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George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

Sep 28

What is the UK's underlying problem? It's an endemic disease that withstands all changes of government, a disease we scarcely know how to name.
Clientelism: the exchange of favours on a massive scale.
This week's column, plus short 🧵: theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

It explains not only the HS2 fiasco, but also the astonishing contradictions of austerity: hobbling essential public services and slashing holes in economic safety nets while lavishing money on roadbuilding, the arms industry and tax breaks for the very rich.

It explains the trashing of environmental protections, which happens to mesh with the interests of Conservative party funders: scrapping the rules that stopped construction companies from poisoning our rivers, delaying net zero policies, licensing new oil and gas.

Read 6 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

Sep 26

To all the people attacking low emissions zones, Ulez cameras, charges, fines etc and saying "we should do it a different way": yes we should. But here's the problem .... Short thread/

The different way - tackling the major reasons for air pollution at source - can come only from central government. But central government isn't playing. Well, it is playing, but for the opposing team.

It has delayed the transition to less polluting cars, done nothing to change our transport modes (except to make the problem even worse by building new roads) and blocked all attempts to address the major source of PM2.5 particulates: ammonia from farms.

Read 6 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

Sep 22

1. Here are a set of extraordinary, crucial facts that scarcely anyone is aware of.
What is the biggest source of PM2.5s (the deadly particles that cause a very wide range of health conditions and early deaths) in the UK?
Diesel exhaust?
Tyre and brake dust?
Smoke?
No.
Ammonia🧵

2. Where does it come from?
Almost entirely from farms.
This is why air pollution levels even in quite remote rural areas are often way above WHO recommendations.
(Primrose is below the recc level, every other colour is above)

3. Even in big cities, astonishingly, ammonia from farms is the major cause of PM2.5 particulates, producing more of them *than the cities themselves do*.
(All links and sources are in the article at the end of this thread)

Read 13 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

Sep 18

Alice, one of the women who has accused Russell Brand of of rape or sexual assault, has neatly expressed the problems with the way that he and his fans have framed his defence. The following thread consists of quotes from her interview on Woman's Hour.🧵

"it’s laughable that he would even imply that this is some kind of mainstream media conspiracy. He’s not outside the mainstream – he did a Universal Pictures movie last year, he did Minions, a children’s movie."

“He is very much part of the mainstream media, he just happens to have a YouTube channel where he talks about conspiracy theories to an audience that laps it up."

Read 4 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

Sep 11

1. The Great Reset is a real policy proposal, published by a real instrument of oligarchic power, the World Economic Forum. But if those who built a viral conspiracy theory around it had actually read it, they’d be disappointed: it says nothing very striking or original.🧵

2. So where did the conspiracy fiction come from? Like the origin of so many conspiracy theories, it's almost unimaginably trivial.

3. It’s all in the name. The Great Reset sounds like the Great Replacement, another viral conspiracy fiction, claiming white populations in rich nations are being deliberately “replaced” by immigrants.

Read 5 tweets

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

Sep 4

For the last few years, I've been conducting a rolling experiment: asking environmental activists and practitioners if they could name the Shadow Environment Secretary. I don't mean to diss the various holders of that post, but remarkably few could.
What does this tell us?🧵

It tells us how unserious the Labour Party is about the environmental crisis. If they gave it the attention it demands, the Shadow Environment Secretary would be all over the media, making bold statements, impossible to ignore.

The last shadow who made an impact was @KerryMP (Kerry McCarthy). Since then, the holders of that post have been all but invisible, unknown even to those whose daily business is environmental issues.

Read 6 tweets

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