George Monbiot

George Joshua Richard Monbiot (/ˈmɒnbioʊ/ MON-bee-oh; born 27 January 1963) is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain (2000) and Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding (2013). He is the founder of The Land is Ours, a peaceful campaign for the right of access to the countryside and its resources in the United Kingdom.

In January 2010, Monbiot founded the ArrestBlair.org website, which offers a reward to people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of former British prime minister Tony Blair for alleged crimes against peace.

George Monbiot grew up in Henley-on-Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, in a house next to Peppard Common. Politics was at the heart of family life—his father, Raymond Geoffrey Monbiot, is a businessman who headed the Conservative Party's trade and industry forum, while his mother, Rosalie—the elder daughter of Conservative MP Roger Gresham Cooke—was a Conservative councillor who led South Oxfordshire District Council for a decade. His uncle, Canon Hereward Cooke, was the Liberal Democrat deputy leader of Norwich City Council between 2002 and 2006.

Monbiot was educated at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, an independent school, and won an open scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford. He stated that his "political awakening" was prompted by reading Bettina Ehrlich's book Paolo and Panetto while at Stowe, and that he regretted attending Oxford, stating that his time there was unhappy and he did not fit in with the college's culture.

After graduating in zoology, Monbiot joined the BBC Natural History Unit as a radio producer, making natural history and environmental programmes. He transferred to the BBC's World Service, where he worked briefly as a current affairs producer and presenter, before leaving to research and write his first book.

Working as an investigative journalist, he travelled in Indonesia, Brazil, and East Africa. His activities led to his being made persona non grata in seven countries and being sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Indonesia. In these places, he was also shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets. He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria.

In Britain, he joined the roads protest movement and was often called to give press interviews; as a result he was denounced as a "media tart" by groups such as Green Anarchist and Class War. He was attacked by security guards, who allegedly drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle metatarsal bone. His injuries left him in hospital. Sir Crispin Tickell, a former British diplomat at the United Nations, who was then Warden at Green College, Oxford, made the young protester a Visiting Fellow. He was an active member of the Pure Genius!! campaign and co-founded The Land is Ours, which has occupied land at several locations in Britain. Its first high-profile success was in 1997, when it occupied thirteen acres (five hectares) of prime real estate on the river in London on which its owner, beverages multinational Diageo, intended to build a superstore. The protesters defeated Diageo in court, built an "eco-village," and held on to the land for six months.

Monbiot began writing for the Guardian in 1996. He may be the first journalist worldwide to fully reference his columns, having done so since 2003. Among his best-known articles are: A long read about the wide-ranging impacts of neoliberalism: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot About the “corporate misinformation machine” that supplied many of Donald Trump’s staffers: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/30/donald-trump-george-monbiot-misinformation About the global crisis of soil loss: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/25/treating-soil-like-dirt-fatal-mistake-human-life About the psychological and physical impacts of the “age of loneliness”: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us

He appears to have been: the first journalist to have raised concerns about the environmental impacts of biofuels, in 2004: http://www.monbiot.com/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/ the first to propose leaving fossil fuels in the ground to prevent climate change, in 2007: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/dec/11/comment.greenpolitics and the first in the national press to have exposed the letter sent by David Cameron, revealing the prime minister’s naivety about the impact of his government’s cuts: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/11/david-cameron-letter-cuts-oxfordshire

His article in 2014 about the public subsidies and farm policies that exacerbate flooding triggered a major national debate, that continues to this day: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/flooding-public-spending-britain-europe-policies-homes

He gave a Ted talk in July 2013: https://www.ted.com/talks/george_monbiot_for_more_wonder_rewild_the_world An extract from the talk, called How Wolves Change Rivers, set to pictures and music by the Sustainable Human group, has been watched 28 million times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q&t=4s

Monbiot made a second video with Sustainable Human, called How Whales Change Climate (January 2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18HxXve3CM

In 2016, he revealed that he had converted to veganism a year earlier: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/09/vegan-corrupt-food-system-meat-dairy

In January 2011, Monbiot took the unusual step of publishing an account of his assets. In the interests of transparency, Monbiot explained that he earned £77,400 a year, gross, from publishing contracts and rents, and urged other journalists to follow suit. He continues to publish his financial accounts on his website.

