Difference between revisions of "George Monbiot"

Visiting fellowships or professorships: Universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics) and East London (environmental science); currently visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University
Honorary doctorate: University of Essex, honorary fellowship: Cardiff University, 2007

Career: Career (Wikipedia); About George Monbiot (monbiot.com)

Current position/role: columnist

also writes/has written for:

Other roles/Main role: journalist, author

Other interests: patron of the UK student campaign network People & Planet; environmental and political activist, author and academic,

Disclosures: http://www.monbiot.com/registry-of-interests

Viewpoints/Insight:

After Japan, this green guru’s gone pro-nuclear, John-Paul Flintoff, Sunday Times, 27th March 2010
Solutions to control the climate (Wikipedia)

Broadcast media:

Video: see IMDb

Controversy/Criticism:

This EU-US trade deal is no 'assault on democracy' - Ken Clarke: Ignore George Monbiot's polemic – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is an astonishingly good deal for the UK economy - 11th November 2013
Jeremy Leggett: caught between low carbon and high-voltage rows - Terry Macalister: Former scientific director at Greenpeace is at the leading edge of a green energy revolution, and under fire from environmentalists, The Guardian, 26th March 2010
"The Great Moonbat is the one who's spreading 'misinformation' about asbestos" Christopher Booker of The Telegraph defends himself against an 'extraordinary tirade' by George Monbiot, 28th September 2008
David Bellamy and George Monbiot, two of Britain's leading environmentalists, have been arguing fiercely about climate change and wind farms. Their correspondence continues: Blow by blow The Guardian, 6th October 2004

Awards/Honours: Honours (Wikipedia)

Scoops:

Other: Cousin of Dominic Lawson and the solicitor Fiona Shackleton

Books & Debate:

Poisoned arrows: an investigative journey through Indonesia OCLC52024713 , 1989
Mahogany is murder: mahogany extraction from Indian reserves in Brazil OCLC27106378 , 1992
Amazon watershed: the new environmental investigation OCLC3063714 , 1991
No man's land: an investigative journey through Kenya and Tanzania OCLC30919009 , 1994
An activists' guide to exploiting the media OCLC77597381 , 1999
Captive state: the corporate takeover of Britain OCLC44563069 , 2000
Anti-capitalism: a guide to the movement OCLC49894259 , contributor, 2001
The age of consent: a manifesto for a new world order OCLC59357399 , 2003
Heat: how to stop the planet burning OCLC85018597 , 2007

http://www.monbiot.com/books

Latest work: Bring on the apocalypse: six arguments for global justice OCLC183148937 , 2008

Speaking/Appearances: http://www.monbiot.com/events | https://www.ted.com/speakers/george_monbiot

Debate:

A threat to democracy? The EU-US trade deal is no such thing - Ken Clarke: Response: George Monbiot paints the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership as a corporate plot. It's a bizarre overreaction - 14th March 2014
George Monbiot is wrong to question my vigilance on liberty, Henry Porter, Comment is free, 29th March 2011
Is nuclear power still the answer to our energy problems?, discussion with Caroline Lucas, The Guardian, 26th March 2011
Coal isn't the climate enemy, Mr Monbiot. It's the solution, Arthur Scargill, The Guardian, 8th August 2008
George Monbiot won the day in tussle with Julie Burchill, Michael White, The Guardian, 6th August 2008
Discussion on George Monbiot's articles

Video interviews:

Monbiot meets... (taking to task the figures who hold the world in their hands)

Jeroen van de Veer - In the latest of his groundbreaking encounters with the figures whose decisions shape our environment, George Monbiot challenges Jeroen van de Veer, chief executive of oil and gas giant Shell, on ethics, greenwash advertising, renewable energy investments and gas-flaring in Nigeria - 6th January 2009
Shaun Spiers - In the third of his groundbreaking encounters with the figures whose decisions shape our environment, George Monbiot gives the head of the countryside watchdog, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, an unforgettable grilling, asking why it opposes windfarms - but not opencast coal mines - 18th December 2008
Fatih Birol - In the latest in the groundbreaking interview series, Britain's leading green commentator tackles the International Energy Authority's chief economist, who reveals for the first time a startling and worrying prediction for the date of peak oil. Read the peak oil feature and add your comment - 15th December 2008
Yvo de Boer - In the first of a remarkable series of video interviews, Britain's leading green commentator, George Monbiot, charges the UN's leading climate change official with lacking ambition for a global emissions deal, and takes him to task over expensive carbon offset schemes and his support for the US president, George Bush. In the coming weeks, Monbiot takes on the bosses of Shell and the International Energy Agency and more. (Note: This film includes stock footage from Greenpeace) - 8th December 2008

The Guardian:

Column name:

Remit/Info: Environment issues (including: global warming, climate change, anticorporate activism, globalisation, nuclear proliferation...), Politics and International Affairs in connection with Global Justice

Section: Comment

Role: columnist

Pen-name:

Email:

Website: Guardian.co / George Monbiot: All comment | Climate Change | Comment is free

Commissioning editor:

Day published: Tuesday

Regularity: Weekly

Column format:

Average length:

Articles: 2017

Who paid for the leave vote? Brexit should be halted until we know - There are huge questions about funding, involving the DUP and others. A public inquiry is needed - 28th June
With Grenfell Tower, we’ve seen what ‘ripping up red tape’ really looks like - Too often safety has been sacrificed to an agenda of deregulation backed by lobbyists: it’s time to put the public interest above corner-cutting and greed - 16th June
The election’s biggest losers? Not the Tories but the media, who missed the story - Trapped in their hall of mirrors the broadcasters and press wrote off Jeremy Corbyn. They have to change and reflect the world they report on - 14th June
I’ve never voted with hope before. Jeremy Corbyn has changed that - The Labour leader’s improved performance and raft of popular policies have given me an unfamiliar feeling as I prepare to go to the polls: optimism - 7th June
Public luxury for all or private luxury for some: this is the choice we face - Labour at least wants to protect and improve our communal life. But even it ducks the biggest issues - 31st May
Dark money is pushing democracy in the UK over the edge - We urgently need new rules to prevent the capture of our politics by billionaires and corporations and their secretive funding - 17th May
Calling true conservatives: stop the fake ones from destroying Britain - If Theresa May wins the election, she will be empowered to pulp all that real patriots know is precious and beautiful about this country - 3rd May
Finally, a breakthrough alternative to growth economics – the doughnut - Instead of growth at all costs, a new economic model allows us to thrive while saving the planet - 12th April
Theresa May is dragging the UK under. This time Scotland must cut the rope - Britain is politically dead from the neck down. Leaving the union may be risky, but staying is worse - 15th March
Our greatest peril? Screening ourselves off from reality - Immersed in life online like the followers of 4chan or PewDiePie, we start to imagine that nothing matters – even racism, misogyny and resurgent fascism - 1st March
In an age of robots, schools are teaching our children to be redundant - A regime of cramming and testing is crushing young people’s instinct to learn and destroying their future - 15th February
This is how people can truly take back control: from the bottom up - Our atomised communities can heal themselves. Through local initiatives we can regenerate our culture and make politics relevant again - 8th February
How corporate dark money is taking power on both sides of the Atlantic - A secretive network of business lobbyists has long held sway in US politics. Now their allies in the UK government are planning a Brexit that plays into their hands - 3rd February
Our democracy is broken, debased and distrusted – but there are ways to fix it - Trump and Brexit are responses to a political system that’s imploding. But could a radical redesign wrest it from the liars? - 25th January
Donald Trump’s mission? To keep the US in the fossil age - While China invests heavily in renewable energy, the fossil economy in the US will be given the green light to squeeze every last cent from oil and coal - 19th January
Of course farmers fear Brexit, but it could save the British countryside - Removing the dependency on European money will be painful for rural Britain, but it could be just what our wildlife and agriculture need - 10th January

