2024
Marcus Decker dared to protest the climate crisis and was punished. Now he could be deported, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
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In a world built by plutocrats, the powerful are protected while vengeful laws silence their critics
- George Monbiot
In the UK and around the world, those who challenge rich corporations are being hounded and crushed with ever-more inventive penalties, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
Janine Abbring spreekt zoöloog en klimaatactivist George Monbiot (1963) over het gevoel van nietigheid en vrijheid wanneer hij in zijn zeekajak vaart, hoe een krachtig verhaal zelfs onze diepst gevoelde waarden omver kan werpen, en hoe we straks de mensheid kunnen voeden zonder uiteindelijk de planeet zélf op te eten. Monbiot laat een fragment zien uit de Britse cultserie Survivors, over overlevenden na een pandemie veroorzaakt door een virusuitbraak in een lab in China. Verder beelden van de Amerikaanse rapper Eminem en van bultrugwalvissen in de baai van Monterey in Californië.
2023
It’s obscene that the super-rich can criminalise protest, while they burn the world’s resources and remain untouched by the law, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
Lorsque Rishi Sunak a accordé 27 nouvelles licences en mer du Nord cette semaine, il ne pensait pas à la survie du monde vivant. Le voyez-vous déjà ? L’horizon des systèmes terrestres – le point où nos systèmes planétaires basculent dans un nouvel équilibre, hostile à la plupart des formes de vie ? Je pense que oui. L’accélération soudaine des crises environnementales que nous avons connue cette année, associée à l’inutilité stratégique des puissants gouvernements, nous précipite vers le point de non-retour.
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When Rishi Sunak granted 27 new North Sea licences this week, he wasn’t thinking about the survival of the living world, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
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Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quo, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
Emmanuel Macron’s government is at least doing the bare minimum to avert the planetary crisis – and putting the UK to shame, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
George Monbiot Source : The Guardian – Traduction Deepl – Josette À mesure que la politique climatique s’affaiblit, les conditions météorologiques extrêmes s’intensifient et…
As climate policy is weakened, extreme weather intensifies and more refugees are driven from their homes – and the cycle of hatred continues, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
It’s not ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ if campaigners cannot explain their motivations to a jury, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
2022
It’s not just indifference. It’s an active, and deadly, cavalier attitude towards the lives of others: an example other nations follow
Fossil fuels, fisheries and farming: the world’s most destructive industries are protected – and subsidised – by governments
We know that the easiest way for a politician to secure power is to appease those who already possess it, those whose power transcends elections: the oil barons, the media barons, the corporations and financial markets. We know that this power appoints the worst possible people at the worst possible time. We know how, as elderly billionaires seek to grab ever more of the life that slips from them, they create a death cult....
The sediments preserved in these cliffs in Devon were laid down in the early Triassic period, just after the greatest mass extinction in the history of multicellular life that brought the Permian period to an end 252m years ago. Around 90% of species died, and fish and four-footed animals were more or less exterminated between 30 degrees north of the equator and 40 degrees south.
Les chaleurs excessives vont devenir la norme, même au Royaume-Uni. Les systèmes doivent changer de toute urgence – et le silence doit être brisé. Peut-on en parler maintenant ? Je veux dire le sujet que la plupart des médias et la majorité de la classe politique évitent depuis si longtemps. Vous savez, le seul sujet qui compte en définitive – la survie de la vie sur Terre. Tout le monde sait, même s’ils évitent soigneusement le sujet, qu’à côté de lui, tous les sujets qui remplissent les premières pages et obsèdent les experts sont des broutilles. Même les rédacteurs du Times qui publient encore des articles niant la science du climat le savent. Même les candidats à la direction du parti Tory, qui ignorent ou minimisent le problème, le savent. Jamais un silence n’a été aussi fort ou aussi assourdissant.
Can we talk about it now? I mean the subject most of the media and most of the political class has been avoiding for so long. You know, the only subject that ultimately counts – the survival of life on Earth. Everyone knows, however carefully they avoid the topic, that, beside it, all the topics filling the front pages and obsessing the pundits are dust. Even the Times editors still publishing columns denying climate science know it. Even the candidates for the Tory leadership, ignoring or downplaying the issue, know it. Never has a silence been so loud or so resonant.