He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics), Oxford Brookes (planning), and East London (environmental science).

Monbiot lived in Oxford for many years, but in 2007 moved with his then-wife, writer and campaigner Angharad Penrhyn Jones, and daughter to a low emissions house in the mid-Wales market town of Machynlleth. Monbiot's second daughter was born in the spring of 2012. Because his new partner lives in Oxford, Monbiot had returned there by 2013.

In November 2012, he apologised to Lord McAlpine for his "stupidity and thoughtlessness" in implying, in a tweet, that the Tory peer was a paedophile. In March 2013, Monbiot announced on his blog the details of a settlement reached with Lord McAlpine's representatives. Monbiot agreed "to carry out, over the next three years, work on behalf of three charities of my choice whose value amounts to £25,000", which he described as an "unprecedented settlement".

Album

In October 2016, George Monbiot released his first album, Breaking the Spell of Loneliness (http://alanbearmanmusic.co.uk/artists/george-monbiot-ewan-mclennan/), written with the musician Ewan McLennan. Monbiot wrote the first draft of the lyrics, McLennan refined them and wrote the music. This is a concept album on the theme of loneliness and how it might be addressed.

It arose from an article Monbiot wrote in the Guardian (The age of loneliness is killing us) (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us) . The article went viral, but instead of accepting offers from publishers to write a book about it, Monbiot wanted to do something that had the potential to bring people together. He approached McLennan with the idea (http://www.monbiot.com/music/).

The album has been well-reviewed (http://www.monbiot.com/music/), earning four stars in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/20/ewan-mclennan-and-george-monbiot-breaking-the-spell-of-loneliness-review-fellside), Songlines and R2 magazine, and five stars in EDS magazine.

Monbiot and McLennan have been touring the album around Britain (http://www.ewanmclennan.co.uk/breaking-the-spell-of-loneliness) – Monbiot discusses the themes and McLennan plays and sings the songs. The performances are designed to create social connections: the audience is encouraged to meet each other and continue the evening in a nearby pub.

Climate change

Monbiot believes that drastic action coupled with strong political will is needed to combat global warming. Monbiot has written that climate change is the "moral question of the 21st century" and that there is an urgent need for a number of emergency actions he believes will stop climate change, including: setting targets on greenhouse emissions using the latest science; issuing every citizen with a "personal carbon ration"; new building regulations with houses built to German passivhaus standards; banning incandescent light bulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights, and other inefficient technologies and wasteful applications; constructing large offshore wind farms; replacing the national gas grid with a hydrogen pipe network; a new national coach network to make journeys using public transport faster than using a car; all petrol stations to supply leasable electric car batteries with stations equipped with a crane service to replace depleted batteries; scrap road-building and road-widening programmes, redirecting their budgets to tackle climate change; reduce UK airport capacity by 90 percent; closing down all out-of-town superstores and replacing them with warehouses and a delivery system.

Monbiot says the campaign against climate change is "unlike almost all the public protests" that came before it. "It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves."

Monbiot also thinks that economic recession can be a good thing for the planet: "Is it not time to recognise that we have reached the promised land, and should seek to stay there? Why would we want to leave this place in order to explore the blackened waste of consumer frenzy followed by ecological collapse? Surely the rational policy for the governments of the rich world is now to keep growth rates as close to zero as possible?" While he does recognize that recession can cause hardship, he points out that economic growth can cause hardship as well. For example, the increase in sales of jet skis would count as economic growth, but they would also cause hardships such as water pollution and noise pollution.

Monbiot purchased a used diesel Renault Clio after moving to Machynlleth in 2007. He has travelled through Canada and the United States, campaigning on climate change and promoting his book. He contends that this travel was justifiable as it sought to boost the case for much greater carbon cuts there.