Articles: 2016

How I ended up in the jungle with deadly hornets in my hair - When a swarm of giant hornets descended upon me in West Papua I feared I was going to die. Fortunately, a local was at hand with an antidote. Or so I thought - 27th December
Celebrity isn’t just harmless fun – it’s the smiling face of the corporate machine - Our failure to understand the link between fame and big business made the rise of Trump inevitable - 21st December
No country with a McDonald’s can remain a democracy - The best way to combat the likes of Trump, Le Pen and Farage and the politics they represent is to rescue power from the grip of transnational corporations - 7th December
Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it - Many of his staffers are from an opaque corporate misinformation network. We must understand this if we are to have any hope of fighting back against them - 30th November
The 13 impossible crises that humanity now faces - From Trump to climate change, this multiheaded crisis presages collapse. And there’s no hope of exiting the ‘other side’ if political alternatives are shut down - 25th November
Trump’s climate denial is just one of the forces that points towards war - The failure to get to grips with our crises, by all mainstream political parties, is likely to lead to a war between the major powers in my lifetime - 23rd November
Neoliberalism: the deep story that lies beneath Donald Trump’s triumph - How a ruthless network of super-rich ideologues killed choice and destroyed people’s faith in politics - 13th November
Cars don’t just choke our children – they tear a hole in our communities - A chance has emerged to press the UK government into action over deadly pollution – and I don’t mean just the fumes from diesel engines. We must take it - 9th November
Without the power of kindness, our society will fall apart - When we are vulnerable and estranged from each other we can be easily manipulated by demagogues, as can be seen in the US and Europe - 2nd November
Donald Trump is no outsider: he mirrors our political culture - He’s right that the little guy is being screwed by the system. The problem is, he’s the embodiment of it - 26th October
Climate change means no airport expansion – at Heathrow or anywhere - There is only one way to prevent aviation from wrecking the planet. We need to fly much less - 19th October
Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That’s what’s wrenching society apart - Epidemics of mental illness are crushing the minds and bodies of millions. It’s time to ask where we are heading and why - 13th October
Lies, fearmongering and fables: that’s our democracy - People power can challenge the status quo, but only if we understand our political system has inherent flaws - 5th October
No fracking, drilling or digging: it’s the only way to save life on Earth - The Paris climate change agreement is worthless. Politicians can’t possibly honour it unless we stop developing all new fossil fuel reserves - 27th September
Our roads are choked. We’re on the verge of carmageddon - Car use takes a huge toll on our health and on the planet. We need to kick our addiction to driving - 21st September
Nuclear power – yes please. Hinkley Point – no thanks - Atomic energy is low carbon and safer than you think. But Hinkley C is an expensive white elephant - 15th September
We’d never kill an albatross or gorilla: but we let others do it on our behalf - From elephants and albatrosses to coral reefs, extinction is the bycatch of consumerism: we assert the right to consume, and ignore the consequences - 14th September
The transatlantic trade deal TTIP may be dead, but something even worse is coming - Governments and corporate lobbyists keep inventing new ways to embed privatisation and circumvent democracy – in this case, the Canada-EU deal - 7th September
The grouse shooters aim to kill: the first casualty is the truth - Their campaign against the RSPB is a shameful example of ‘astroturfing’. The public should beware - 17th August
I’ve converted to veganism to reduce my impacts on the living world - Nothing hits the planet as hard as rearing animals. Caring for it means cutting out meat, dairy and eggs - 10th August
The climate crisis is already here – but no one’s telling us - The media largely relegate the greatest challenge facing humanity to footnotes as industry and politicians hurtle us towards systemic collapse of the planet - 3rd August
Sovereignty? This government will sell us to the highest bidder - The past of the new international trade secretary, Liam Fox, as a corporate stooge is known. He promises post-EU freedom, but will hand control to big business - 27th July
These Brexiters will grind our environment into the dust - Crucial portfolios have been given to people who are prepared to scrub Britain’s features from the map - 20th July
Billionaires bought Brexit – they are controlling our venal political system - We may be told donors do not influence policy, but anywhere else our setup would be seen as corruption - 13th July
Chilcot’s judgment is utterly damning – but it’s still not justice - The inquiry made it as clear as its terms allowed that Tony Blair committed the crime of aggression. Can he now be held to account? - 6th July
Labour can still survive, but only if it abandons hope of governing alone - Reshaping the political landscape with a progressive alliance and unity candidates is the best way for the British left to gain power - 5th July
Brexit is a disaster, but we can build on the ruins - This is a crisis of astonishing proportions, but also an opportunity for the changes the left has long sought - 29th June
The shocking waste of cash even leavers won’t condemn - In or out, everyone seems to agree that the poor should keep subsidising the rich with land subsidies - 22nd June
The European Union is the worst choice – apart from the alternative - The EU is a festering cesspool. But it’s a crystal spring compared with what the outers want to do – surrender Britain’s sovereignty to the United States - 15th June
Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems - Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative? - 16th April
Dear Readers, I’m currently taking 4 months off... - 7th March 2016
I’m starting to hate the EU. But I will vote to stay in - On jobs, health and wildlife, the European Union is often all that stands between us and unfettered corporate power - 10th February
We’re drowning in cheap oil – yet still taxpayers prop up this toxic industry - As these new crisis bailouts for fossil fuels show, it’s those who are least deserving who get the most government protection - 3rd February
The Heathrow ‘hooligans’ are our modern day freedom fighters - The trial of 13 climate protesters is not really about aviation, it highlights a glaring democratic deficit - 20th January
Who’s driving high abortion rates? It’s the religious right - From Northern Ireland to the US, conservatives stifle measures that reduce the killing of foetuses - 13th January
You can be born into privilege and still want to change the world - Despite a conservative upbringing I’ve been open to radical ideas. It’s essential to challenge convention – the alternative is a hellish stasis - 6th January

Articles: 2015

This flood was not only foretold – it was publicly subsidised - The government pays grouse moor owners to drain their glorified outdoor chicken runs. Meanwhile it’s the proles downstream who get a soaking - 30th December
Warning: your festive meal could be more damaging than a long-haul flight - We miscalculate environmental risk: eating certain meats is about the worst thing you can do to the planet - 23rd December
We’ve almost stopped killing each other. Now let’s spare the planet - The astonishing drop in violence between human beings needs to be matched by an end to violence against the natural world - 16th December
Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined by squalid retrenchments - Until governments undertake to keep fossil fuels in the ground, they will continue to undermine agreement they have just made - 13th December
Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined by squalid retrenchments - Until governments undertake to keep fossil fuels in the ground, they will continue to undermine agreement they have just made - 13th December
I’ve eaten roadkill badger and squirrel, but dolphin? No thanks - Unlike Arthur Boyt of Cornwall, I’d never have dolphin on the menu in my house, no matter how it died. Here are my personal guidelines on such matters - 10th December
Do little, hide the evidence: the official neglect that caused these deadly floods - Storm Desmond’s floods expose the utter madness of government policies, both in the hills and at the Paris talks - 8th December
Do little, hide the evidence: the official neglect that caused these deadly floods - Storm Desmond’s floods expose the utter madness of government policies, both in the hills and at the Paris talks - 8th December
Consume more, conserve more: sorry, but we just can’t do both - Economic growth is tearing the planet apart, and new research suggests that it can’t be reconciled with sustainability - 25th November
There’s a population crisis all right. But probably not the one you think - While all eyes are on human numbers, it’s the rise in farm animals that is laying the planet waste - 20th November
David Cameron hasn’t the faintest idea how deep his cuts go. This letter proves it - Ever wondered how the prime minister sleeps at night? Now we have the answer: blissful ignorance - 11th November
Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away? - A great tract of Earth is on fire and threatened species are being driven out of their habitats. This is a crime against humanity and nature - 30th October
We’re not as selfish as we think we are. Here’s the proof - Stories of greed and ego bombard us. But a new study shows that humans are inherently good - 14th October
Nato’s bombs fall like confetti, not containing conflict but spreading it - Syria, Isis, Iraq … there are no easy solutions. But killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan and elsewhere draws more people into insurgencies - 7th October
There may be flowing water on Mars. But is there intelligent life on Earth? - While we marvel at Nasa’s discoveries, we destroy our irreplaceable natural resources – so we can buy pre-peeled bananas and smartphones for dogs - 30th September
Meet the ecomodernists: ignorant of history and paradoxically old-fashioned - The people behind a manifesto for solving environmental problems through science and technology are intelligent but wrong on their assumptions about farming and urbanisation - 24th September
Would Volkswagen have got away with its pollution fiddle in the UK? - The carmaker is not the only company poisoning the air. Yet still our government blocks effective legislation - 23rd September
The model for a leftwing resurgence? Evangelical Christianity - Corbyn’s survival requires a sustained grassroots movement. I share none of its core beliefs, but evangelism shows me how this might best be done - 15th September
The City’s stranglehold makes Britain look like an oh-so-civilised mafia state - Dodgy donations, misselling, trading scandals, tax evasion: wherever you sniff, something stinks - 9th September
Help me trace the book that prompted my political awakening - In a dusty box in the school sanatorium I found a book that had escaped the censorship of the headmaster. But what was its title? - 25th August
Jeremy Corbyn is the curator of the future. His rivals are chasing an impossible dream - Those who believe that New Labour’s clapped-out politics can transform the party’s fortunes are delusional - 19th August
Obesity is an incurable disease. So why is the government intent on punishing sufferers? - Fat-shaming is worse than useless. David Cameron points his finger at the afflicted, but food manufacturers and advertisers are the real culprits - 12th August
By inflating Islamic extremism, David Cameron has lost sight of what really threatens us - The real ‘struggle of our generation’ is not terrorism – in fact, that’s way down on the list - 22nd July
Greece is the latest battleground in the financial elite’s war on democracy - From laissez-faire economics in 18th-century India to neoliberalism in today’s Europe the subordination of human welfare to power is a brutal tradition - 7th July
Far from being a ‘Mugabe-style grab’, Scotland’s land reform is too timid - Why not raise the level of ambition with new national parks, protected for their habitats, which could generate new jobs built on wildlife and tourism? - 30th June
Skivers and strivers: this 200–year–old myth won’t die - Vilification of the unemployed, by the government and the media, has a long and shameful heritage – expect the fallacy that welfare creates poverty to persist - 24th June
Why we fight for the living world: it's about love, and it's time we said so - Pope Francis reminds us that our relationship to the natural world is about love, not just goods and services - 18th June
Aspirational parents condemn their children to a desperate, joyless life - Surrender your freedom, avoid daylight, live to work, and you too could join a toxic, paranoid elite - 10th June
How fossil fuel burning nearly wiped out life on Earth – 250m years ago - New evidence shows that catastrophic climate change probably destroyed 96% of species at the end of the Permian period. It could happen again - 27th May
Attacks on the last elephants and rhinos threaten entire ecosystems - Megafauna like elephants and rhinos are ecological engineers, creating conditions that hundreds of other species have evolved to exploit. Losing their last remaining populations will radically alter life on Earth - 22nd May
Faeces, bacteria, toxins: welcome to the chicken farm - Whether it’s welfare standards, environmental impact or the emerging threat to human health, we’ve got to change our insatiable greed for this meat - 20th May
The return of Britain's otters offers a glimpse of rewilding's great rewards - Watching a pair of wild otters is a rare chance to enjoy the thrill of nature on our doorstep. Rewilding could see beavers, lynx and boar follow in the otter’s footsteps to transform Britain for the enrichment of all - 7th May
There are issues that really matter at this election. But Britain’s media are ignoring them - Political parties may claim to be at each other’s throats – yet they seem to agree on a public discourse that keeps the nation in a state of arrested development - 7th May
Big Coal’s big scam: scar the land for proft, then let others pay to clean up - Keep it in the ground: Energy giants claim they dig new opencast mines to fund the closure of old ones. Will anyone call their bluff? - 28th April
Let’s not fool ourselves. We may not bribe, but corruption is rife in Britain - Allegations of a cover-up at Scotland Yard show that the British are as prone to malfeasance as any other nation - 18th March
Our government’s big green idea: let’s subsidise natural disasters - Britain pays billions to support farming, and then billions to repair the catastrophic damage it causes - 25th February
A maverick currency scheme from the 1930s could save the Greek economy - The eurozone crisis calls for radical solutions – and one of the most thrilling has been tried and tested - 18th February
The careless, astonishing cruelty of Barack Obama’s government - Let me introduce you to the world’s most powerful terrorist recruiting sergeant: a US federal agency called the office of the comptroller of the currency. Its decision to cause a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the poorest, most troubled places on Earth could resonate around the world for decades - 11th February
Some deny society exists. Let’s prove them wrong - There’s more to life than consumerism. But to find it we need new models of supporting each other - 4th February
Follow your convictions – this could be the end of the politics of fear - Here is the first rule of politics: if you never vote for what you want, you never get it - 28th January
Our ‘impartial’ broadcasters have become mouthpieces of the elite - If you think the news is balanced, think again. Journalists who should challenge power are doing its dirty work - 21st January
The TTIP trade deal will throw equality before the law on the corporate bonfire - The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will let corporations defend their interests in secret offshore tribunals. But we can beat it - 14th January
No wonder landowners are scared. We are starting to learn who owns Britain - Scotland is breaking the cover-up that stifles our political thought. Bring the Highland Spring south - 7th January
Children in our towns and cities are being robbed of safe spaces to play - We’re plagued by joyless developments that destroy the essence of community: chances for young people to gather and play - 6th January

