George Monbiot

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George Monbiot.Picture credit: Monbiot.com
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George Monbiot.
Picture credit: Monbiot.com
Monbiot at Make Poverty History rally in Scotland
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Monbiot at Make Poverty History rally in Scotland

George Monbiot (born January 27, 1963) is an extreme leftwing journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist in the United Kingdom who writes a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper.

Contents

[edit] Career

Monbiot was educated at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire and then Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read Zoology. He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics) and East London (environmental science). He is currently visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University. [1]

On graduating, he joined the BBC's Natural History Unit as a radio producer, making natural history and environmental programmes. He left the Natural History Unit to work briefly as a current affairs producer and presenter for the BBC's World Service, before leaving the BBC to research and write his first book.[2]

Working as an investigative journalist he travelled in Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa. His activities led to him being made persona non grata in several countries [citation needed] and being sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Indonesia.[citation needed] In these places he also claims to have been 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. [1]

In Britain, he joined the roads protest movement. He claims to have been attacked by security guards, who drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle metatarsal bone. His injuries left him in hospital. He helped to found The Land is Ours, which has occupied land all over the country, including thirteen acres (five hectares) of prime real estate in Wandsworth on which owners Diageo intended to build a superstore. The protesters beat Diageo in court, built an "eco-village" and held on to the land for six months. [1]

He recently gave a talk at the Cambridge Union Society detailing his ideas for combatting the ever worsening level [citation needed] of global warming. This was a talk in conjunction with his latest book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning. He believes that the UK needs to reduce carbon based emissions by 2030 by around 90%, which although it appears difficult is possible with certain sacrifices, such as reducing the use of aeroplanes and the addition of new, more efficient bus services to reduce the need for cars.

He is on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.

[edit] Published works

George Monbiot’s first book was Poisoned Arrows (1989), a work of investigative travel journalism criticising the treatment of the indigenous people of West Papua by the Indonesian government. It was followed by Amazon Watershed which explored the ecological and human costs of the timber industry in Brazil. His third book, No Man’s Land: An Investigative Journey Through Kenya and Tanzania, highlighted the struggles of nomadic people in Kenya and the United Republic of Tanzania.

In 2000, George Monbiot published Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain. The book examines the role of corporate power within the United Kingdom, on both a local and national level, 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’s 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 critiques anarchism and Marxism, arguing that any possible solution to the world’s inequalities must be rooted in a democratic 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; an 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 practically be achieved. Monbiot treads the path of a revolutionary, urging those who suffer the consequences of a global inequality predicated on developing world debt and subservience to utilise this debt and effectively hold the developed world to ransom. 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.”

Monbiot’s most recent book, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, published in 2006, focuses on the issue of climate change. In this book, Monbiot argues that a 90% 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. Monbiot concludes that such changes are possible but they would require considerable political will.

To coincide with the launch of Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, he has created a new website, criticising both those who deny human influenced climate change and those he believes make "inflated claims about their environmental performance." It is available at Turn Up The Heat.

[edit] Honours

In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. [3] He has also won the Lloyds National Screenwriting Prize for his screenplay The Norwegian, a Sony Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent Award and the OneWorld National Press Award. [1] Prospect Magazine listed him in the bonus ballot of The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll.

[edit] Politics

Initially, he was involved with the Respect political party, but he broke with that organisation when it chose to run candidates against the Green Party in the 2004 election to the European Parliament. [4]

[edit] Private life

Monbiot's father, Raymond, is the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and Chairman of the National Convention. [5] His mother Rosalie is a Conservative councillor who led South Oxford district council for a decade. [6]

Monbiot is married to Angharad Penrhyn Jones with one daughter, Hanna.

[edit] Miscellany

  • The pejorative political epithet "Moonbat" is often used by right-wing political commentators to mock Monbiot.[7] The epithet was coined in 2002 by Perry de Havilland of Samizdata.net, a libertarian weblog. The claim that the term was originally used as a play on Monbiot's surname [8] has been denied by de Havilland. Seemingly, George himself does not mind.[9]

[edit] See also

[edit] Leading UK environmentalists

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d About George Monbiot George Monbiot's biography on Monbiot.com Accessed 10 November 2006.
  2. ^ Monbiot CV on McSpotlight
  3. ^ Monbiot Profile on Global 500 Forum Accessed 10 November 2006.
  4. ^ "Monbiot quits Respect over threat to Greens" The Guardian, 17 February 2004. Accessed 10 November 2006.
  5. ^ Raymond Monbiot CBE, People, Conservative Party website
  6. ^ The Daily Telegraph, 25 May 1996
  7. ^ Guardian 17 November 2003 "...with political theorist and global justice guru George "Moonbat" Monbiot (that's the nickname his rightwing critics give him)..." Accessed 14 November 2006
  8. ^ Moonbattery Accessed 14 November 2006
  9. ^ Guardian 17 November 2003Accessed 01 December 2006

[edit] External links

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