Z Needs Your Help!
Source: The Guardian Illustration: Sébastien Thibault/The Guardian What can you say about governments that, in the midst of a global food crisis,…
George Monbiot
George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books Heat: how to stop the planet burning; The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain; as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.
During seven years of investigative journeys in Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa, he was 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. He was hospitalised by security guards, who drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle bone. He helped to found The Land is Ours, which has occupied land all over the country, including 13 acres of prime real estate in Wandsworth belonging to the Guinness corporation and destined for a giant superstore. The protesters beat Guinness in court, built an eco-village and held onto the land for six months.
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. In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. 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.
In summer 2007 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University.
The government’s attempt to hide a toxic waste disaster heralds a new bonanza for organized crime
A toxic combination that is poisoning our land
Massive food producers hold too much power – and the regulators scarcely understand what is happening. Sound familiar?
Across 12 years, the Conservatives have ruined countless lives and destroyed our social fabric. Why would anyone vote for them?
England’s punitive exam system is only good at one thing: preserving privilege
The failure to adapt to new realities is not an accident. It’s the design.
Almost everyone in public life participates in the assault on truth
We won’t defend ourselves from the global food crisis by destroying what remains of our wildlife
Thanks to a series of astonishingly foolish decisions, Europe has allowed Vladimir Putin to control much of its energy supply. Here’s what it needs to do