Articles: 2014

Heroes of 2014: Russell Brand - The volatile comedian-turned-activist's ability to be openly and honestly flawed sets him apart from the grand old men of the left - 30th December
A winter’s tale of the things I did for Queen and country - I learned a great deal about myself and the reality of animal suffering working a gap year on a pig farm - 24th December
We are in perpetual denial about our food, but meat is bad news - From chickens pumped with antibiotics to the environmental devastation caused by production, we need to realise we are not fed with happy farm animals - 16th December
Taming corporate power: the key political issue of our age - Taming corporate power: Big business and its lobbyists have taken control of our politics. But there is an alternative: here's how we can take on the fat cats - 8th December
No wonder landowners are scared. We are starting to learn who owns Britain - Scotland is breaking the cover-up that stifles our political thought. Bring the Highland Spring south - 3rd December
We need a new law to protect our wildlife from critical decline - The Nature and Wellbeing Act could do for the natural world what the Climate Change Act did for curbing emissions – provide a crucial safeguard against attacks by industries and corporate politicians on environmental regulations - 21st November
Growth: the destructive god that can never be appeased - The blind pursuit of economic exapansion stokes a cycle of financial crisis, and is wrecking our world. Time for an alternative - 18th November
Tiger schmiger – big cat sightings simply play on our will to believe - So the Paris tiger belongs with the Beast of Barnet and all the other cat flaps that reflect a thrill we all seek in our tame and predictable lives - 14th November
Interstellar: magnificent film, insane fantasy - Movies about abandoning Earth reflect the political defeatism of our age: that adapting to climate breakdown is preferable to stopping it - 11th November
The British government is leading a gunpowder plot against democracy - This bill of corporate rights threatens to blow the sovereignty of parliament unless it can be stopped - 5th November
'Cleansing the stock' and other ways governments talk about human beings - Those in power don't speak of 'people' or 'killing' – it helps them do their job. And we are picking up their dehumanising euphemisms - 22nd October
The age of loneliness is killing us - For the most social of creatures, the mammalian bee, there’s no such thing now as society. This will be our downfall - 14th October
Our bullying corporations are the new enemy within - The demands of business dominate our politicians and embed inequality. It's a full-blown assault on democracy - 8th October
It's time to shout stop on this war on the living world - Our consumption is trashing a natural world infinitely more fascinating and intricate than the stuff we produce - 1st October
Why stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world? - Humanitarian arguments, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East - 1st October
How the media shafted the people of Scotland - Journalists in their gilded circles are woefully out of touch with popular sentiment and shamefully slur any desire for change - 17th September
A yes vote in Scotland would unleash the most dangerous thing of all - hope - Independence would carry the potential to galvanise progressive movements across the rest of the UK - 10th September
Scots voting no to independence would be an astonishing act of self-harm - England is dysfunctional, corrupt and vastly unequal. Who on earth would want to be tied to such a country? - 3rd September
Sick of this market-driven world? You should be - The self-serving con of neoliberalism is that it has eroded the human values the market was supposed to emancipate - 6th August
The rich want us to believe their wealth is good for us all - As the justifications for gross inequality collapse, only the Green party is brave enough to take on the billionaires' boot boys - 30th July
Is a Tea Party movement about to kick off in Britain? - Owen Paterson, the fallen environment secretary who fought the ‘green blob’ seems to contemplating a US-style insurgency - 23rd July
Ban neonicotinoids now – to avert another silent spring - This pesticide is destroying life across the natural world: the evidence cannot be denied. Only a global moratorium will stop it - 16th July
This is thrilling life-extension news – for dictators and the ultra-rich - Longevity science may divide us into treated and untreated: the first living ever longer, the second dying even younger than now - 7th July
Stop the control freaks who want to capture England's wild beavers - The government is going against public opinion, and its reasons for wanting to rehome beavers in Devon fall apart easily - 4th July
The real enemies of press freedom are in the newsroom - The principal threat to expression comes not from state regulation but from censorship by editors and proprietors - 30th June
Beware the small print that threatens all public land - As the infrastructure bill in the Lords shows, we seem to measure progress only by how much of the UK we can concrete over - 24th June
Saving the world should be based on promise, not fear - For 30 years I banged on about threats. But research shows we must to be true to ourselves – and to the wonder in nature - 17th June
Unchallenged by craven Labour, Britain slides towards ever more selfishness - We need a Labour that reminds the country to care, not one that embraces market values and entrenches inequality - 10th June
The only way to fairness in housing is to tax property - Help to Buy and the other government schemes merely lock in place an unjust system which rewards those in power - 3rd June
It's simple. If we can't change our economic system, our number's up - It's the great taboo of our age – and the inability to discuss the pursuit of perpetual growth could prove humanity's undoing - 28th May
I'd vote yes to rid Scotland of its feudal landowners - The scoured, scorched Highlands could be brought to life – maybe an independent nation will have the courage to act - 20th May
Welcome to Britain, the new land of impunity - No matter the criticisms made or damage done, fat cats and politicians seem able to cling on. Often their efforts are rewarded - 6th May
This cash for grouse scandal shows how Britain has become a plutocrats' paradise - We subsidise the landed gentry and their shotguns. While the poor are plunged into a brutal world of insecurity, the rich are untroubled - 30th April
Today I arrested myself for supporting nuclear power. Now, where's my £100? - A website called Arrest Monbiot has been set up due to my 'nuclear crimes against humanity' – so I'm turning myself in - 29th April
How have these corporations colonised our public life? - Our politicians have delegated power to global giants engineering a world of conformity and consumerism - 8th April
So, after the IPCC report, which bit of the world are you prepared to lose? - When people say we should adjust to climate change, do they understand what that actually means? - 1st April
Is this all humans are? Diminutive monsters of death and destruction? - New research suggests that there was never a state of grace. We have always been the nemesis of the planet's wildlife - 25th March
How Big Tobacco's lobbyists get what they want from the media - With cigarette packs on the agenda, the BBC must be asked why it lets thinktanks argue the tobacco companies' case without revealing who their paymasters are - 18th March
Give and take in the EU-US trade deal? Sure. We give, the corporations take - I have three challenges for the architects of a proposed transatlantic trade deal. If they reject them, they reject democracy - 11th March
The welfare dependents the government loves? Rich landowners - Uncapped, almost unconditional, the vast sums of public money we give to farmers buys only destruction - 4th March
How we ended up paying farmers to flood our homes - This government let the farming lobby rip up the rulebook on soil protection – and now we are suffering the consequences - 18th February
Orwell was hailed a hero for fighting in Spain. Today he'd be guilty of terrorism - The International Brigades were hailed for bravery. But British citizens who fight in Syria are damned. If only they did it for the money - 11th February
Did an undercover cop help organise a major riot? - The wrongly convicted activist John Jordan claims the Met helped plan serious civil disorder. An independent public inquiry is now vital - 4th February
Dredging rivers won't stop floods. It will make them worse - George Monbiot: David Cameron pledges to pursue a policy in the Somerset Levels that will only lead to more dangerous rivers. But it keeps the farmers happy - 30th January
Freedom is something to use or lose - we must fight the antisocial behaviour bill - Consumerism's petty liberties have made us inhumanly passive. We've forgotten what freedom is, and how easily it is lost - 21st January
The untold story of the crazy public spending that makes flooding inevitable - Every year billions are spent in Britain and Europe on policies that wreck homes and lives through flooding - 14th January
At last, a law to stop almost anyone from doing almost anything - Protesters, buskers, preachers, the young: all could end up with 'ipnas'. Of course, if you're rich, you have nothing to fear - 7th January

