engage with them, not your allies but your sworn enemies. I think it’s time for you to take stock and ask why this has been happening.
→ read full articleThe Empire Strikes Back
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Oct 2012
Imperialism did almost as much harm to the ruling nations as it did to their subject peoples. Over the gates of Auschwitz were the words “Work Makes You Free”. Over the gates of the Solovetsky camp in Lenin’s gulag: “Through Labour – Freedom!”. Over the gates of the Ngenya detention camp, run by the British in Kenya: “Labour and Freedom”. Dehumanisation appears to follow an almost inexorable course.
→ read full articleThe Mind Thieves
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Sep 2012
The evidence linking Alzheimer’s disease to the food industry is strong and growing.
→ read full articleA Step towards the Dock
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Sep 2012
The prospect of a trial for Tony Blair now starts to look more plausible. When Desmond Tutu wrote that Tony Blair should be treading the path to the Hague, he de-normalised what Blair has done. Tutu broke the protocol of power – the implicit accord between those who flit from one grand meeting to another – and named his crime. I expect that Blair will never recover from it.
→ read full articleBounty Paid for Blair Arrest Attempt
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Sep 2012
On Tuesday [4 Sep 2012] the Arrest Blair campaign will pay Tom Grundy £2,400 for his attempt to arrest Tony Blair during a public event in Hong Kong. The campaign was established to uphold the principle that no one is above the law. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, commissioned by George W. Bush and Tony Blair, meets the definition of a crime against peace, established by the Nuremberg Principles and described by the Nuremberg Tribunal as “the supreme international crime.”
→ read full articleThe Great Impostors
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Aug 2012
In the name of saving the natural world, governments are privatising it. “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘this is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
→ read full articleScorched Earth Economics
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Aug 2012
Neoliberals claim that we are best served by maximising market freedom and minimising the role of the state. The free market, left to its own devices, will deliver efficiency, choice and prosperity. All tasks would be better discharged by private enterprise. The quest for Year Zero market purity was dangerous enough in theory; distorted by the grubby realities of life on earth it is devastating to the welfare of both people and planet.
→ read full articleEnd of an Era
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jul 2012
So now what do we do to defend life on Earth? Was it too much to have asked of the world’s governments, which performed such miracles in developing stealth bombers and drone warfare, global markets and trillion dollar bail-outs, that they might spend a tenth of the energy and resources they devoted to these projects on defending our living planet? It seems, sadly, that it was.
→ read full articleHow “Sustainability” Became “Sustained Growth”
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jun 2012
The Rio Declaration rips up the basic principles of environmental action.
→ read full articleThe Mendacity of Hope
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jun 2012
The summits which promise to save the world keep us dangling, not mobilising. Worn down by hope. That’s the predicament of those who have sought to defend the earth’s living systems. Every time governments meet to discuss the environmental crisis, we are told that this is the “make or break summit”, upon which the future of the world depends.
→ read full articleA Monstrous Proposal
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 May 2012
Why the private sector should be subject to freedom of information laws.
→ read full articleEmpire of Capital
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 May 2012
Colonialism Never Ended, It Continues by Different Means – Despite its trumpeted reforms, the IMF remains under the control of the US and the former colonial powers. Belgium still has eight times the votes of Bangladesh, Italy a bigger share than India, and the United Kingdom and France between them more voting power than the 49 African members. The managing director remains, as imperial tradition insists, a European, her deputy an American.
→ read full articleThe Big Green Question
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Feb 2012
Is environmentalism compatible with social justice? Journalists writing for the corporate press, with views somewhere to the right of Vlad the Impaler and no prior record of concern for the poor, suddenly become their doughty champions when the interests of the proprietorial class are threatened. If tar sands cannot be extracted in Canada, they maintain, subsistence farmers in Africa will starve. If Tesco’s profits are threatened, children will die of malaria. When it is done cleverly, promoting the interests of corporations and the ultra-rich under the guise of concern for the poor is an effective public relations strategy.
→ read full articleLiberal Constipation
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Feb 2012
Conservatism is linked to low intelligence; but the real idiots are the progressives letting it win. Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today’s progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation.
