Heart Rot. If we lose the ash tree, we’ll lose culture as well as nature. By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website 12th October 2012 Reading the shocking news about ash die-back, the disease that has now killed most of Denmark’s ash trees and many of those across the rest of northern Europe, I was reminded that when we lose our wildlife we lose some of our stories. The death of a species, especially a species as significant as the ash, punches a hole not only in nature, but also in our culture.
Throughout northern Europe, the ash tree was associated in pagan thought with the guardianship of life. As Paul Kendall explains on the Trees for Life site, in the mythology of the Vikings (and several other northern peoples), an ash known as Yggdrasil or the World Tree was the scaffolding on which the universe was built. It “grew on an island surrounded by the ocean, in the depths of which the World Serpent lay. Odin, the king of the gods, hung himself from the tree to obtain cosmic wisdom. Putting a price on the rivers and rain diminishes us all | George Monbiot. 'The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine', and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody'. " Jean Jacques Rousseau would recognise this moment. Now it is not the land his impostors are enclosing, but the rest of the natural world.
In many countries, especially the United Kingdom, nature is being valued and commodified so that it can be exchanged for cash. The effort began in earnest under the last government. The argument in favour of this approach is coherent and plausible. But it doesn't end there. It diminishes us, it diminishes nature. Dance With the One Who Brung You. The environment is being trashed because of a failure to reform campaign finance. By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website 2nd August 2012 “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
These words, from WB Yeats’s poem The Second Coming, came to mind as I read the testimony from Wednesday’s Senate hearings on climate change. They’re not a precise description of what took place, as the two most eminent climate scientists who testified before the environment and public works committee, Christopher Field and James McCarthy, were not lacking in conviction. But they were, as scientists should be, careful and meticulous, laying out their evidence calmly and sequentially, saying nothing that was not supported by the data.
By contrast, the Senate committee’s ranking member (its most senior Republican), James Inhofe, spoke with the demagogic passion of a revivalist preacher. None of this makes the slightest difference to Mr Inhofe. Www.monbiot.com. Scorched Earth Economics. Why have the Year Zero policies of neoliberalism not been abandoned? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 31st July 2012 The model is dead; long live the model. Austerity programmes are extending the crises they were meant to solve, yet governments refuse to abandon them. The United Kingdom provides a powerful example. The cuts, the coalition promised, would hurt but work. They hurt all right – and have pushed us into a double dip recession(1). This result was widely predicted. Two questions arise. Surely the corporate class and the ultra-rich – the only people to whom the government will listen – can see that these policies are destroying the markets on which their wealth relies?
To understand this conundrum we should first understand that what is presented as an economic programme is in fact a political programme. Neoliberals claim that we are best served by maximising market freedom and minimising the role of the state. So where is the economic elite? Www.monbiot.com References: Lead Soldiers. A new front opens up in the war against nature. By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website 26th July 2012 I have long seen the Countryside Alliance as a neo-feudal organisation, run by the landowning class and resentful of the intrusions of democracy upon its traditional privileges.
The Alliance, whose board is populated by dukes, lords and baronesses, asserts the right of its members to kill what they want and how they want. When anyone objects, it characterises the objection as the oppression of rural people by urbanites. In reality, rural opinion on these and other matters is diverse and divided, while many of the most ardent killers (who spend a fortune on shooting grouse, stags and driven pheasants) make their money in the City and other parts of the urban economy. This is not a clash between rural and urban values, but a clash between aristocratic and democratic values. In such cases birds will often swallow large quantities of lead. This limited ban is widely flouted. A Manifesto for Psychopaths. Ayn Rand’s ideas have become the Marxism of the new right.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 6th March 2012. It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the post-war world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled by government intervention, in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The poor die like flies as a result of government programmes and their own sloth and fecklessness. Rand’s is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge and greed. Ignoring Rand’s evangelical atheism, the Tea Party movement has taken her to its heart.
Like all philosophies, Objectivism is absorbed second-hand by people who have never read it. References: Why Libertarians Must Deny Climate Change. As soon as it encounters environmental issues, the ideology of the new right becomes ensnared in its own contradictions. By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website, 6th January 2012 Over the Christmas break I read what I believe is the most important environmental essay of the past 12 months. Though it begins with a mildly unfair criticism of a column of mine, I won’t hold it against the author.
In a simple and very short tract, Matt Bruenig presents a devastating challenge to those who call themselves libertarians, and explains why they have no choice but to deny climate change and other environmental problems. Bruenig explains what is now the core argument used by conservatives and libertarians: the procedural justice account of property rights. Their property rights are absolute and cannot be intruded upon by the state or by anyone else. “Almost all uses of land will entail some infringement on some other piece of land that is owned by someone else. Www.monbiot.com. The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen | George Monbiot. If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy.
This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes. The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. Such results have been widely replicated. So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. This is now changing. It’s the Rich Wot Gets the Pleasure.
Population is much less of a problem than consumption. No wonder the rich are obsessed by it. By George Monbiot. Published on the Guardian’s website, 27th October 2011 It must rank among the most remarkable events in recent human history. In just 60 years the global average number of children each woman bears has fallen from 6 to 2.5. This is an astonishing triumph for women’s empowerment, and whatever your position on population growth might be, it is something we should celebrate.