Articles: 2013

Cold fact: humans aren't as resilient as Exmoor ponies - How a bicycle ride along a neolithic pathway led me to a surprisingly peaceful brush with death by hypothermia - 30th December
A tale of gold, guns, greed and rat poison in the Brazilian jungle - The miners of northern Brazil live by the laws of power, honour, money and lust. But sometimes, karma asserts itself too - 23rd December
Nuclear scare stories are a gift to the truly lethal coal industry - Coal is a much nastier power source than the one we have chosen to fear in a deadly form of displacement activity - 17th December
The BBC must declare the interests of its contributors, or lose our trust - The BBC seems happy to be used as a covert propaganda outlet by tobacco, fossil fuel and other controversial companies - 12th December
Materialism: a system that eats us from the inside out - Materialism is associated with depression, anxiety and broken relationships. It is socially destructive and self-destructive - 10th December
The lies behind this transatlantic trade deal - Plans to create an EU-US single market will allow corporations to sue governments using secretive panels, bypassing courts and parliaments - 3rd December
You're wrong, George Monbiot – there is nothing secret about this EU trade deal - Our negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are fully open to scrutiny, and Europe will benefit - Karel De Gucht, The Guardian, 18th December 2013
Heard a thinktank on the BBC? You haven't heard the whole story - When the BBC interviews someone about smoking, it's supposed to reveal if the thinktank they work for receives funding from tobacco companies - 29th November 2013
Why I'm eating my words on veganism – again - Al Gore has gone vegan, a diet I was once sceptical about. Now I believe it is meat-eating that is more environmentally damaging - 27th November
So you need that smart cuckoo clock for Christmas, do you? - A global bullshit industry recruits the values with which we'd like the festival to be invested – to sell things no one wants - 26th November
For Pope Francis the liberal, this promises to be a very bloody Sunday - Francis is the poster pope for progressives. But canonising a genocidal missionary like Junípero Serra epitomises the Catholic history problem - 19th November
It's business that really rules us now - Lobbying is the least of it: corporate interests have captured the entire democratic process. No wonder so many have given up on politics - 12th November
This transatlantic trade deal is a full-frontal assault on democracy - Brussels has kept quiet about a treaty that would let rapacious companies subvert our laws, rights and national sovereignty - 5th November
The farce of the Hinkley C nuclear reactor will haunt Britain for decades - We need nuclear power. But the government has plumped for outdated technology at the worst price imaginable - 22nd October
From Obamacare to trade, superversion not subversion is the new and very real threat to the state - Rightwing politicians and their press use talk of patriotism to disguise where their true loyalty lies: the wealthy elite - 15th October
The problem with education? Children aren't feral enough - The 10-year-old Londoners I took to Wales were proof that a week in the countryside is worth three months in a classroom - 8th October
For scientists in a democracy, to dissent is to be reasonable - Government policy in Britain, Canada and Australia is crushing academic integrity on behalf of corporate power - 1st October
Why is Apple so shifty about how it makes the iPhone? - The paragon of modern tech risks losing its shine by dodging queries about Indonesia, and an orgy of unregulated tin mining - 24th September
How much longer can MPs resist this flat-Earth love-in? - All the evidence of manmade climate change is proving inconvenient for a Commons beseiged by fossil fuel lobbyists - 17th September
Obama's rogue state tramples over every law it demands others uphold - For 67 years the US has pursued its own interests at the expense of global justice – no wonder people are sceptical now - 9th September
Australia's natural wonders will gradually be rubbed away - Tony Abbott's climate policies are about removing the social and environmental protections enjoyed by all Australians to allow the filthy rich to become richer – and filthier - 5th September
The Lake District is a wildlife desert. Blame Wordsworth - I revere Wordsworth the poet, but not his view of farming as a benign force. The Lakes fells don't need world heritage status – just fewer sheep - 3rd September
What is behind this fracking mania? Unbridled machismo - The prime minister's love of shale gas is not driven by jobs or energy security, but a fixation with manly extractive industries - 20th August
Native trees help wildlife – so why do councils plant so many exotic ones? - Some non-natives, the best known being the London plane, are useful but opportunities to harbour life are continually missed - 15th August
Resurrecting woolly mammoths is exciting – but it's a fantasy - De-extinction would lead only to lonely captivity for a few sad beasts. There's a better way to restore lost ecosystems - 6th August
Neonicotinoids are the new DDT killing the natural world - UK is collaborating in peddling the corporate line that neonicotinoid pesticides are safe to use – they are anything but - 6th August
Why does Britain want to build airports for ghost planes? - The economic case for more capacity is based on defunct data: this policy will only drag us back to the planet-burning past - 23rd July
Cigarette packaging: the corporate smokescreen - Noble sentiments about individual liberty are being used to bend democracy to the will of the tobacco industry - 16th July
I love nature. For this I am called bourgeois, romantic – even fascist - Those of us who defend the planet are increasingly subject to abuse. It is the price we pay for confronting the power of money - 9th July
Farming subsidies: this is the most blatant transfer of cash to the rich - As the British government cut benefits for the poor at home, in Europe it fought to keep millions in subsidies for wealthy farmers - 2nd July
How can we invest our trust in a government that spies on us? - We should not fear some Orwellian future state where we're subjected to total electronic scrutiny – it's our present reality - 25th June
Bono can't help Africans by stealing their voice - Because the U2 frontman and others like him are seen as representatives of the poor, the poor are not invited to speak - 18th June 2013
Africa, let us help – just like in 1884 - From the Conference of Berlin to G8, 'helping' Africans looks very like grabbing their resources - 11th June
Is the lawlessness of Obama's drone policy coming home? - Once a state gets used to abusing the rights of foreigners in distant lands, it's almost inevitable it will import the habit - 4th June
The murder of April Jones tested the strength of my community - For everyone connected with Machynlleth, the experience has been shattering, but with Mark Bridger's conviction, the process of healing can begin - 30th May
My manifesto for rewilding the world - Nature swiftly responds when we stop trying to control it. This is our big chance to reverse man's terrible destructive impact - 28th May
Big-cat sightings: is Britain suffering from mass hysteria? - In 1995, government inspectors spent months on Bodmin moor in Cornwall looking for evidence of a 'beast' roaming wild there. They found nothing. Yet every year there are 2,000 similarly spurious big-cat sightings in Britain. What's going on? - 22nd May
Oxford University won't take funding from tobacco companies. But Shell's OK - If scholars are prepared to take an ethical stance against money from tobacco companies, why won't they against Big Oil too? - 14th May
Why the politics of envy are keenest among the very rich - Essential public services are cut in order that the wealthy may pay less tax. But even their baubles don't make them happy - 6th May
Beware the rise of the government scientists turned lobbyists - From badgers to bees, government science advisers are routinely misleading us to support the politicians' agendas - 30th April
My search for a smartphone ends here - Samsung's admission that its smartphones may contain tin from Bangka Island makes me think I'm better off without one after all - 25th April
This faith in the markets is misplaced: only governments can save our living planet - The European emissions trading system died last week. Why? Because of the lobbying power of big business - 23rd April
Hey advertisers, leave our defenceless kids alone - In-school marketing, promoting junk food online: how can we tolerate this corporate capture of young minds? - 16th April
Fine, our IDS petition is a 'stunt' – a stunt to shame the oblivious aristocrats - So far 350,000 have challenged Iain Duncan Smith to show he really can live on £53 a week. No wonder he looks rattled - 3rd April
Communism, welfare state – what's the next big idea? - Any attempt to challenge the elite needs courage, inspiration and a truly groundbreaking proposal. Here are two to set us off - 2nd April
Property, theft and how we must breach this sacred line - The 'private good, public bad' madness sees a bedroom tax foisted on the poor while the rich amass vast property wealth - 26th March
In the war on the poor, Pope Francis is on the wrong side - In Latin America a new Inquisition has betrayed Catholic priests who risk their lives to stand up to tyrants – as I've witnessed - 19th March
My search for a smartphone that is not soaked in blood - Phone companies do too little to ensure the minerals they use are conflict-free. Here's what you can do to hold them to account - 12th March
With threats and bribes, Gove forces schools to accept his phoney 'freedom' - Through its academies programme, the government is creating a novelty: the first capitalist command economy - 5th March
Will EDF become the Barbra Streisand of climate protest? - The energy giant is part of a global strategy by corporations to stifle democracy. Clearly it hasn't heard of the Streisand effect - 26th February
The educational charities that do PR for the rightwing ultra-rich - Billionaires control the political conversation by staying hidden and paying others to promote their brutal agendas - 19th February
The end of nuclear power? Careful what you wish for - Flawed and stalled as the plans for toxic waste may be, at least they exist. There is no way to clean up CO2, the greater evil - 4th February
When the rich are born to rule, the results can be fatal - I was schooled in a system that separated me from ordinary people's lives. The same fate has befallen the global elite - 29th January
I agree with Churchill: let's get stuck into the real shirkers - They parasitise us from above. But landowners and the Tory party's idle rich are spared the fairest and simplest of taxes - 22nd January
If you think we're done with neoliberalism, think again - The global application of a fraudulent economic theory brought the west to its knees. Yet for those in power, it offers riches - 15th January
Heatwave: Australia's new weather demands a new politics - Climate change clashes with the myth of a land where progress is limited only by the rate at which resources can be extracted - 9th January
Yes, lead poisoning could really be a cause of violent crime - It seems crazy, but the evidence about lead is stacking up. Behind crimes that have destroyed so many lives, is there a much greater crime? - 8th January
2012: the year we did our best to abandon the natural world - Emissions are rising, ice is melting and yet the response of governments is simply to pretend that none of it is happening - 1st January