→ read full articleDivine Injustice
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Jan 2012
Drone warfare can be used to thwart democratic movements, anywhere. In October last year, a 16 year-old called Tariq Aziz was travelling through North Waziristan in Pakistan with his 12 year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. Their car was hit by a missile from a US drone(13). As always, their deaths made them guilty: if we killed them, they must be terrorists. But they weren’t. Tariq was about to start work with the human rights group Reprieve, taking pictures of the aftermath of drone strikes. A mistake? Possibly. But it is also possible that he was murdered out of self-interest.
→ read full articleHow Freedom Became Tyranny
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Dec 2011
Rightwing libertarians have turned “freedom” into an excuse for greed and exploitation. They speak as if the same freedom affects everybody in the same way, asserting their freedom to pollute, exploit, even – among the gun nuts – to kill, as if these were fundamental human rights. They characterise any attempt to restrain them as tyranny and refuse to see that there is a clash between the freedom of the pike and the freedom of the minnow.
→ read full articleNo Bail-Out for the Planet
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Dec 2011
Why is it so easy to save the banks, but so hard to save the biosphere? They bailed out the banks in days. But even deciding to bail out the planet is taking decades. No legislator, as far as I know, has yet been able to explain why making $7.7tn available to the banks is affordable, while investing far smaller sums in new technologies and energy saving is not.
→ read full articleThe Self-Attribution Fallacy
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Nov 2011
Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality. If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy.
→ read full articleSucking Out Our Brains through Our Eyes
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Oct 2011
Advertising trashes our happiness and trashes the planet. And my income depends on it. Nor is the problem confined to the commercial media. Even those who write only for their own websites rely on search engines, platforms and programmes ultimately funded by advertising. We’re hooked on a drug that is destroying society. As with all addictions, the first step is to admit to it.
→ read full articleGoing Naked
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Oct 2011
I’ve seen how groups purporting to be spontaneous gatherings of grassroots activists, fighting the regulation of tobacco or demanding that governments should take no action on climate change, have in fact been created and paid for by corporations: a practice known as astroturfing. A voluntary register is a small step towards transparency. What I would really like to see is a mandatory list of journalists’ financial interests, similar to the House of Commons registry. I believe that everyone who steps into public life should be obliged to show who is paying them, and how much.
→ read full articleA Hippocratic Oath for Journalists
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2011
What do we do about the power of the corporate media? Here’s one answer.
→ read full articleWhy This Matters
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Apr 2011
We have to be sure our facts about nuclear power are right, as the latest exchange with Helen Caldicott shows. My request was a simple one: I asked her to give me sources for the claims she had made about the effects of radiation.
→ read full articleOil and Trouble
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Mar 2011
Why western governments won’t support democracy in Saudi Arabia. Did you hear it? The clamour from western governments for democracy in Saudi Arabia? The howls of outrage from the White House and Number 10 about the shootings on Thursday, the suppression of protests on Friday, the arrival of Saudi troops in Bahrain on Monday? No? Nor did I. Did we miss it, or do they believe that change is less necessary in Saudi Arabia than it is in Libya? If so, on what grounds?
→ read full articleCold Burn
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Dec 2010
Yes, the extreme cold in the UK right now really could be a result of global warming.
→ read full articleReclaim the Cyber-Commons
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Dec 2010
The internet is being captured by organised trolls. It’s time we fought back. They are the online equivalent of enclosure riots: the rick-burning, fence-toppling protests by English peasants losing their rights to the land. When MasterCard, Visa, Paypal and Amazon tried to shut WikiLeaks out of the cyber-commons, an army of hackers responded by trying to smash their way into these great estates and pull down their fences.
→ read full articleA Ghost Agreement
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Nov 2010
Everyone agrees that the new declaration on biodiversity is a triumph. Just one snag: it doesn’t appear to exist.
→ read full articleThe Aliens Are Coming
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Oct 2010
We appear to be incapable of dealing with invasive species while there’s still time. We can sow chaos with a keystroke in an investment bank, with one signal to a Predator drone, a seed dislodged from the sole of a boot, a fish tank emptied into a canal. But when asked to repair the mess we’ve made, we proclaim our impotence. Our challenge this century is to meet our capacity for harm with an equal power for good. We are not, so far, doing very well.
→ read full articlePutting the Pope on Trial
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Apr 2010
International law presents a radical challenge to the powerful: they could be judged by the same standards as the rest of us.
→ read full articleTHE UNPERSUADABLES
George Monbiot,
9 Mar 2010
In fighting for science, we subscribe to a comforting illusion: that people can be swayed by the facts. There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake […]
→ read full article