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[[Image:George Monbiot.jpg|thumb|220px|George Monbiot]]
[[Image:George Monbiot.jpg|thumb|220px|George Monbiot]]


'''George Joshua Richard Monbiot''' (born [[27 January]], [[1963]]) is a [[journalist]], [[author]], [[academic]] and [[environmentalism|environmental]] and [[politics|political]] [[activism|activist]] in the [[United Kingdom]] who writes a weekly column for ''[[The Guardian]]'' newspaper. He is the [[patron]] of the UK student campaign network ''[[People & Planet]]''.<ref>http://peopleandplanet.org/aboutus/patron</ref>
'''George Joshua Richard Monbiot''' (born [[27 January]], [[1963]]) is a [[journalist]], [[author]], [[academic|douche]] and [[environmentalism|environmental]] and [[politics|political]] [[activism|activist]] in the [[United Kingdom]] who writes a weekly column for ''[[The Guardian]]'' newspaper. He is the [[patron]] of the UK student campaign network ''[[People & Planet]]''.<ref>http://peopleandplanet.org/aboutus/patron</ref>


==Family==
==Family==

Revision as of 05:22, 29 May 2008

George Monbiot

George Joshua Richard Monbiot (born 27 January, 1963) is a journalist, author, douche and environmental and political activist in the United Kingdom who writes a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper. He is the patron of the UK student campaign network People & Planet.[1]

Family

Monbiot's father, Raymond Geoffrey Monbiot, was the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and Chairman of the National Convention.[2] His mother Rosalie, the elder daughter of Roger Gresham Cooke, M.P.[3] is a Conservative councillor who led South Oxford district council for a decade.[4] His father was the son of Maurice F. Monbiot, the Belgian born maitre d' of the Trocadero restaurant in London owned by J. Lyons and Co., whose French-born father Raymond[5] was the Trocadero's restaurant manager.[6] Maurice F. Monbiot married Ruth Margaret Salmon, only daughter of Henry "Harry" Salmon,[7] J.P., chairman of J. Lyons and Co., and Lena Gluckstein.[8] Ruth Margaret Salmon was first cousin of both of the maternal grandparents of Nigella Lawson and Dominic Lawson[9] therefore George Monbiot is their double third and fourth cousin. His great-grandparents Henry "Harry" Salmon and Lena Gluckstein were themselves first cousins through the Gluckstein family, co-founders of J. Lyons and Co.

Monbiot is married to Angharad Penrhyn Jones with whom he has one daughter, Hanna, and they live in Machynlleth, Wales.[10]

Education and career

He was educated at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, where he won an Open Scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read Zoology. He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics) and East London (environmental science). He is currently visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University.[11]

On graduating, he joined the BBC Natural History Unit as a radio producer, making natural history and environmental programmes. He transferred within the BBC to the World Service, where he worked briefly as a current affairs producer and presenter, before leaving to research and write his first book.[12]

Working as an investigative journalist he travelled in Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa. His activities led to him being made persona non grata in several countries[13] and being sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Indonesia.[14] In these places he was also shot at,[15] beaten up by military police,[15] shipwrecked[15] and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets.Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page). He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria.Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page).

In Britain, he joined the roads protest movement. He was attacked by security guards, who drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle metatarsal bone. His injuries left him in hospital. He was an active member of the Pure Genius!! campaign and co-founded The Land is Ours, which has occupied land all over the country. Its first notable success was in 1997, when it occupied thirteen acres (five hectares) of prime real estate on the river in London on which owners Diageo intended to build a superstore. The protesters beat Diageo in court, built an "eco-village" and held on to the land for six months.[11]

Among his best-known articles are his critique of David Bellamy's climate science,[16] his description of an encounter with a police torturer in Brazil,[17] his attack on libertarian interpretations of genetics[18] his discussion of the ethics of outsourcing,[19] and his attack on the politics of Bob Geldof and Bono.[20]

Solutions to control the climate

Monbiot believes that drastic action coupled with strong political will is needed to combat global warming, Monbiot asserts that climate change is the "moral question of the 21st century" and that there is little time for debate or objections to a raft of emergency action he believes will stop climate change, including: setting targets on greenhouse emissions using the latest science; issuing every citizen with a 'personal carbon ration'; new building regulations with houses built to German passivhaus standard; banning incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other inefficient technologies; constructing large offshore wind farms, replacing the national gas grid with a hydrogen pipe network; a new national coach network to make journeys using public transport faster than using a car; all petrol stations to supply leasable electric car batteries with stations equipped with a crane service to replace depleted batteries; scrap road-building and road-widening programmes, redirecting their budgets to tackle climate change; reduce UK airport capacity by 90%; closing down all out-of-town superstores and replace them with warehouses and a delivery system.[21]