Articles: 2012

The day my inner anarchist lost out to the bourgeois me - Boxing Day, 2011: a fall on the ice lands me in A&E – and that's when I meet the man with tattoos on his neck and knuckles … - 26th December
In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats - Barack Obama's tears for the children of Newtown are in stark contrast to his silence over the children murdered by his drones - 18th December
On the 12th day of Christmas ... your gift will just be junk - Every year we splurge on pointless, planet-trashing products, most of which are not wanted. Why not just bake them a cake? - 11th December
Break the grip of corporate power to secure our future - Neoliberal dogma forbids the intervention required to stop climate change. To save the planet we must articulate a new politics - 4th December
Europe's €50bn bung that enriches landowners and kills wildlife - The EU's farm subsidies are a modern equivalent of feudal aid. As Europe suffers under austerity, it's right to call for reform - 27th November
If children lose contact with nature they won't fight for it - With half of their time spent at screens, the next generation will be poorly equipped to defend the natural world from harm - 20th November
The Guardian's great fish hypocrisy - The paper, along with the Observer, claims to encourage ethical choices on which fish to eat, but you wouldn't know it from Slater, Ottolenghi and Hartnett's recipes - 9th November
Obama and Romney remain silent on climate change, the biggest issue of all - Despite hurricane Sandy, neither Obama nor Romney will speak about global warming. The danger this poses is huge - 6th November
When corporations bankroll politics, we all pay the price - Letting taxpayers fund parties directly could revive our rotten system – and at £1 per elector, it would be cheaper too - 30th October
The Tory culture wars laying waste to the countryside - The government's 'bonfire' of regulations rages through the natural world as Conservatives protect their class interests - 22nd October
If extreme weather becomes the norm, starvation awaits - With forecasts currently based only on averages, food production may splutter out even sooner than we feared - 16th October
Colonised and coloniser, empire's poison infects us all - Ideas that underpinned Britain's imperial project led not only to torture in Kenya, but war and catastrophe in Europe - 9th October
A rightwing insurrection is usurping our democracy - For 30 years big business, neoliberal thinktanks and the media have colluded to capture our political system. They're winning - 2nd October
Mitt Romney and the myth of self-created millionaires - The parasitical ultra-rich often deny the role of others in the acquisition of their wealth – and even seek to punish them for it - 25th September
When our economic interests are at stake, the war on nature resumes - All this badger cull will prove is that our relations with the natural world have scarcely altered since the dark ages - 17th September
Alzheimer's could be the most catastrophic impact of junk food - There is evidence that poor diet is one cause of Alzheimer's. If ever there was a case for the precautionary principle, this is it - 11th September
We're one crucial step closer to seeing Tony Blair at The Hague - Desmond Tutu has helped us see the true nature of what the former prime minister did to Iraq - 4th September
Along with the Arctic ice, the rich world's smugness will melt - The belief that Europe and America will be hit least by climate change is in ruins. Yet all we do is try to profit from disaster - 28th August
Must the poor go hungry just so the rich can drive? - Sports stars like Mo Farah at No 10 will not change a simple fact: people are starving because of the west's thirst for biofuels - 14th August
Putting a price on the rivers and rain diminishes us all - Payments for 'ecosystem services' look like the prelude to the greatest privatisation since enclosure - 7th August
Our economic ruin means freedom for the super-rich - Cameron and Osborne's neoliberal agenda promised prosperity for all, but created a totalitarian capitalism that feeds on crisis - 31st July
After 800 years, the barons are back in control of Britain - The Magna Carta forced King John to give away powers. But big business now exerts a chilling grip on the workforce - 17th July
John Clare, the poet of the environmental crisis – 200 years ago - On Friday I'll mark John Clare Day. This great poet showed how the era of greed began with the enclosure of the land - 10th July
We were wrong on peak oil. There's enough to fry us all - A boom in oil production has made a mockery of our predictions. Good news for capitalists – but a disaster for humanity - 3rd July
After Rio, we know. Governments have given up on the planet - The post-summit pledge was an admission of defeat against consumer capitalism. But we can still salvage the natural world - 26th June
Rio 2012: it's a make-or-break summit. Just like they told us at Rio 1992 - World leaders at Earth summits seem more interested in protecting the interests of plutocratic elites than our environment - 19th June
People haven't turned to the right. They just don't vote - A new theory of choice isn't useful to politicians. The left is losing because it isn't offering policies of care and economic justice - 12th June
Our countryside has once again become a playground for the rich - Anything that can't be shot and eaten is shot and hung from a gibbet. The aristocracy is back in charge, destroying Britain's wildlife - 5th June
My fight may be hopeless, but it is as necessary as ever - On trial beside Mladic in The Hague is a disturbing case of infectious idiocy and denial which the left can no longer ignore - 22nd May
Moral decay? Family life's the best it's been for 1,000 years - Conservatives' concerns about marriage seem to be based on a past that is fabricated from their own anxieties and obsessions - 15th May
Yes, Mr Gove, I went to private school – but I want to challenge the system - For all his talk of social justice, Michael Gove serves in a government that supports the privilege of a plutocratic class - 11th May
Freedom of information: my monstrous idea will keep corporate tyrants at bay - Extending transparency laws to the private sector would make the likes of News International think twice before misbehaving - 8th May
Imperialism didn't end. These days it's known as international law - A one-sided justice sees weaker states punished as rich nations and giant corporations project their power across the world - 1st May
Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them - New evidence of British colonial atrocities has not changed our national ability to disregard it - 24th April
Daughter, my generation is squandering your birthright - When my second child reaches my age I fear the NHS, along with the tiger and rhino, will be part of a mythologised arcadia - 17th April
Britain's shadow government: unelected, unbalanced and unaccountable - Democracy itself is being undermined by publicly funded agencies crawling with conflicts of interest and devoid of scrutiny - 13th March
How Ayn Rand became the new right's version of Marx - Her psychopathic ideas made billionaires feel like victims and turned millions of followers into their doormats - 6th March
Britain is being rebuilt in aid of corporate power - Trust business, Cameron tells us, self-regulation is a force for social good. Silly me – I thought it was an invitation to disaster - 28th February
We need to know who funds these thinktank lobbyists - The battle for democracy is becoming a fight against backroom billionaires seeking to shape politics to suit their own interests - 21st February
The right's stupidity spreads, enabled by a too-polite left - Conservativism may be the refuge of the dim. But the room for rightwing ideas is created those too timid to properly object - 7th February
With its deadly drones, the US is fighting a coward's war - As technology allows machines to make their own decisions, warfare will be become bloodier – and less accountable - 31st January
Only a maximum wage can end the great pay robbery - Corporate wealth is being siphoned off by a kleptocratic class that has neither earned nor generated it - 24th January
The British boarding school remains a bastion of cruelty - While condemning global injustices against children, we fail to examine the ethics of removing seven-year-olds from their families - 17th January
Bankers can wait. Targeting protesters is much more Cameron's cup of tea - The Vickers banking reforms are set for 2019. But when it comes to undermining protest ministers don't fanny about - 10th January
That sleighbell winter? It's all part of climate change denial - The tabloids' forecast of Siberian weather has been forgotten. Unlike their treatment of the Met Office barbecue summer - 3rd January

Articles: 2011

This bastardised libertarianism makes 'freedom' an instrument of oppression - It's the disguise used by those who wish to exploit without restraint, denying the need for the state to protect the 99% - 20th December
Britain's press are fighting a class war, defending the elite they belong to - It's not just Rupert Murdoch and his crooks. All the barons who corrupted our political system must be unmasked - 13th December
We need to talk about Sellafield, and a nuclear solution that ticks all our boxes - There are reactors which can convert radioactive waste to energy. Greens should look to science, rather than superstition - 6th December
We're all paying for Europe's gift to our aristocrats and utility companies - Dukes, water companies and wildlife charities will be relieved to know their plunder of farm subsidies under the common agricultural policy can last until at least 2020 - 29th November
The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen - Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt - 7th November
The unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest - Working beyond the authority of parliament, the Corporation of London undermines all attempts to curb the excesses of finance - 1st November
Advertising is a poison that demeans even love – and we're hooked on it - We are subjected to ever more pervasive messages to consume, encouraging dissatisfaction. Yet this column depends on it - 25th October
Millionaires and corporations are using tax breaks to help sway public opinion - Rightwing thinktanks profess a love of freedom, but their refusal to reveal who funds them is deeply undemocratic - 18th October
It's in all our interests to understand how to stop another Great Depression - When a man like Steve Keen says the trillions spent on refinancing the banks has truly stuffed us, we really should listen - 10th October
Bins, roads, unwinnable wars: this is a chancellor with money to burn - While the poor struggle to survive the crisis, George Osborne is happy to run a welfare state for corporations and billionaires - 4th October
A register of journalists' interests would help readers to spot astroturfing - Pieces paid for by lobby groups would become apparent if, like me, other writers opened a public registry of their interests - 30th September
Our planning system is authorised blackmail – and it's about to get worse - The interests of people come second to those of profit in a system where developers work hand in glove with government - 27th September
Damned if we do impose sanctions on Syria. And damned if we don't - Foreign companies are enriching Assad's brutal regime – but even the Syrian people are divided on the issue of sanctions - 20th September
Secretive thinktanks are crushing our democracy - Free-market thinktanks may hide their funders' identities, but they reveal influence-peddling is rife in British politics - 13th September
This wrecking ball is Osborne's version of sustainable development - Economic growth is not the purpose of a planning system. It should meet human needs while the environment is protected - 5th September
A balloon and hosepipe as the answer to climate change? It's just pie in the sky - Increasingly bizarre attempts at geo-engineering simply deflect attention from the fact we need to cut greenhouse gases - 3rd September
Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist - Academic publishers charge vast fees to access research paid for by us. Down with the knowledge monopoly racketeers - 30th August
As the dream of economic growth dies, a new plan awaits testing - Even when times are supposedly good, neither society nor the environment can take the strain of an ever-expanding economy - 23rd August
EU and fish quotas: Who will protect these fish from our feeding frenzy? - The EU tells Iceland and the Faroes to stop their fishing frenzy of mackerel, but only because it wants to plunder the stock itself - 9th August
Debt deal: anger and deceit has led the US into a billionaires' coup - The debt deal will hurt the poorest Americans, convinced by Fox and the Tea Party to act against their own welfare - 2nd August
If it really wants to cut carbon, why is the coalition issuing licences to drill? - Pledges to curb reliance on fossil fuels are hard to square with prospecting for more oil and gas and pushing dirty coal plants - 19th July
This media is corrupt – we need a Hippocratic oath for journalists - Our job is to hold power to account. Instead, most of the profession simply ventriloquises the concerns of the elite - 12th July
The nuclear industry stinks. But that is not a reason to ditch nuclear power - The debate is skewed by distrust of big corporate interests. Under proper scrutiny, new plants can give safer, cleaner energy - 5th July
Left and libertarian right cohabit in the weird world of the genocide belittlers - Yes, atrocities by the US get little media attention. But that's no excuse for this revisionism towards Srebrenica and Rwanda - 14th June
The true value of nature is not a number with a pound sign in front - Cost-benefit analysis of nature is rigged in favour of business – and delivers the countryside to those who would destroy it - 7th June
Support wind farms? It would be less controversial to argue for blackouts - By rejecting all the means by which renewable electricity can be generated, the UK has set a very dangerous course - 31st May
Cameron's 'green growth' policy looks naive today. It will look cynical in 2027 - The promised 50% cut to greenhouse gases means little while rich countries continue to outsource pollution to poorer ones - 24th May
Ignore his denials: Cameron, like Blair, wants to turn 'NHS' into a kitemark - Tony Blair would heartily approve of this prime minister's plans to carve up health. But tactically they are miles apart - 17th May
This 'greenest government ever' is the greatest threat yet to our environment - The coalition is preparing to bin Britain's climate change targets. After all, ministers have corporate sponsors to take care of - 10th May
Let's face it: none of our environmental fixes break the planet-wrecking project - All of us in the green movement are lost before the planet's real nightmare: not too little fossil fuel – but too much - 3rd May
Justice is impossible if we cannot trust police forces to tell the truth - From Blair Peach to Ian Tomlinson, there is only one remedy for police officers found to have made false statements: sack them - 12th April
The unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby has misled us all - I've discovered that when the facts don't suit them, the movement resorts to the follies of cover-up they usually denounce - 5th April
Free to protest? I can still be arrested if my placard reads: 'Nick Clegg, oh dear' - Even Tony Blair's most illiberal measures have survived Clegg's promise to repeal all the laws that inhibit our freedom - 29th March
Budget 2011: Guardian columnists' verdict - 24th March
Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power - Japan's disaster would weigh more heavily if there were less harmful alternatives. Atomic power is part of the mix - 22nd March
We won't trouble Saudi's tyrants with calls to reform while we crave their oil - Unrest will be seen as destabilising for western governments too until our dependency on Riyadh's tap is curbed - 15th March
We know what to march against on 26 March; here's what to protest for - Here is a challenge to the brave and brilliant TUC rally organisers – a first draft of a statement of aim - 7th March
The anti-state right takes the Welsh for idiots who mustn't be left alone - Backing big government against the people is not so strange when what you really hate is state spending on the poor - 1st March
Almost everyone condemns naked short selling. But not the British Treasury - The refusal to back a ban on naked short selling, despite the risk to the economy, exposes the cynicism of the Conservatives - 15th February
To us, it's an obscure shift of tax law. To the City, it's the heist of the century - In David Cameron we have a leader whose job is to quietly legitimise a semi-criminal, money-laundering economy - 8th February
Give me William the Conqueror's big society over David Cameron's any day - Coalition rhetoric evokes a public ownership of woodland lost centuries ago. The reality, however, is corporate tax breaks - 1st February
Curb the banks? The government has propped them at every opportunity - Here's the story of how Cameron and Osborne secretly tried and failed to kill tougher European rules on bankers' bonuses - 25th January
Eco-terrorism: the non-existent threat we spend millions policing - Spying on environmental activists serves no one's interests except for big corporations. Let's end this insult to democracy - 18th January
The rich will reap none of the pain and all of the gain of Clarke's legal-aid cuts - To understand the government's phoney war on fat cat lawyers don't just look at the victims, look at the beneficiaries - 11th January
Let's take the housing fight to wealthy owners with empty spare rooms - The hidden truth about our housing crisis is that it is driven by under-occupation - 4th January

