George Monbiot

I often hear this argument, "oh, but how far can we possibly go??! But deer are pretty?!", especially from farmers and grouse shooting estates here in the UK. It's wild, because it's so easy to measure and asses: an ecological desert, dying ecosystem, rich in single overgrazing specie is unequivocally bad. Rich, lush ecosystems sustaining great biodiversity and ecologically unique features (eg chalk streams or temperate rainforests in the UK) are good. Killing everything for the sake of one specie: Bad. More on that if your position is honest: https://www.monbiot.com/2025/05/12/the-commoner-kings/

Yes, this article gets to the heart of the problem, like a few others, eg https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/30/the-problem-is-capitalism/ Electric cars and other techno-fixes at best reduce the damage caused by what we do, and at worst, hide the damage from us. The actual problem is in what we do, how we live. IMHO there are two sustainable paths. We can live 'in nature', as the article suggests. This probably requires a much lower population, and probable accepting nature's solutions to problems. Famine for over-population, etc. Or we can detach entirely from nature. Live in beautiful self-sustaining cities, our food produced by cell culture, fermentation, indoor farms, etc, energy from solar, deep geothermal, etc. The rest of the world is a nature reserve.

I'm reminded of this great read, "The Impossibility of Growth." http://www.monbiot.com/2014/05/27/the-impossibility-of-growth/

George Monbiot is a rare breed: a journalist with great integrity and transparency. As a case in point his "Registries of Interests" lists his annual fees, sources of income from one-off articles, gifts he was given, and just about anything that implicates him financially! It is astoundingly good and he makes a fine example that I wish more journalists and news organisations would follow. http://www.monbiot.com/registry-of-interests/

When articles like this come out it's important to exercise a bit of healthy scepticism and look at whether this study was funded by interested corporations. This does happen, and sometimes through non-profits that are themselves fronts for corporations. See this excellent article by George Monbiot from a while back: http://www.monbiot.com/2006/02/07/smoke-rings/

Here is an excellent rebuttal of the whole concept: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/08/16/towering-lunacy/

In Ireland (and I'd guess in most of Europe) bogs are are artificial landscapes, the result of mass deforestation and overgrazing. I don't see them as warranting any particular preservation. At least in the case of Ireland peatland preservation is just trying to preserve a very particular artefact of the agricultural revolution. Maybe it's different elsewhere... . It's about as worthy a cause to me as a golf-course preservation movement would be (ignoring the carbon-sequesterisation aspect of the argument, which I don't feel like assessing right now). In the UK there's an lot amount of wildlife 'preservation' effort + money spent on on 'preserving' the landscape as an 18th century agricultural-industry idyll (including making sure that the actually indigenous flora+fauna doesn't get out of hand) rather than actually returning it to a more sustainable wilderness. George Monbiot has a big bit on this with his re-wilding schtick - https://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/27/a-manifesto-for-rewilding-the-world… .

>People love to complain about work, but in reality if they become unemployed, many people's lives are destroyed. That's only when they have been raised in cultures that teach them that their work is their ultimate purpose, and have them structure every aspect of their lives around it. Nobody dies from not having to work in Mediterranean culture's for example... >A ton of people work to make everything I enjoy. The food, the buildings, the vehicles, roads, appliances, etc. Millions of people who get up in the morning and work through the day and come home exhausted make all of this possible. Besides the food, the buildings, the vehicles, roads, appliances, etc, that people do want and depend on, billions of people are also forced to work to make all kinds of crap they don't care about, that makes no difference, is marked up 5 to 100 percent, for others to be unhappy consuming them, and to kill the environment with externalities in the process. E.g.: https://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/ http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