He is the patron of the UK student campaign network People & Planet and appears in the film The Age of Stupid in animated form, in which he says "The very fact that the crisis is taking place within our generation, it's happening right now, means that we are tremendously powerful people. So this position of despair and 'I can't do anything' and 'there's no point' is completely illogical, it's exactly the opposite".

Monbiot attended the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen.

Monbiot once expressed deep antipathy to the nuclear industry. He finally rejected his later neutral position regarding nuclear power in March 2011. Although he "still loathe[s] the liars who run the nuclear industry", Monbiot now advocates its use, having been convinced of its relative safety by what he considers the limited effects of the 2011 Japan tsunami on nuclear reactors in the region. Subsequently, he has harshly condemned the anti-nuclear movement, writing that it "has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health...made [claims] ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged and wildly wrong." He singled out Helen Caldicott for, he wrote, making unsourced and inaccurate claims, dismissing contrary evidence as part of a cover-up, and overstating the death toll from the Chernobyl disaster by a factor of more than 140. In October 2013 Monbiot criticized the selection of a generation III reactor design for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station due to cost as well as for a half century requirement of uranium mining and transuranic waste production. He contrasted this with two generation IV reactor concepts: "if integral fast reactors were deployed, the UK's stockpile of nuclear waste could be used to generate enough low-carbon energy to meet all UK demand for 500 years. These reactors would keep recycling the waste until hardly any remained: solving three huge problems—energy supply, nuclear waste and climate change—at once. Thorium reactors use an element that's already extracted in large quantities as an unwanted byproduct of other mining industries. They recycle their own waste, leaving almost nothing behind." (cf. similar comments by James Hansen)

In 2012, Monbiot claimed that there was more than enough oil for "industry and consumer capitalism" to "deep-fry the lot of us" (citing a report of 110 million barrels per day in 2020.

Debate with Ian Plimer

Monbiot harshly criticised the book Heaven and Earth by climate change skeptic Ian Plimer, saying that "Since its publication in Australia it has been ridiculed for a hilarious series of schoolboy errors, and its fudging and manipulation of the data". Plimer challenged Monbiot to a public debate on the issues covered in the book. Monbiot agreed on the condition that Plimer first answer a series of written questions for publication on the website of The Guardian, so there would be a factual basis to the discussion. Plimer refused and Monbiot labeled Plimer a "grandstander" with a "broad yellow streak" who has nowhere answered the accusations of serious errors in his Heaven and Earth book, and accused him of trying to "drown out the precise refutations published by his book's reviewers". Plimer then reversed his decision, and agreed to answer written questions in return for a live debate. Monbiot's response on receiving Plimer's contribution was one of disappointment, on the grounds that Plimer's response "so far consists not of answers, but of questions addressed to me." Monbiot told Plimer that he is not qualified to answer Plimer's questions (although Gavin Schmidt of NASA did answer them). On 2 September 2009, Monbiot published another column in The Guardian asking: "Is Ian Plimer ever going to answer my questions?" and suggested that Plimer was evading the questions by using the Chewbacca defence. A debate was subsequently held on 15 December, while Monbiot was in Copenhagen, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline programme, moderated by Tony Jones.

Attempted arrest of John Bolton

Monbiot made an unsuccessful attempt to carry out a citizen's arrest of John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, when the latter attended the Hay Festival to give a talk on international relations in May 2008. Monbiot argued that Bolton was one of the instigators of the Iraq War, of which Monbiot was an opponent.

Political parties

He was involved initially with the Respect political party, but he broke with the organisation when it chose to run candidates against the Green Party in the 2004 election to the European Parliament. In an interview with the British political blog Third Estate in September 2009, Monbiot expressed his support for the policies of Plaid Cymru, saying "I have finally found the party that I feel very comfortable with. That's not to say I feel uncomfortable with the Green Party, on the whole I support it, but I feel even more comfortable with Plaid."

In April 2010, he was a signatory to an open letter of support for the Liberal Democrats, published in The Guardian. Prior to the 2015 UK general election, he was one of several public figures who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas. He announced an intention to vote Labour in the 2017 general election..