Articles: 2010

The cold claims lives while energy companies get rich - Successive governments have allowed Britain's privatised, liberalised utility companies to get away with murder - 28th December
That snow outside is what global warming looks like - Unusually cold winters may make you think scientists have got it all wrong. But the data reveal a chilling truth - 21st December
These astroturf libertarians are the real threat to internet democracy - As I see in threads on my articles, the online sabotaging of intelligent debate seems organised. We must fight to save this precious gift - 14th December
The bill for PFI contracts is an outrage. Let us refuse to pay this odious debt - The great racket that was private finance now robs the taxpayer of billions that should be spent on nurses and teachers - 23rd November
Control landowners, not badgers – that's the real answer to bovine TB - Culling badgers risks spreading TB, government research concludes. But the NFU wants blood - 16th November
Yes, Britain's open for business – the sort of business that doesn't pay tax - I don't know if Vodafone avoided paying billions. But slashing staff at the Revenue clearly benefits our richest companies - 9th November
Channel 4's convenient green fictions - The latest anti-environmentalist TV polemic, billed as heretical, fits all too easily with corporate thinking - 5th November
We've been conned. The deal to save the natural world never happened - The so-called summit in Japan won't stop anyone trashing the planet. Only economic risks seem to make governments act - 2nd November
The Tea Party movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires - By funding numerous rightwing organisations, the mega-rich Koch brothers have duped millions into supporting big business - 26th October
For the Conservatives, this is not a financial crisis but a long-awaited opportunity - In a classic example of 'disaster capitalism', the cuts are being used to reshape the economy in the interests of business – and to trash the public sector - 19th October
It goes against our nature; but the left has to start asserting its own values - The progressive attempt to appeal to self-interest has been a catastrophe. Empathy, not expediency, must drive our campaigns - 12th October
Worse than pollution: crazy ants, bird-eating mice and murdering mink - They read like creatures in a gothic novel, but the species we've introduced round the world are real and cause untold harm - 5th October
We can't use it – so why the heck are we prospecting for new oil? - To stop runaway climate change we have to get out of fossil fuels. Drilling off Shetland and in the Arctic makes no sense - 28th September
Climate change enlightenment was fun while it lasted. But now it's dead - The collapse of the talks at Copenhagen took away all momentum for change and the lobbyists are back in control. So what next? - 21st September
I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly - The ethical case against eating animal produce once seemed clear. But a new book is an abattoir for dodgy arguments - 7th September
For deniers, politics beats the science. Handouts beat both - From Australia to the US, the rightwingers who claim climate change is a leftwing conspiracy will grab green subsidies - 24th August
Greens living in ivory towers now want to farm them too - The idea that you can feed Manhattan with crops grown in a skyscraper is the craziest of my allies' many miracle solutions - 17th August
We have allowed developers to rob us of our village green - In its push for more public housing the coalition must consider the health and social legacy of estates without shared space - 10th August
For evidence of the real war involving motorists, look in the mortuary - That cameras reduce road accidents is indisputable. Conservatives hate them because they catch the rich as well as the poor - 27th July
Ian Tomlinson ruling: we must all fight this whitewash - First Blair Peach. Then Jean Charles de Menezes. Now Ian Tomlinson. It is our duty to raise Cain this time - 24th July
This Tory bonfire of regulations lets the rich foul the poor with impunity - The failure of big business to police itself will cause crises in all aspects of public life – and the state will pay to put them right - 13th July
The 'climategate' inquiry at last vindicates Phil Jones – and so must I - The UEA's climate science chief has been cleared: he was provoked beyond endurance. It was unfair to call for his resignation - 8th July
Turn up the Mosquito and Manilow. And better still, lock the young up - Despite high-pitched sirens and curfews, still they are seen in public. I have a modest proposal to tackle the youthwave - 29th June
Matt Ridley's Rational Optimist is telling the rich what they want to hear - The ex-Northern Rock man is in denial about his book's mistakes - 18th June
Bogus and misdirected, yes. But the Tea Party has a lot to teach the left - The radical right has an authenticity the left lacks – it is angry and ready to translate that anger into action. We talk, they act - 15th June
The oil firms' profits ignore the real costs - The energy industry has long dumped its damage and, like the banks, made scant provision against disaster. Time to pay up - 8th June
This state-hating free marketeer ignores his own failed experiment - Matt Ridley, the former head of Northern Rock, is peddling theories riddled with blame-shifting and excruciating errors - 1st June
Plan after plan fails to make Oxbridge access fair. There is another way - Top universities remain dominated by privileged types like me. But one solution is ignored. Why? Because it would work - 25th May
What's not to like about high-speed rail? The case simply hasn't been made - I wanted to be convinced of the benefits but the figures don't work – nor, for this little island, does a plan for perpetual growth - 18th May
I share their despair, but I'm not quite ready to climb the Dark Mountain - To sit back and wait for the collapse of industrial civilisation is to conspire in the destruction of everything greens value - 11th May
General election 2010: Grasp the opportunity for reform - With no clear winner, the people's verdict is a plague on the old politics. Now is the time for real reform of our broken system - 7th May (Cif at the polls)
New Labour is a parasite. A vote for them is born of fear, not hope - A movement for social justice has had its brain rewired to serve the rich. I cannot join colleagues in urging that it be saved - 4th May
Britain needs a ginger revolution - If all the assaults on our old political powers could only channel their energies, we could break this rotten system - 27th April
Guardian's climate debate shows green politics has grown up - Greg Clark, Ed Miliband, Simon Hughes could all have been fronting a Friends of the Earth campaign from a few years ago - 22nd April
What links the banking crisis and the volcano? - George Monbiot: We rely globally on over-complex, over-strained systems. Act now, or wait for the much more brutal corrective of nature - 20th April
The pope on trial would show what equality before the law means - The case against Benedict rests on international law's potential to judge all alike. No wonder the powerful are resisting it - 13th April
The root of the climate email fiasco - Learning forced into silos of humanities and science has created closed worlds of specialists who just don't understand each other - 6th April
Why do our paranoid, anti-fun police seem to think they run the country? - Morality policing here is starting to rival Saudi. At protests and festivals, we need to reassert the right to gather in public spaces - 30th March 2010
Only America can end Britain's Trident folly - Talk of British sovereignty is laughable. We will blow billions on a nonsensical nuclear deterrent unless the US acts to disarm - 23rd March
Common English species face extinction - If a country that takes conservation so seriously can still be losing plants and animals every year, where does hope lie? - 16th March
The trouble with trusting complex science - There is no simple way to battle public hostility to climate research. As the psychologists show, facts barely sway us anyway - 9th March
Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off? - Plans for the grid feed-in tariff suggest we live in southern California. And at £8.6bn, this is a pricey conceit with little benefit - 1st March
Bankers' promises of self-imposed exile were empty – but I could help - If the rich-listers really want to maintain their wealth by leaving Britain, then let's provide them with a proper haven - 23rd February
Mock this campaign if you like, but how else can Blair be held to account? - With the limits of power in Britain so ill-defined, the only way a reckoning for Iraq will ever come is via a citizen's arrest - 2nd February (see: ArrestBlair.org)
Wanted: Tony Blair for war crimes. Arrest him and claim your reward - Chilcot and the courts won't do it, so it is up to us to show that we won't let an illegal act of mass murder go unpunished - 26th January
When our economic interests are at stake, the war on nature resumes - All this badger cull will prove is that our relations with the natural world have scarcely altered since the dark ages - 19th January
Mawkish, maybe. But Avatar is a profound, insightful, important film - Cameron's blockbuster offers a chilling metaphor for European butchery of the Americas. No wonder the US right hates it - 12th January
Will the Tories tackle supermarkets? - Regulatory failure has given supermarkets a stranglehold on grocery sales. Do the Tories have the guts to take them on? - 5th January
After this 60-year feeding frenzy, Earth itself has become disposable - Consumerism has, as Huxley feared, changed all of us – we'd rather hop to a brave new world than rein in our spending - 5th January

