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George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

2 Dec

A crucial step towards a kinder, greener world.
Anyone who cares about animal welfare, cares about pollution, deforestation, climate breakdown and human health should welcome it.
theguardian.com/environment/20…

To those eating meat from animals, whose instinctive reaction is "yuck!":
Visit a broiler shed
an abbatoir
and a packing plant
and you'll see what yuck really looks like.

One day, when cultured meat is the norm, we will look back on the age when animals were reared and slaughtered to serve our appetites with horror and disgust.

Read 7 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

1 Dec

For years, the Russian and Syrian governments, their paid trolls and useful idiots on both the far right and the left have dominated the conversation about #Syria on social media. They have denied or justified Assad’s atrocities, and spread lurid conspiracy theories.
Thread/

@chloehadj

But now, thanks to the work of @chloehadj, @bellingcat and others, the tide is at last turning. There’s a palpable sense of panic among those who now find themselves exposed as atrocity deniers.
bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08…

I’m sorry to say that, until recently, the left had failed dismally on this issue. Very few of us called out the lies and stood in solidarity with the Syrian people, as they've been murdered en masse and oppressed by the world’s bloodiest dictator. That's now changing

Read 6 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

30 Nov

This might sound strange, but I think we can judge the health of a public culture by what I call the Actor Index. This measures the proportion of featured interviews in the newspapers that are devoted to actors. The higher the proportion, the greater the trouble we’re in
Thread/

Now I have nothing against actors. But, by definition, we value them for their ability to adopt someone else’s persona and speak someone else’s words. Fetishising actors reveals an obsession with images, rather than with the realities they obscure.

Guy Debord argued that “the spectacle” (the domination of social relationships by images) is used to justify the “dictatorship of modern economic production”. It disguises and supplants the realities of capitalism, changing our perceptions until we become “consumers of illusion”.

Read 9 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

28 Nov

A few thoughts about #competition.
1. Competition could be seen as the defining value of our times. It is the touchstone of conservative/radical right politics. Even formerly left parties now treat it as a holy virtue. But ...
Thread/

2. ... when you look at what conservatives do, rather than what they say, you discover that competition is strictly bounded. Competition is good – as long as *we* win.

3. If they really believed in competition, they would immediately abolish both private education and inheritance. Everyone would start from the same position, and the people who are most adept at particular tasks would win.

Read 18 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

25 Nov

Brexit is the outcome of a civil war within capitalism. The stuff about foreigners and sovereignty and blue passports was just a smokescreen for some extremely determined economic interests. And we are mere collateral damage. My column:
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

"We will get out there and we will become incredibly successful because we will be insecure again. And insecurity is fantastic."
Peter Hargreaves (a billionaire who donated £3.2m to the Leave campaign).

The Pollution Paradox explains a lot about the state we're in:

The more damaging the enterprise, the more money it must spend on politics to ensure it’s not regulated out of existence. As a result, politics comes to be dominated by the most harmful companies and oligarchs.

Read 4 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

23 Nov

A few thoughts about vaccination.
1. Once a vaccine against Covid-19 which has received regulatory approval is offered to you, please accept it. It will help protect you and other people. Getting vaccinated is a pro-social act.
Thread/

2. There could be some risks associated with it. But once it has received full approval, we can be pretty confident that any risks of vaccination will be much lower than the risks of not vaccinating: namely allowing a pandemic that kills people and ruins lives to keep raging.

3. Everything we do is risky to some extent. Even doing nothing (sitting at home all day without exercise is really bad for your health). But you will almost certainly face higher risks travelling to the clinic to get your injection then you will face from the injection itself.

Read 7 tweets

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