Monbiot purchased a Renault Clio (diesel) after moving to a small town in mid-Wales in 2007, leading to charges of hypocrisy.[22] Similarly he has also travelled through Canada and the United States, campaigning on climate change and promoting his book. He contends that this travel was justifiable as it sought to boost the case for much greater carbon cuts there.[23][24]

Published works

George Monbiot’s first book was Poisoned Arrows (1989), a work of investigative travel journalism exposing the transmigration programme funded by the Suharto government and the World Bank, and the devastating effects on both the migrants and the indigenous people of West Papua. It was followed by Amazon Watershed (1991) which documented expulsions of Brazilian peasant farmers from their land and followed them thousands of miles across the forest to the territory of the Yanomami Indians, and showed how timber bought in Britain was being stolen from indigenous and biological reserves in Brazil. His third book, No Man’s Land: An Investigative Journey Through Kenya and Tanzania (1994), documented the seizure of land and cattle from nomadic people in Kenya and the Tanzania, by - among other forces - game parks and safari tourism.

In 2000, George Monbiot published Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain. The book examines the role of corporate power within the United Kingdom, on both a local and national level, and argues that corporate involvement in politics is a serious threat to democracy. Subjects discussed in the book include the building of the Skye Bridge, corporate involvement in the National Health Service, the role of business in university research and the conditions which influence the granting of planning permission.

Monbiot at Make Poverty History rally in Scotland

Monbiot’s fifth book, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order, was published in 2003. The book is an attempt to set out a positive manifesto for change for the global justice movement. Monbiot critiques anarchism and Marxism, arguing that any possible solution to the world’s inequalities must be rooted in a democratic parliamentary system. The four main changes to global governance which Monbiot argues for are a democratically-elected world parliament which would pass resolutions on international issues; a democratised United Nations General Assembly to replace the unelected UN Security Council; the proposed International Clearing Union which would automatically discharge trade deficits and prevent the accumulation of debt; and a fair trade organisation which would regulate world trade in a way that protects the economies of poorer countries.

The book also discusses ways in which these ideas may practically be achieved. Monbiot treads the path of a revolutionary, urging those who suffer the consequences of a global inequality predicated on developing world debt and subservience to utilise this debt and effectively hold the developed world to ransom. He posits that the United States and Western European states are heavily dependent on the existence of this debt, and that when faced with a choice between releasing the developing world from debt and the collapse of the global economy, their internal economic interests will dictate that they opt for the "soft landing" option. However, Monbiot emphasises that he does not present the manifesto as a “final or definitive” answer to global inequalities but intends that it should open debate and stresses that those who reject it must offer their own solutions. He argues that ultimately the global justice movement “must seek [...] to provide a coherent programme of alternatives to the concentrated power of the dictatorship of vested interests.”

Monbiot’s most recent book, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, published in 2006, focuses on the issue of climate change. In this book, Monbiot argues that a 90% reduction in carbon emissions is necessary in developed countries in order to prevent disastrous changes to the climate. He then sets out to demonstrate how such a reduction could be achieved within the United Kingdom, without a significant fall in living standards, through changes in housing, power supply and transport. Monbiot concludes that such changes are possible but they would require considerable political will.

Honours

In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement.[25] He has also won the Lloyds National Screenwriting Prize for his screenplay The Norwegian, a Sony Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent Award and the OneWorld National Press Award.[11] In 2007, he was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University. In November 2007 his book Heat was awarded the Premio Mazotti, an Italian book prize. But he was denied the money given with the prize because he refused to travel to Venice to collect it in person, arguing that it wasn't a good enough reason to justify flying.