Articles: 2009

If you want to know who's to blame for Copenhagen, look to the US Senate - Obama's attempt to put China in the frame for failure had its origins in the absence of American campaign finance reform - 22nd December (See: Copenhagen 2009)
Mr Obama, here's your Copenhagen speech - Only one person can now rescue these climate talks. This is the speech to turn shambles to triumph - 17th December
This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity - It's hard for a species used to ever-expanding frontiers, but survival depends on accepting we live within limits - 15th December
The climate denial industry is out to dupe the public. And it's working - Think environmentalists are stooges? You're the unwitting recruit of a hugely powerful oil lobby – I've got the proof - 8th December
Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling - The tar barons have held the nation to ransom. This thuggish petro-state is today the only obstacle to a deal in Copenhagen - 1st December
Global warming rigged? Here's the email I'd need to see - The leaked exchanges are disturbing, but it would take a conspiracy of a very different order to justify sceptics' claims - 24th November
The one thing depleting faster than oil is the credibility of those measuring it - The challenge of feeding billions of people as fuel supplies fall is staggering. And yet leaders' heads remain stuck in the sand - 17th November
About those local newspapers … - In my column this week I asked readers to name local papers worth saving. Here are some of the strongest cases - 12th November
I, too, mourn good local newspapers. But this lot just aren't worth saving - The idea of democratic flag-bearers died decades ago. I can count on one hand those brave enough to speak truth to power - 10th November 2009
Clive James isn't a climate change sceptic, he's a sucker - but this may be the reason - My fiercest opponents on global warming tend to be in their 60s and 70s. This offers a fascinating, if chilling, insight into human psychology - 3rd November
Making this ruthless liar EU president is a crazy plan. But I'll be backing Blair - If the man who waged an unprovoked war in Iraq gets this job, it could be the chance to hold him to account for his crimes - 27th October
How our senior libel judge stamps on free speech – all over the world - Mr Justice Eady's rulings amplify the democratic world's most illiberal laws – enabled by 12 years of utterly feeble leadership - 20th October
When the army's in the dock, Justice swaps her crown for a bandana - Britain can hardly pass the democracy test when government and military police collude to prevent murderers being tried - 6th October
Stop blaming the poor. It's the wally yachters who are burning the planet - Population growth is not a problem - it's among those who consume the least. So why isn't anyone targeting the very rich? - 29th September
From toxic waste to toxic assets, the same people always get dumped on - Trafigura is just another case of global fly-tipping. It's all too easy for firms to protect profit and pass risk to the poor world - 22nd September
This professor of denial can't even answer his own questions on climate change - Ian Plimer is a purveyor of 24-carat bafflegab. So why are publications like the Spectator so keen to champion him? - 15th September (See also: Spectator recycles climate rubbish published by sceptic)
One financial meltdown, it seems, is just not enough for Gordon Brown - No one on this side of the Atlantic bears as much responsibility for this crisis. But he's still in cahoots with the bankers - 8th September
We're pumping out CO2 to the point of no return. It's time to alter course - Scientists now say peak temperatures will not fall back. Join me in taking the 10:10 pledge – it's the best shot we've got left - 1st September
Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse? - The collapse of civilisation will bring us a saner world, says Paul Kingsnorth. No, counters George Monbiot – we can't let billions perish - 18th August
My town is menaced by a superstore. So why are we not free to fight it off? - People know a Tesco will suck the marrow from us. Yet the decision is left in the hands of a remote and frightened council - 11th August
Is the Big Green Gathering another victim of the crackdown on dissent? - Organisers of the long-running festival have reason to believe that an excuse was contrived to bankrupt them - 4th August
These denialogues don't care if their own children end up with syphilis - US conservatives can add teenage pregnancies and STDs to climate change and all the other things they love to disavow - 28th July
The rich can relax. We just need the poor world to cut emissions. By 125% - British and G8 climate strategy just doesn't add up. As soon as serious curbs are needed it turns into impossible nonsense - 14th July (See: Climate change: summary)
England's pork barrel politics is paying for airlines to burn the planet - Demand for new routes and airports comes not from passengers but unelected, unaccountable development - 7th July
Yes, addicts need help. But all you casual cocaine users want locking up - I know people who drink fair-trade tea and coffee, shop locally and snort drugs at parties. They are disgusting hypocrites - 30th June
I wish Charles would stay out of it - Even if I often sympathise with him, the prince's intervention in the political affairs of the nation is an abuse of privilege - 25th June
Any real effort on climate change will hurt. Start with the easy bits: war toys - Our brains struggle with big, painful change. The rational, least painful change is to stop wasting money building tanks - 23rd June
For 300 years Britain has outsourced mayhem. Finally it's coming home - George Monbiot: Opium. famine and banks all played their part in this country's plundering of the globe. Now it's over, we find it hard to accept - 9th June
These are not the mariners of old but pirates who make bureaucrats blanch - Like the slash and burn of rainforest farming, dredging is allowed to continue, despite the law and long-term damage - 2nd June
The real British expenses scandal seems to be immune to exposure - MPs' claims are microscopic compared with the corruption bubbling along over PFIs and motorway expansion - 26th May
As the political consensus collapses, now all dissenters face suppression - Peaceful protest - or 'domestic extremism' - is being put down with increasing violence by our police forces - 19th May
These men would've stopped Darwin - Science research in Britain is now all about turning knowledge into business, rather than the beauty of exploration - 13th May
Corporate welfare for car companies must stop now - No 'green new deal', Peter Mandelson's bailout plan for the auto industry is just a retread of old-fashioned nationalisation - 8th May
This £2bn Mandelson fiefdom is an open door to corporate predators - BERR has become a cell within government that interferes with both social democracy and free markets - 5th May
G20 videos won't change the Met - Police officers seem able to use violence with impunity. But where the state has failed, demonstrators are refusing to lie down - 21st April
Allies against democracy - Both the police and the government appear to be taking their instructions from a multinational energy company. (See: Secret police intelligence was given to E.ON before planned demo) - 20th April
We spend millions on smallpox, but nothing on this far greater threat - Our leaders' approach to risk is unbalanced: huge resources to guard against an extinct disease, and nothing on oil running out - 14th April
You are being fleeced in the biggest, weirdest rip-off yet: a widened M25 - The state's road-building deal guarantees profits to private firms, while taxpayers put up the money and take the risks - 7th April
Just when we need him, the professor has an acute attack of the Bellamoids - The new planning regime for wind farms is not a 'fascist' erosion of our freedoms; it is vital for the survival of our planet - 31st March
Woodchips with everything. It's the Atkins plan of the low-carbon world - The latest miracle mass fuel cure, biochar, does not stand up; yet many who should know better have been suckered into it - 24th March
If we behave as if it's too late, then our prophecy is bound to come true - However unlikely success might be, we can't afford to abandon efforts to cut emissions - we just don't have any better option - 17th March
This scam is nothing but a handout for motor companies, resprayed green - Paying drivers to scrap their old cars and buy new ones will do nothing to catalyse a low-carbon transport revolution - 10th March
This revolting trade in human lives is an incentive to lock people up - The inmate population has soared since Britain started running prisons for profit. Little wonder lobbyists want Titan jails - 3rd March
Why you'll never find execution or eviction on a National Trust tea towel - Britain's biggest private landowner has done more than any other body to sanitise the national consciousness - 24th February
England, that great colonising land, has itself become a colony - Only one of the UK's four nations is deprived of its own assembly. You need not love the place to call for it to have a parliament - 17th February
Just what exactly do you stand for, Hazel Blears - except election? - The minister claims to have political guts, but the only principle her voting record shows is slavish obedience - 10th February
Politics is broken, so what do we do? We leave it to the politicians - The government couldn't revitalise this rotten system even if it wanted to. It's down to us - and we can learn from the US - 3rd February
This lobbying scandal confirms it. The dying days of Labour are upon us - A party elected to stamp out collusion has abjectly failed. Now, expect it to be mired in sleaze claims, as the Tories were in 1997 - 27th January
If the state can't save us, we need a licence to print our own money - It bypasses greedy banks. It recharges local economies. It's time to think seriously about an alternative currency - 20th January
The third runway is the final betrayal - A Labour government approves the expansion of Heathrow – why, it's almost enough to make you vote Tory - 16th January (see: Runway 3)
This is indeed a class war, and the campaign against the Aga starts here - Climate change allows the richest on earth to trash the lives of the poorest, no matter how Furedi's cult spins it - 13th January (Wikipedia-Frank Furedi)
It will take more than goodwill and greenwash to save the biosphere - Shell may boast about tackling climate change, but companies tend always to sacrifice good intentions for hard cash - 6th January