The US supreme court is helping to destroy our climate. But it was a much smaller decision, closer to home, that was the final straw for me
There’s a simple way to unite everyone behind climate justice – and it’s within our power
For the past few years, scientists have been frantically sounding an alarm that governments refuse to hear: the global food system is beginning to look like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008.
Wealthy companies are using the facade of ‘nature-based solutions’ to enact a great carbon land grab
2021
Like humanity, wildlife knows no boundaries. Stopping people moving also carves up habitats, driving species to extinction
Maintenant, c’est un combat direct pour la survie. Le Pacte climatique de Glasgow, malgré tout son langage sobre et diplomatique, ressemble à un pacte suicidaire. Après tant d’années gâchées de déni, de distraction et de retard, il est trop tard pour un changement progressif. Avoir de bonnes chances d’éviter plus de 1,5°C de chauffage, c’est réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre d’environ 7 % chaque année : plus vite qu’elles n’ont baissé en 2020, au plus fort de la pandémie.
Now it’s a straight fight for survival. The Glasgow Climate Pact, for all its restrained and diplomatic language, looks like a suicide pact. After so many squandered years of denial, distraction and delay, it’s too late for incremental change.
Pandering to the rich has got us into this mess. The correlation between wealth and polluting behaviour could not be clearer
At Cop26 the wealthy countries cast themselves as saviours, yet their efforts are hopelessly inadequate and will prolong the injustice. the story of the past 500 years can be crudely summarised as follows. A handful of European nations, which had mastered both the art of violence and advanced seafaring technology, used these faculties to invade other territories and seize their land, labour and resources.
There is a myth about human beings that withstands all evidence. It’s that we always put our survival first. This is true of other species. When confronted by an impending threat, such as winter, they invest great resources into avoiding or withstanding it: migrating or hibernating, for example. Humans are a different matter.
The astonishing story of how the US entered the second world war should be on everyone’s minds as Cop26 approaches
A Devon project to provide housing and community facilities has had the ground sold from under it
Earth systems could tip before 2050. We urgently need more stringent climate targets. If there’s one thing we know about climate breakdown, it’s that it will not be linear, smooth or gradual. Just as one continental plate might push beneath another in sudden fits and starts, causing periodic earthquakes and tsunamis, our atmospheric systems will absorb the stress for a while, then suddenly shift.
If there’s one thing we know about climate breakdown, it’s that it will not be linear, smooth or gradual. Just as one continental plate might push beneath another in sudden fits and starts, causing periodic earthquakes and tsunamis, our atmospheric systems will absorb the stress for a while, then suddenly shift. Yet, everywhere, the programmes designed to avert it are linear, smooth and gradual.
It is hard to believe it’s happening again, even harder to believe that so few people seem to know or care. A massive famine is unfolding in Tigray in northern Ethiopia. Five million people are in need of food aid, and perhaps 900,000 are already starving.
Every new climate pledge is an attempt to distract people from the failed ones it replaces. Apparently, all seven governments have committed “to conserve or protect at least 30 per cent of the world’s land and at least 30 per cent of the world’s ocean by 2030”. But what does it mean?
2020
How is it possible to own land? The current pattern of ownership and control of land lies at the heart of many of our biggest dysfunctions: the collapse of wildlife and ecosystems, the exclusion and marginalization of so many people, the lack of housing in many cities—indeed, in many parts of the world—the lack of public space in cities, our exclusion from the countryside. The pattern of land ownership underlies all of these massive issues, and indeed of many more. Yet we rarely question it.
Rising consumption by the affluent has a far greater environmental impact than the birth rate in poorer nations
George Monbiot. George delves deep into the invisible ideologies trashing our planet. In this video George talks in depth about capitalism, consumerism and neo-liberalism.
2015
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2004
We must tackle the environmental nightmare of 4x4s by taxing them off the road, says George Monbiot.