Attempted Citizen's Arrest of John Bolton

On May 28, 2008, Monbiot attempted to make a citizen's arrest of John R. Bolton at the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts in Hay-on-Wye. [26]

Politics

A member of the Green Party, he was involved initially with the Respect political party, but he broke with the organisation when it chose to run candidates against the Green Party in the 2004 election to the European Parliament.[27]

Miscellany

  • The pejorative political epithet "Moonbat" is often used by various political commentators to mock Monbiot.[28] The epithet was coined in 2002 by Perry de Havilland of Samizdata.net, a libertarian weblog. The claim that the term was originally used as a play on Monbiot's surname[29] has been denied by de Havilland - the full epithet being "barking moonbat". Seemingly, Monbiot himself does not mind though in every othe respect he is extremely sensitive to any form of critique, even good-natured.[30]

Bibliography

  • Poisoned Arrows: An Investigative Journey Through Indonesia (1989, Abacus) ISBN 0-7181-3153-3
  • Amazon Watershed (1991, Abacus) ISBN 0-7181-3428-1
  • Mahogany Is Murder: Mahogany Extraction from Indian Reserves in Brazil (1992) ISBN 1-85750-160-8
  • No Man's Land: An Investigative Journey Through Kenya and Tanzania (1994, Picador) ISBN 0-333-60163-7
  • Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain (2000, Macmillan) ISBN 0-333-90164-9
  • Anti-capitalism: A Guide to the Movement (2001, Bookmarks) ISBN 1-898876-78-9 contributor
  • Europe Inc.: Regional and Global Restructuring and the Rise of Corporate Power (2003, Pluto Press) foreword by George Monbiot, ISBN 0-7453-2163-1
  • The Age of Consent (2003, Flamingo) ISBN 0-00-715042-3
  • Manifesto for a New World Order (2004, The New Press) ISBN 1-56584-908-6
  • Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning (September 2006, Allen Lane) ISBN 0-7139-9923-3 U.S. edition (April 2007, South End Press) ISBN 978-0-89608-779-8
  • Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice (March 2008, Atlantic Books) ISBN 978-1843546566

References

  1. ^ http://peopleandplanet.org/aboutus/patron
  2. ^ Raymond Monbiot CBE, People, Conservative Party website
  3. ^ Marriages, p. 10, The Times, 9 December, 1961
  4. ^ The Daily Telegraph, 25 May 1996
  5. ^ The Strand Magazine, p. 62, v. 104, 1942-43 October-March
  6. ^ "Points from Letters", p. 8, The Times, 9 January 1939
  7. ^ Marriages, p. 1, The Times, 13 January 1934
  8. ^ Genealogy, Salmon and Gluckstein family
  9. ^ Who Do You Think You Are?, Series Three: Celebrity Gallery, Dr Nick Barratt
  10. ^ How green will his valley be?, The Sunday Times, 12 November 2006. Accessed 16 October 2007
  11. ^ a b c About George Monbiot George Monbiot's biography on Monbiot.com Accessed 10 November 2006. Cite error: The named reference "about-george-monbiot" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  12. ^ Monbiot CV on McSpotlight
  13. ^ "George Monbiot - short bio". Penguin Books. Retrieved 2007-05-26.
  14. ^ "In a globalised world of opportunity". The Sunday Times (UK). 2003-06-22. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
  15. ^ a b c George Monbiot, 1991. Amazon Watershed. Michael Joseph, London
  16. ^ "Junk Science" published in The Guardian 10 May 2005, accessed 9 March 2008.
  17. ^ "Hunting the Beast">[1]
  18. ^ "Libertarians Are the True Social Parasites">[2]
  19. ^ "The Flight to India">[3]
  20. ^ "Bards of the Powerful">[4]
  21. ^ The Guardian: Drastic action needed now [5]
  22. ^ Mr Green goes motoring, The Times, 3 June 2007
  23. ^ George Monbiot Canada tour 2006, www.monbiot.com November 2006
  24. ^ George Monbiot in Vancouver, www.treehugger.com 23 November 2006
  25. ^ Monbiot Profile on Global 500 Forum Accessed 10 November 2006.
  26. ^ [6] "Telegragh.co.uk" 28 May 2008 Accessed 28 May 2008
  27. ^ "Monbiot quits Respect over threat to Greens" The Guardian, 17 February 2004. Accessed 10 November 2006
  28. ^ The Guardian, 17 November 2003 "...with political theorist and global justice guru George "Moonbat" Monbiot (that's the nickname his rightwing critics give him)..." Accessed 14 November 2006
  29. ^ Moonbattery Accessed 14 November 2006
  30. ^ The Guardian, 17 November 2003 Accessed 1 December 2006

See also

Leading UK environmentalists

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