George Monbiot's Blog

What the governments of the Global North don’t care about, they don’t measure.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 21st November 2025

I began by trying to discover whether or not a widespread belief was true. In doing so, I tripped across something even bigger: an index of the world’s indifference. I already knew that by burning fossil fuels, gorging on meat and dairy, and failing to make even simple changes, the rich world imposes a massive burden of disaster, displacement an...

Why don’t we get to grips with the climate crisis? Partly because most of the means of communication are owned or influenced by the very rich.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 14th November 2025

If this were just a climate crisis, we would fix it. The technology, money and strategies have all been at hand for years. What stifles effective action is a deadly conjunction: the climate crisis running headlong into the epistemic crisis.

An epistemic crisis is a crisis in the ...

To Bill Gates, overthrowing the power of the ultra-wealthy seems to be – literally – unthinkable.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 8th November 2025

Let’s begin with the fundamental problem: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about political realities. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He...

There’s an urgent need to replace our total mess with a codified constitution.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  23rd October 2025

After two years in Brazil, I felt I understood its political system better than I understand the UK’s. The reason is a short book in simple language that almost everyone owned: the constitution, published in 1988. Admittedly, I discovered the document’s limitations while trying to explain its principles to a furious captain of the military polic...

The government is trying to set us against our ecosystems. We must resist this Trumpian gambit.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 16th October 2025

Crucial to the government’s war on nature is the “cauldron principle”. If a species is to be blamed for “holding up development”, it must be one you might find in a witch’s cauldron. The culprits are never dormice, otters, water voles, nightingales, turtle doves or orchids, widely considered cute or beautiful. They are bats, new...

This Labour government would have banned the Labour movement – alongside all the other protests that secured our freedoms.

Imagine a movement arising in this country that seeks to overthrow established power. Imagine that it begins with a series of rebellions, in Scotland and south Wales perhaps, that shut down workplaces, confront police and soldiers (sometimes peaceably, sometimes with crude weapons), set up roadblocks and lay siege to the places where fellow protesters are imprisoned a...

Austerity costs us a fortune.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th October 2025

I was lucky. Last week, I was cycling downhill at night when I hit a pothole. The front wheel folded into an infinity symbol. I went over the handlebars and, with no time to put my hands out, landed on my face. My helmet and glasses took most of the impact. I emerged, remarkably, with just a few cuts and bruises.

My glasses were banjaxed, my bike needed major repairs and my clothes were torn....

Alongside the genocide, the Israeli government is destroying the ecosystems of Gaza, perhaps permanently.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 27th September 2025

A landless people and a peopleless land: these, it appears, are the aims of the Israeli government in Gaza. There are two means by which they are achieved. The first is the mass killing and expulsion of the Palestinians. The second is rendering the land uninhabitable. Alongside the crime of genocide, another great hor...

The mainstream media, with a few exceptions, is a single-issue lobby group, whose purpose is to assert the rights of capital.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  20th September 2025

The BBC I joined on my first day of professional journalism – 40 years ago this week – is unrecognisable today. While, for most of its history, the corporation had largely defended the status quo, under the director general at the time, Alasdair Milne, its journalists were sometimes allowed to sti...

Astonishingly, the Tufton Street junktanks that shaped Liz Truss’s agenda are still operating at the heart of government.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 11th September 2025

Forgive me if I’ve got this wrong, but I seem to recall the country voting the Tories out last year. Part of the reason, if I remember correctly, was their staggering incompetence and insouciance, epitomised by Liz Truss’s mini-budget. That catastrophe was, like Truss’s political career, formed and ste...