George Monbiot is a British journalist and public intellectual, who is also known for his environmental activism. He co-founded the group This Land Is Ours, whose purpose was to try to revitalise public engagement in decisions about how the land is used. The group waged a peaceful campaign for the right of access to the countryside and its resources in the United Kingdom. His latest book, Out of the Wreckage: A new politics for an age of crisis (August 2017) followed on the heels of How Did We Get into This Mess? (February 2017). His other best selling books are The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order (2003) and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain (2000). Monbiot has written a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper since 1996. Visit his website at www.monbiot.com.
Young Climate Strikers Can Win their Fight. We Must All Help
By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog
This one has to succeed. It is not just that the youth climate strike, now building worldwide with tremendous speed, is our best (and possibly our last) hope of avoiding catastrophe.
Could this Local Experiment be the Start of a National Transformation?
By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog
They launched Every One, Every Day in November 2017, opening two shops (the first of five) on high streets in Barking and Dagenham. The shops don’t sell anything but are places where people meet, discuss ideas and launch projects.
As the Fracking Protesters Show, a People’s Rebellion is the Only Way to Fight Climate Breakdown
By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog
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 collect their reward in the form of lucrative directorships.
While Economic Growth Continues We’ll Never Kick our Fossil Fuels Habit
By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog
There may be more electric vehicles on the world’s roads, but there are also more internal combustion engines. There be more bicycles, but there are also more planes. It doesn’t matter how many good things we do: preventing climate breakdown means ceasing to do bad things.
Wheel of Fortune
By George Monbiot, Monbiot.com
Wealth and power concentrate not because those we confront are wicked (though there are one or two). Their escalation, in the absence of a political movement to restrain it, is an intrinsic feature of complex human societies. It occurred even in the world’s first cities, in southern Mesopotamia.
The Town that’s Found a Potent Cure for Illness – Community
By George Monbiot, The Guardian
It could, if the results stand up, be one of the most dramatic medical breakthroughs of recent decades. It could transform treatment regimes, save lives, and save health services a fortune. Is it a drug? A device? A surgical procedure? No, it’s a newfangled intervention called community.
Stepping Back from the Brink: The Patterning Instinct
By George Monbiot, Monbiot.com
Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct was published a few months ago, but it has taken me this long to process, as almost every page caused me to rethink what I held to be true. Bringing together cultural history with neuroscience, Lent develops a new discipline he calls cognitive history.
Monbiot: ‘We Need that New Political Narrative’
By Nick Dowson, George Monbiot, New Internationalist
Prompted by the sense that we are living through a moment of transition, George's latest book, ‘Out Of The Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis’, attempts to sketch a way forward. Most important to this project, he argues, is a political ‘narrative’ that can gain traction as the new ‘common sense’, carrying within it our values and the society that we want live in. But the book is also full of practical proposals, from land value taxes and community land trusts, to democratic reforms and ‘Big Organizing’.