George Monbiot

The little-known history of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in a New York primary hints at the coming transformation By George Monbiot for The Guardian  Even at first sight it is exhilarating. The overthrow of one of the most mainstream and senior Democrats in Congress by a 28-year-old Democratic socialist… »

He gets almost everything wrong. But last weekend Donald Trump got something right. To the horror of the other leaders of the rich world, he defended democracy against its detractors. Perhaps predictably, he has been universally condemned for it. His crime was to insist that the… »

Whether human beings survive this century and the next, whether other lifeforms can live alongside us: more than anything, this depends on the way we eat. We can cut our consumption of everything else almost to zero and still we will drive living systems to collapse, unless we… »

By George Monbiot for The Guardian Here’s how to tame corporate power, and prevent ruthless executives from enriching themselves by harming us Once more, they walk away. Like those at RBS, Northern Rock and a… »

by George Monbiot for The Guardian When contracts fail, the legal priority is still to pay firms like Carillion. Money is officially more valuable than life Again the “inefficient” state mops up the disasters caused by “efficient” private companies. Just as the army had to step in when G4S… »

By George Monbiot for The Guardian Public projects such as the NHS, BBC and social security define us as a nation. Without that cohesion, authoritarianism could flourish.  So what is this country we are asked to love? This might once have been an easy question to answer. National identity… »

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 11th December 2012 Pathological consumption has become so normalised that we scarcely notice it. There’s nothing they need, nothing they don’t own already, nothing they even want. So you buy them a solar-powered waving queen; a belly button brush; a silver-plated ice… »

By George Monbiot for The Guardian The city’s trees and residents are the victims of a Kafkaesque PFI deal between council and contractor One of neoliberalism’s promises was that it would free us from bureaucracy. By rolling back the state, it would vanquish the stifling power of officialdom,… »

By George Monbiot for The Guardian  Voting once every five years alienates us from politics. Participatory rather than representative democracy would allow us more say in how we run the country You lost, suck it up: this is how our politics works. If the party you voted… »

By George Monbiot for The Guardian The rupture of 2008 presents a chance to throw out our iniquitous system that busts the planet – here are some ideas We are still living in the long 20th century. We are stuck with its redundant technologies: the internal combustion engine,… »