There are two things that I consider important to keep in mind when discussing this kind of stuff: the issues with celebrity culture, probably best captured in "celebrity is not harmless fun – it’s the lieutenant of exploitation" by George Monbiot, and (criticisms of) Great Man theory and how that highlights the importance of distinguishing the individual from the structural[0][1]. From Monbiot's writing: > Corporation means body; capital means head. But corporate capital has neither head nor body. It is hard for people to attach themselves to a homogenised franchise, owned by a hedge fund whose corporate identity consists of a filing cabinet in Panama City. So the machine needs a mask. It must wear the face of someone we see as often as we see our next-door neighbours. It is pointless to ask what Kim Kardashian does to earn her living; her role is to exist in our minds. By playing our virtual neighbour, she induces a click of recognition on behalf of whatever grey monolith sits behind her this week. Of course, Bill Gates isn't just a nerd-celebrity, he was the actual boss of Microsoft, and as such has a big impact on its culture and vision and all of that. Nevertheless, equating Bill Gates with MS is akin to saying that I am my neocortex while ignoring every other part of my body. With giant companies like MS and Apple, neither Gates nor Jobs were the company. A lot of faceless people steer the whole thing. Which brings us to Great Man theory: > You must admit that the…

> The variation is too great to paint everyone with the same brush. It's like saying 'everyone makes mistakes'; yes, but some make far more than others; I think you are referring to China making more mistakes then UK in the past. If anything, I think it's the opposite. For example, the whole world made a huge deal(rightfully so) about the tiananmen square protest in China. Have you heard of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre ? Hundreds of unarmed peaceful men, women and children were murdered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre > Do you have any evidence? A history book? A study of history books? "Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes" https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-c… You can see the bullet marks preserved in Jallianwala Bagh. There is a well inside the premises where people jumped to hide from bullets. 120 bodies were recovered later from that well alone. http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/8-pictures-of-jallianwala-bagh-th… EDIT: Here is one more, it isn't hard to find with few online searches ".. Mike Davis tells the story of the famines which killed between 12 and 29 million Indians(1). These people were, he demonstrates, murdered by British state policy.." "..In the Express we can read the historian Andrew Roberts arguing that for “the vast majority of its half millennium-long history, the British Empire was an exemplary force for good.…

My blog and podcast feeds go around these few main interests of mine: software, art, design, music and Apple. Podcasts: Varieties, science, design. * This American Life. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ * Radiolab. http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/ * Planet Money. http://www.npr.org/planetmoney * Stuff You Should Know. http://www.howstuffworks.com/ * The Infinite Monkey Cage. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snr0w * The Weekly Briefly (Shawn Blanc). http://feedpress.me/weeklybriefly * Actuality (from Quartz). http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/actuality-marketplace-and-quar… * Anticast (for Portuguese speakers out there - the best Brazilian podcast I know). http://www.brainstorm9.com.br/anticast/ * 99% Invisible. http://99percentinvisible.prx.org/ Technology, programming, Apple, etc. * Debug. http://www.imore.com/debug/ * Mac Power Users. http://www.relay.fm/mpu * Accidental Tech Podcast. http://atp.fm/ * Overtired. http://www.esn.fm/overtired/ * The Vergecast. http://www.theverge.com/verge/verge_archives/show?mode=EntryGroup&… * What's Tech (also from The Verge, fun show). http://www.theverge.com/whatstech * Pragmatic. http://techdistortion.com/podcasts/pragmatic * Iterate. http://www.imore.com/iterate * The Changelog. http://5by5.tv/changelog * Build Podcast (each post is actually a screencast about some technology). http://build-podcast.com/ * The Talk Show With John Gruber. http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow *…

IMO these should be required reading for anyone unfamiliar with Chomsky's positions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chomsky_and_He… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide_denial https://www.monbiot.com/2012/05/21/2181/ (Chomsky defending the decision to write a foreword for a book denying the Rwandan genocide) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair (Chomsky signed a petition supporting a Holocaust denier he felt had been mistreated)

Already happening. The UK is confiscating books for not being aligned with the government's foreign policy. https://www.monbiot.com/2025/08/01/legal-limbo/

As rjsw says, they refuse to disclose who funds them. See https://www.monbiot.com/2022/10/07/thinktanking-the-country/ for some background.