Articles: 2008

Dr Beeching turned the country I have come to love into an outpost of empire - The Welsh rail map is a classic indicator of an extractive economy, with lines extended towards London and the ports - 30th December 2008
Otter-spotting and birdwatching: the dark heart of the eco-terrorist peril - Without violent activism to monitor, the police's paranoia squad is demonising peaceful protest to stay in business - 23rd December 2008 (Responses: Those behind the harassment law did not want it to stifle protest - Edward Countryman - 7th January 2009 and This act only stops protesters who seriously harass - Tim Lawson-Cruttenden - 14th January 2009)
Even in this crisis, the government still offers refuge to pinstriped pirates - Britain's tax havens fuel crime and corruption on a huge scale but, for Brown, keeping business happy is still the priority - 16th December 2008
Cyberspace has buried its head in a cesspit of climate change gibberish - The Stansted protesters get it. The politicians of Poznan don't quite. But online, planted deniers drive a blinkered fiction - 9th December 2008
Long, detailed, impressive - but futile in the face of runaway climate change - This environmental state of emergency demands a bolder answer than Lord Turner's. We could start by taking six critical steps - 2nd December 2008
The planet is now so vandalised that only total energy renewal can save us - It may be too late. But without radical action, we will be the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse - 25th November 2008
Keynes is innocent: the toxic spawn of Bretton Woods was no plan of his - The economist's dream was blocked for an IMF serving the rich. Reforms proposed by G20 leaders are too little, too late - 18th November 2008
Lest we forget: the generals chose to kill their sons rather than their policies - On the 90th anniversary of the end of the first world war, it's salutory to recall who slaughtered whom and for what - 11th November 2008
How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington - The degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies - 28th October 2008
If an hour is a long time in politics, we must start thinking in centuries - From banking to the climate, the wreckage of short-termism is stark, and the need for a 100-year committee is plain - 21st October 2008
This stock collapse is petty when compared to the nature crunch - The financial crisis at least affords us an opportunity to now rethink our catastrophic ecological trajectory - 14th October 2008
This green subsidy for car makers is just a disguised corporate bail-out - Having long sabotaged eco-innovations, the motor industry is now demanding billions to cut its carbon emissions - 7th October 2008
The free market preachers have long practised state welfare for the rich - Bailing out banks seems unprecedented, but the US government's form in subsidising big business is well established - 30th September 2008
The patron saint of charlatans is again spreading dangerous misinformation - The Sunday Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker has published 38 articles about asbestos - and every one is wrong - 23rd September 2008
How can the rich still be buying our silence with this 13th-century law? - If even football fans can be sued by their club for online remarks, it's clear libel is too easily used to stifle legitimate dissent - 17th September 2008
One thing is clear from the history of trade: protectionism makes you rich - However much Peter Mandelson bullies them, poor countries know his equation of fair trade and free trade is nonsense - 9th September 2008
Yes, I'm a fructivist. My mission is to show you what you're missing - We have lost the sweetest of our native fruit: the only way to get it back is to grow it - even if that means guerrilla grafting - 2nd September 2008
Rich countries once used gunboats to seize food. Now they use trade deals - The world's hungriest are the losers as an old colonialism returns to govern relations between wealthy and poor nations - 26th August 2008
The US missile defence system is the magic pudding that will never run out - Poland is just the latest fall guy for an American foreign policy dictated by military industrial lobbyists in Washington - 19th August 2008
Old King Coal is a brave old soul, but he is talking utter nonsense - Arthur Scargill's nostalgia would punish the people he cares about. And as for his room-full-of-radiation challenge? I accept - 12th August 2008
I'd rather be a hypocrite than a cynic like Julie Burchill - Give me a posh, preachy eco-activist over a narcissist without a moral compass any day - Guardian.co.uk - 6th August 2008
The stakes could not be higher. Everything hinges on stopping coal - The climate camp must succeed. In the absence of political backbone, our only hope is an avalanche of public revulsion - 5th August 2008
We lie and bluster about our nukes - and then wag our fingers at Iran - By failing to disarm and breaking the rules when it suits, nuclear states are driving proliferation as much as Ahmadinejad - 29th July 2008
The great lunar rockism con - I've changed my mind: I do want to make films for Channel 4 again. Here's a pitch - Comment is free - 24th July 2008
Don't be fooled by the climate change bill. Carbon trading torpedoes it - The rigged statistics and exported emissions will render worthless the apparently radical targets Labour is now setting - 24th July 2008
Why does Channel 4 seem to be waging a war against the greens? - Channel 4 is once again fiercely criticised by the TV watchdog for distorting the views of climate scientists - 22nd July 2008
Global warming is a brutal truth - Channel 4's dismissal of Ofcom's damning verdict about its flawed programme is the usual professional self-deception - 21st July 2008 (Comment is free)
A national disgrace, a global menace, and a pre-democratic anachronism - Britain's libel laws are a gift to the censorious and powerful. It's better to be caught mugging than to be caught speaking freely - 15th July 2008
Trawlermen cling on as oceans empty of fish - and the ecosystem is gasping - Europe is propping up an unsustainable industry in an extreme example of short-termism that our children will pay for - 8th July 2008
This economic panic is pushing the planet right back down the agenda - Oil-dependent countries are focused on growth at all costs, and the pale green political consensus looks unlikely to hold - 1st July 2008
Crime is falling - but our obsession with locking people up keeps growing - Wealth, and the desire to preserve it, is what drives citizens of rich nations to demand an increasingly punitive justice system - 24th June 2008
How many innocent people are going out of their minds today? - Guantánamo has proved a useful distraction from the secret detention camps run by the US around the world - 17th June 2008
These objects of contempt are now our best chance of feeding the world - Peasants are detested by both communists and capitalists - but when it comes to productivity a small farm is unbeatable - 10th June 2008
War criminals must fear punishment. That's why I went for John Bolton - As long as the greatest crime of the 21st century remains unprosecuted, we all have a duty to keep the truth alive - 3rd June 2008
We have gone mad, Your Majesty, and only you can cure our affliction - An open letter to the leader of Opec's biggest oil producer, the one man who can force Britain to cut its carbon emissions - 27th May 2008
This government has been the most rightwing since the second world war - The prospect of a Tory in No 10 does worry me - but no more so than another term for this cabinet of war criminals - 20th May 2008
The survivors' stories leave no doubt: Guantánamo makes us all less safe - Official accounts reveal with chilling clarity that acts carried out in the name of the war on terror have backfired dreadfully - 13th May 2008
If there is a God, he's not green. Otherwise airships would take off - Many will cite the Hindenburg, but flying without harming the planet is possible. These craft are worth developing - 6th May 2008
Labour's perverse polyclinic scheme is the next step in privatising the NHS - The giant healthcare centres set to replace local GP surgeries are good for no one but the firms who will profit - 29th April 2008
The most potent weapon wielded by the empires of Murdoch and China - A riveting account of two of the world's most powerful forces has been ignored - blame anticipatory compliance - 22nd April 2008
Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat - A food recession is under way. Biofuels are a crime against humanity, but - take it from a flesh eater - flesh eating is worse - 15th April 2008
Jobs are used to justify anything, but the numbers don't add up - The credibility of the employment claims made for projects like nuclear newbuild is rarely, if ever, questioned - 1st April 2008
Carbon capture is turning out to be just another great green scam - Cleaner technology is possible, but Labour plans to introduce it so slowly that any benefits will be lost in higher coal output - 18th March 2008
Making GPs more accessible is just a disguised concession to big business - Extended opening hours will transfer resources away from those in most need, and allow private companies to fill the gaps - 11th March 2008
Did the Standard tell the truth about the Heathrow climate change camp? - The press watchdog mostly looks the other way when complaints are made, but it mustn't brush this one under the carpet - 4th March 2008
Face facts, Cardinal. Our awful rate of abortion is partly your responsibility - agree with His Eminence about the distress caused by the deaths of unborn children - but his policies will only increase the rate - 26th February 2008
Juggle a few of these numbers, and it makes economic sense to kill people - Britain's official approach to climate change puts a price on human lives. And the richer you are, the more yours is worth - 19th February 2008
Apart from used chip fat, there is no such thing as a sustainable biofuel - Even capitalists now admit the oil crisis is real. But their solutions border on lunacy as they avoid the obvious answer - 12th February 2008
This scandal makes it clear: for Labour, money trumps principle every time - Peter Hain's choice of donor defaces his reputation and reveals the surrender of his party to the super-rich - 5th February 2008
Population growth is a threat. But it pales against the greed of the rich - 29th January 2008
Only class war on public schools can rid us of this unhinged ruling class - Cowardice over the charitable status of private education leaves power in the hands of a tiny, damaged elite - 22nd January 2008
How Britain became party to a crime that may have killed a million people - Not having a written constitution allowed Blair and his advisers to go to war without reference to parliament or the public - 1st January 2008

Articles: 2007

We've been suckered again by the US. So far the Bali deal is worse than Kyoto - America will keep on wrecking climate talks as long as those with vested interests in oil and gas fund its political system - 17th December 2007
The real answer to climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground - All the talk in Bali about cutting carbon means nothing while ever more oil and coal is being extracted and burned - 11th December 2007
This crisis demands a reappraisal of who we are and what progress means - Outdated figures have been hiding the full extent of climate change. But I am still advocating action, and not despair - 4th December 2007
We build 3 million homes - or leave these families in Dickensian misery - It sounds preposterous: 3 million new homes in England alone by 2020. My instinct is to fight this project - 27th November 2007
The Middle East has had a secretive nuclear power in its midst for years - When will the US and the UK tell the truth about Israeli weapons? Iran isn't starting an atomic arms race, it's joining one - 20th November 2007
The anti-speed-camera campaign is built on twisted truth and junk science - Petrolheads are full of swagger in attacking road safety measures, but can't cope when called to account for skewing data - 13th November 2007
The western appetite for biofuels is causing starvation in the poor world - Developing nations are being pushed to grow crops for ethanol, rather than food - all thanks to political expediency - 6th November 2007
Civilisation ends with a shutdown of human concern. Are we there already? - A powerful novel's vision of a dystopian future shines a cold light on the dreadful consequences of our universal apathy - 30th October 2007
Governments aren't perfect, but it's the libertarians who bleed us dry - Northern Rock's former chairman liked to rage against regulation, until his bank had to beg 16bn pounds from the detested state - 23rd October 2007
I'm sorry to widen the golf gulf, but I still want answers from Gary Player - The construction of new courses is big business worldwide, but it leads to dispossession and huge environmental damage - 16th October 2007
In this age of diamond saucepans, only a recession makes sense - Economic growth is a political sedative, snuffing out protest as it drives inequality. It is time we gave it up - 9th October 2007
The new coal age - The government says it wants a low-carbon economy. Yet on a green hilltop in south Wales, despite huge opposition from locals, diggers have begun excavating what will be the largest opencast coal mine in Britain. Who let this happen? - 9th October 2007
If you want to support the monks, then call Gary Player to account - Western interests in Burma contribute to the oppression of its people. Let's put pressure on the companies responsible - 2nd October 2007
Crack the shell of Brown's new politics and out crawl the same old maggots - The push for participatory democracy has the disturbing whiff of an Astroturf campaign - a fake grassroots movement - 11th September 2007
This great free-market experiment is more like a corporate welfare scheme - A hospital in Coventry lays bare the deceit of neoliberal logic: staff cuts, ward closures and millions to the financiers - 4th September 2007
How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves - A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effects - 28th August 2007
Beneath Heathrow's pall of misery, a new political movement is born - It was not flawless, but the climate camp was still the most democratic and best organised protest I've witnessed - 21st Auguat 2007
Attack of the baby eaters - Shameless exaggerations of the climate protesters' dastardly plans have left us baffled at the camp - 18th August 2007
The new face of activism - The people who set up the Heathrow climate camp are neat, articulate and frighteningly well-organised. What is the world coming to? - 17th August 2007
The editorials urge us to cut emissions, but the ads tell a very different story - Newspaper exhortations on climate change sit uncomfortably alongside promotions for budget flights and oil companies - 14th August 2007
Because it is illegal, the climate camp is now also a protest for democracy - The ban on next week's Heathrow demonstration will not deter us. It will only boost the profile and raise the stakes - 7th August 2007
Brown's contempt for democracy has dragged Britain into a new cold war - The prime minister has broken his word and put us all at risk by allowing a US missile defence base on the North York Moors - 31st July 2007
Ethical shopping is just another way of showing how rich you are - The middle classes congratulate themselves on going green, then carry on buying and flying as much as before - 24th July 2007
They still rage about the class war, but keep funding their class enemies - The unions will clearly take any level of Labour abuse, leaving Brown free to bank their money as he appeases the bosses - 10th July 2007
Stop doing the CBI's bidding, and we could be fossil fuel free in 20 years - Prospects for renewable power are promising. But it means nothing if the public interest is drowned by corporate power - 3rd July 2007

News & updates:

Guardian columnist makes charity work settlement over Lord McAlpine Twitter libel. A national newspaper columnist has vowed to carry out charity work to the value of £25,000 to make amends for wrongly naming Lord McAlpine as a paedophile on Twitter. The Telegraph, 12th March 2013
Guardian columnist apologises for naming Lord McAlpine on Twitter. George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist, has apologised for naming Lord McAlpine on Twitter amid intense speculation about the identity of a senior Tory politician allegedly linked to the North Wales child sex abuse scandal. The Telegraph, 9th November 2012

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 ====Articles: 2017====
+*[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/28/paid-leave-vote-funding-brexit-public-inquiry  ''Who paid for the leave vote? Brexit should be halted until we know''] - There are huge questions about funding, involving the DUP and others. A public inquiry is needed - 28th June
 *[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/15/grenfell-tower-red-tape-safety-deregulation  ''With Grenfell Tower, we’ve seen what ‘ripping up red tape’ really looks like''] - Too often safety has been sacrificed to an agenda of deregulation backed by lobbyists: it’s time to put the public interest above corner-cutting and greed  - 16th June
 *[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/13/election-tories-media-broadcasters-press-jeremy-corbyn  ''The election’s biggest losers? Not the Tories but the media, who missed the story''] - Trapped in their hall of mirrors the broadcasters and press wrote off Jeremy Corbyn. They have to change and reflect the world they report on - 14th June

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