George Joshua Richard Monbiot ( MON-bee-oh; born 27 January 1963) is an English journalist, author, and environmental and political activist. He writes a regular column for The Guardian and has written several books. Monbiot grew up in Oxfordshire in a Jewish family and studied zoology at the University of Oxford. He then began a career in investigative journalism, publishing his first book Poisoned Arrows in 1989 about human rights issues in West Papua. In later years, he has been involved in activism and advocacy related to various issues, such as climate change, British politics and loneliness. In Feral (2013), he discussed and endorsed expansion of rewilding. He is the founder of The Land is Ours, a campaign for the right of access to the countryside and its resources in the United Kingdom. Monbiot was awarded the Global 500 in 1995 and the Orwell Prize in 2022.
Early life and education Born in Kensington, Monbiot grew up in Rotherfield Peppard, Oxfordshire. His father, Raymond Monbiot, was a businessman who headed the Conservative Party's trade and industry forum. His mother, Rosalie (daughter of Gresham Cooke MP), was a Conservative councillor and former leader of South Oxfordshire District Council. His uncle, Canon Hereward Cooke, was the Liberal Democrat deputy leader of Norwich City Council. After preparatory boarding school at Elstree School, he was educated at Stowe School, in Buckinghamshire. He won an open scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford. Monbiot has stated that his "political awakening" was prompted by reading Bettina Ehrlich's book Paolo and Panetto while at his prep school, and that he regretted attending Oxford.
Career
After graduating with a degree in zoology, Monbiot joined the BBC Natural History Unit as a radio producer, making natural history and environmental programmes. He transferred to the BBC's World Service, where he worked briefly as a current affairs producer and presenter, before leaving to research and write his first book. Working as an investigative journalist, he travelled in Indonesia, Brazil, and East Africa. His activities led to his being made persona non grata in seven countries and being sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Indonesia. In these places he was also shot at, brutally beaten up and arrested by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets. He came back to work in Britain after having been pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria. He joined the British roads protest movement and was often called to give press interviews; as a result he was denounced as a "media tart" by groups such as Green Anarchist and Class War. He claims he was brutally beaten and attacked by security guards, who allegedly drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle metatarsal bone. His injuries left him in hospital. Sir Crispin Tickell, a former United Nations diplomat, who was then Warden at Green College, Oxford, made the young protester a visiting fellow. In November 2012, he apologised to Lord McAlpine for his "stupidity and thoughtlessness" in implying, in a tweet, that the Conservative peer was a paedophile. In 2014, Monbiot wrote an article on the theme of loneliness. This led to a collaboration with musician Ewan McLennan. Together they released an album Breaking the Spell of Loneliness in October 2016 followed by a tour of the UK. Folk Radio described it as "an enthralling album" where "Each song is a short, eloquent and thought provoking essay on the destruction of our humanity and how it can be regained". Monbiot narrated the video How Wolves Change Rivers which was based on his TED talk of 2013 on the restoration of ecosystems and landscape (rewilding) when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone Park. In 2019, Monbiot co-presented Nature Now, a video about natural climate solutions, with Greta Thunberg. Monbiot appeared in the documentary The Cost of Living: Does Britain Need a Basic Income?, a companion piece to the film The Future of Work and Death, about UBI in the UK – released on Amazon Prime in 2020. He appeared in the 2021 Netflix documentary Seaspiracy, which focuses on the human impact on marine life and fishing, and defended it from critics. In 2021, Monbiot created the live documentary Rivercide, highlighting the lamentable state of the UK's rivers, and in particular the River Wye. While describing the film Don't Look Up in early 2022, Monbiot explained how difficult it is to campaign for the preservation of Earth in the face of what he sees as overwhelming inaction. In 2024, Monbiot appeared in the British documentary film I Could Never Go Vegan.
Views and activism
Peak oil In the early 2000s, Monbiot predicted that global production of oil "will peak before long". In his article, titled "The Bottom of the Barrel", he wrote:
The most optimistic projections are the ones produced by the US Department of Energy, which claims that this will not take place until 2037. But the US energy information agency has admitted that the government's figures have been fudged: it has based its projections for oil supply on the projections for oil demand,(5) perhaps in order not to sow panic in the financial markets. Other analysts are less sanguine. The petroleum geologist Colin Campbell calculates that global extraction will peak before 2010.(6) In August the geophysicist Kenneth Deffeyes told New Scientist that he was "99 per cent confident" that the date of maximum global production will be 2004. Even if the optimists are correct, we will be scraping the oil barrel within the lifetimes of most of those who are middle-aged today.
The supply of oil will decline, but global demand will not. Today we will burn 76 million barrels; by 2020 we will be using 112 million barrels a day, after which projected demand accelarates [sic]. If supply declines and demand grows, we soon encounter something with which the people of the advanced industrial economies are unfamiliar: shortage. The price of oil will go through the roof.
Climate change
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