> all this individual effort did little to stop the flood of new single-use plastics entering the waste stream every day. That's the i-Frame "The i-Frame and the s-Frame: How Focusing on Individual-Level Solutions Has Led Behavioral Public Policy Astray" <https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4046264> > Rather than calling attention to working with what we already have, and simply buying less, it was still grounded in producing and shipping more “things.” The story called it "consumerism", which again is the i-Frame. The correct word is "capitalism", and the incentives driving it. See "The Gift of Death" https://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/

What a nice blog. I don't think I have ever said this before. I read several articles and agree with the thought process of this person. This one touched me https://www.monbiot.com/2023/10/24/necroculture/

It might be https://www.monbiot.com/2013/07/16/the-naturalists-who-are-terrified-o… or similar. Strange to see how different Britain is from the USA, maybe because the USA is slightly bigger. Around here there's any number of conservation/wildlife preserves and they literally buy land, maybe put a trail through it and a dinky dirt parking lot at the trailhead, and then just leave it alone. As in literally don't do anything.

My understanding was that was the umbrella term for various technologies one of which Solar Foods use. https://www.monbiot.com/2022/11/26/fermenting-a-revolution/ Is it incorrect?

The Conservative Party has been the play thing of the rich and informous for years. The Undead by George Monbiot : https://www.monbiot.com/2022/09/21/the-undead/

Well, I guess 'terraforming' is an overstatement, but hill farming in general and the sheep specifically have had a profound effect on the landscape. This link is to a polemic, but it also contains plenty of references. https://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/30/sheepwrecked/

Read this - https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/07/rewild-the-world/ Donate to the organisations listed here - https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002296049-Does-Ecosia-…

In a free, decentralized environment, you'll get jackals (tragedy of the commons) That phrase "tragedy of the commons" has an interesting history! It's propaganda used to justify the privatization of common land, according to George Monbiot: http://www.monbiot.com/1994/01/01/the-tragedy-of-enclosure/

Fun piece but it lacks any realistic depth. For example the claim that "your score can increase to infinity, if you just push yourself harder" is a concept that is untrue and obsolete. http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy/ Further, the realities of privilege, oppression and discrimination are completely ignored.

Vertical farming is an energy nightmare. It requires at least 1000x more energy than conventional agriculture because you have to provide supplemental light for the plants to grow indoors. Others have addressed this: "... the light required to grow the 500 grammes of wheat that a loaf of bread contains would cost, at current prices, £9.82. (The current farm gate price for half a kilo of wheat is 6p.) That’s just lighting: no inputs, interest, rents, rates, or labour. Somehow this minor consideration – that plants need light to grow and that they aren’t going to get it except on the top storey – has been overlooked by the scheme’s supporters. I won’t bother to explain the environmental impacts." -- http://www.monbiot.com/2010/08/16/towering-lunacy/

Very informative. Another tax haven many people are unaware of is the City of London. George Monbiot puts it this way: The Corporation of the City of London is the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally unaccountable. (See http://www.monbiot.com/2011/10/31/wealth-destroyers/ and http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city )

For those wondering what's wrong with TTIP, a while ago Geroge Monibot wrote a well documented piece about it: http://www.monbiot.com/2013/11/04/a-global-ban-on-left-wing-politics/

Strange he doesn't link directly to the article: http://www.monbiot.com/2014/01/06/dead-zone/ Imagine reading this article in a few months, then this article would have been buried further down on monbiot.com (Perhaps he is not permitted directly to the article from the Guardian's website.)

Matt Ridley should stick to blowing up banks and leave the climate alone. http://www.monbiot.com/2010/06/01/the-man-who-wants-to-northern-rock-t…

Surprised nobody has mentioned a Land Value Tax. http://www.monbiot.com/2013/01/21/a-telling-silence/ http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2012/02/land-tax-income-…