But this decline in fertility, according to the report the United Nations published yesterday, is not the end of the story. That’s the middle scenario. Writing in the journal Nature in May, Fred Pearce pointed out that the UN’s revision arose not from any scientific research or analysis, but from what appeared to be an arbitrary decision to change one of the inputs it fed into its model. Even so, and even if we’re to assume that the old figures are more realistic than the new ones, there’s a problem.
The Lairds of Learning. How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers? By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 30th August 2011 Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the Western world? Whose monopolistic practices makes WalMart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch look like a socialist? You won’t guess the answer in a month of Sundays. While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers. Theirs might sound like a fusty and insignificant sector.
Everyone claims to agree that people should be encouraged to understand science and other academic research. You might resent Murdoch’s paywall policy, in which he charges £1 for 24 hours of access to the Times and Sunday Times. Of course, you could go into the library (if it still exists). Murdoch pays his journalists and editors, and his companies generate much of the content they use. It’s bad enough for academics, it’s worse for the laity. 1.
Corporate Power? No Thanks. The machinations of the industry shouldn’t be allowed to spoil the case for nuclear power. By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 5th July 2011 Power corrupts; nuclear power corrupts absolutely. The industry developed as a by-product of nuclear weapons research. Last week the Guardian revealed that the British government connived with corporations to play down the impact of the disaster at Fukushima(1). It is through such collusion that accidents happen. In this respect they are, of course, distinguished from the rest of the energy industry, which is run by collectives of self-abnegating monks whose only purpose is to spread a little happiness. All the big energy companies – whether they invest in coal, oil, gas, nuclear, wind or solar power – manipulate politicians, bully regulators and bamboozle the public. Let’s begin with safety.
What we see here is the difference between 1970s and 1980s safety features. The second is that it takes 10-15 years to build new nuclear plants. 2. Arrested Development. The wild boar cull should be halted, and we should stop confusing conservation with gardening. By George Monbiot. Published on the Guardian’s wesbite, 16th September 2011 Is the United Kingdom the most zoophobic nation in Europe? Do we, in other words, have an unusually intense fear of wild animals? We’ve certainly been less successful than other nations at protecting large mammals. Norway and Finland, for example, have lost none of their large, post-glacial land mammal species. But, until recently, our native species numbered just two: roe deer and red deer. There are several reasons for this failure. The tendency was illustrated again this week by the news that grouse estates in Scotland appear to have been poisoning golden eagles, peregrines, red kites, buzzards and even a white-tailed eagle.
But one small, accidental reversal of this destructive legacy is taking place, and we should celebrate and cherish it. Anyway, Dr Harmer said he didn’t know whether the boar were damaging or not. Think of a Tank. The “free market thinktanks” and their secret funders are a threat to democracy. By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 13th September 2011 Nadine Dorries won’t answer it. Lord Lawson won’t answer it. When she attempted to restrict abortion counselling, Nadine Dorries MP was supported by a group called Right to Know. We know that to understand politics and the peddling of influence we must follow the money. There are dozens of groups in the UK which call themselves free market or conservative thinktanks, but they have a remarkably consistent agenda.
Some of them have a turnover of several million pounds a year, but in most cases that’s about all we know. The Kochs and the oil company Exxon have also funded a swarm of thinktanks which, by coincidence, all spontaneously decided that manmade climate change is a myth(8,9). Jeff Judson, who has worked for 26 years as a corporate lobbyist in the US, has explained why thinktanks are more effective than other public relations agencies. 5. An Answer to the Meaning of Life. The well-intentioned dolts putting a price on nature are delivering it into the hands of business. By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 7th June 2011 Love, economists have discovered, is depreciating rapidly.
On current trends, it is expected to fall by £1.78 per passion-hour between now and 2030. The opportunity cost of a kiss foregone has declined by £0.36 since 1988. By 2050 the net present value of a night under the stars could be as little as £56.13. None of that is true, but it’s not far off. Under the last government, the Department for Transport announced that it had discovered “the real value of time”. The government has not yet produced one number for “the true value of nature”, but its scientists have costed some of the assets that will one day enable this magical synthesis to be achieved. How do they calculate these values? The exercise is well-intentioned. The second problem is that it delivers the natural world into the hands of those who would destroy it. 1. 3. 4.
Our Crushing Dilemmas. How do environmentalists fight without losing what we’re fighting for? By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website, 5th May 2011 In my column earlier this week, I discussed the crisis the environment movement is now confronting. I’m using this essay to expand on the problems I mentioned there, and in particular to consider the most interesting of the responses to the crisis proposed so far, by Paul Kingsnorth. Let me begin by spelling out, at greater length, the dilemmas we face. 1. 2. Those of us who support renewables find ourselves in a difficult position: demanding the industrialisation of the countryside, supporting new power stations, new power lines and (for the electricity storage required) new reservoirs. 3.
A. B. C. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. The enmity arises when people go into denial. We’re all responding to the same impulses, but we’re all being tripped up by denial. I’m by no means the first to recognise that environmentalism is stuck. But here too there is a problem.