Indigenous rights

Monbiot has been associated with the cause of indigenous rights, and has sought to denounce threats to tribal people, at the face of corporate interests. He contributed to the 2009 book We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, which explores the culture of peoples around the world, portraying both its diversity and the threats it faces.

Monbiot's first book was Poisoned Arrows (1989), a work of investigative travel journalism exposing what he called the "devastating effects" of the partially World Bank-funded transmigration program on the peoples and tribes of Papua and West Papua in Indonesia. It was followed by Amazon Watershed (1991) which documented expulsions of Brazilian peasant farmers from their land and followed them thousands of miles across the forest to the territory of the Yanomami Indians, and showed how timber sold in Britain was being stolen from indigenous and biological reserves in Brazil. His third book, No Man's Land: An Investigative Journey Through Kenya and Tanzania (1994), documented the seizure of land and cattle from nomadic people in Kenya and the Tanzania, by—among other forces—game parks and safari tourism.

In 2000, he published Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain. The book examines the role of corporate power in the United Kingdom, on both local and national levels, and argues that corporate involvement in politics is a serious threat to democracy. Subjects discussed in the book include the building of the Skye Bridge, corporate involvement in the National Health Service, the role of business in university research, and the conditions which influence the granting of planning permission.

Monbiot at a Make Poverty History rally in Scotland

The Age of Consent

His fifth book, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order, was published in 2003. The book is an attempt to set out a positive manifesto for change for the global justice movement. Monbiot criticises anarchism and Marxism, arguing that any possible solution to the world's inequalities must be rooted in a democratic parliamentary system. The four main changes to global governance which Monbiot argues for are a democratically elected world parliament which would pass resolutions on international issues; a democratised United Nations General Assembly to replace the unelected UN Security Council; the proposed International Clearing Union which would automatically discharge trade deficits and prevent the accumulation of debt; and a fair trade organisation which would regulate world trade in a way that protects the economies of poorer countries.

The book also discusses ways in which these ideas may be put into practice. He posits that the United States and Western European states are heavily dependent on the existence of this debt, and that when faced with a choice between releasing the developing world from debt and the collapse of the global economy, their internal economic interests will dictate that they opt for the "soft landing" option. However, Monbiot emphasises that he does not present the manifesto as a "final or definitive" answer to global inequalities but intends that it should open debate and stresses that those who reject it must offer their own solutions. He argues that ultimately the global justice movement "must seek...to provide a coherent programme of alternatives to the concentrated power of the dictatorship of vested interests."

Heat

Monbiot's next book, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, published in 2006, focuses on the issue of climate change. He points out that the public opinion campaign to cast doubt on the reality of climate change is funded by fossil-fuel companies (primarily Exxon-Mobil), and traces the "network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies" campaigning to discredit climate science to origins in a campaign by tobacco companies to create a facade of science to cast doubt on the link between cigarette smoking and disease. He argues that a 90 percent reduction in carbon emissions is necessary in developed countries in order to prevent disastrous changes to the climate. He then sets out to demonstrate how such a reduction could be achieved within the United Kingdom, without a significant fall in living standards, through changes in housing, power supply, and transport.

Feral

Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding was published in 2013, and focuses on the concept of rewilding the planet. Monbiot states "rewilding offers a positive environmentalism. Environmentalists have long known what they are against; now we can explain what we are for."

In the book, Monbiot attacks sheep farming as "a slow-burning ecological disaster, which has done more damage to the living systems of this country than either climate change or industrial pollution. Yet scarcely anyone seems to have noticed." He particularly looks at sheep farming in Wales.

The book received favourable reviews, including in publications normally hostile to his work, such as The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph. It won the Society of Biology Book Award for general biology in 2014.

He has honorary doctorates from the University of St Andrews and the University of Essex, and an honorary fellowship from Cardiff University.

In 1995, Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement.

He was a finalist in the Lloyds National Screenwriting Prize with his screenplay The Norwegian, and won a Sony Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent Award and the OneWorld National Press Award. In November 2007 his book Heat was awarded the Premio Mazotti, an Italian book prize, but he was denied the money given with the prize because he refused to travel to Venice to collect it in person, arguing that it was not a good enough reason to justify flying.