STWR - Share The World's Resources

George Monbiot is an author, journalist and campaigner. His articles are frequently republished on this site and can be accessed below, including a link to original source.

The toxic waste dumped by oil trading firm Trafigura represents one of the world's worst cases of chemical exposure. The story is also a metaphor for corporate capitalism in revealing that without regulation, it's all too easy for firms to protect profit and pass the risk onto the world's poor, argues George Monbiot.

Saving the biosphere cannot be left to goodwill and greenwash from oil companies like Shell, and governments cannot let them drift into whatever fields they find profitable, regardless of the consequences for people or the environment, writes George Monbiot.

The UN has stated that oil supply is expected to plateau in 2020 - a shocking development that has the potential to cause severe economic, social and political disruption unless dependence on petroleum is curbed, argues George Monbiot.

The economic crisis is petty by comparison to the nature crunch, but they have the same cause and the rules are the same in both cases. If you extract resources at a rate beyond the level of replenishment, your stock will collapse, writes George Monbiot.

The banking crisis has diverted attention from the billions of dollars of public money being spent to help car manufacturers go green. The greenest thing governments could do is to allow these multinationals to go under, says George Monbiot.

The claims that a bailout of Wall Street would mark unprecendented "American Socialism" are unfounded. Rather, the 0 billion in banking subsidies rejected by the US Congress are as American as apple pie and obesity, argues George Monbiot.

The EU's Economic Partnership Agreements on trade for 76 of the world’s poorest countries (the African, Caribbean and Pacific nations) pose as “instruments for development”, but in fact threaten to beggar them, writes George Monbiot.

Where once they used gunboats and sepoys, the rich nations now use chequebooks and lawyers to seize food from the hungry. The scramble for resources has begun, but - in the short term at any rate - we will hardly notice, writes George Monbiot.

Why is the US government still pouring billions into missile defence?  The answer is in the question: the programme persists because it doesn’t work, writes George Monbiot.

The climate camp must succeed. In the absence of political backbone, our only hope is an avalanche of public revulsion, writes George Monbiot.

There is no cheap alternative to a green economy - and no trade off possible between the economy and ecology. What we need is a green industrial revolution and a 'new New Deal', writes George Monbiot.

Crime is down, convictions are down, but the prisons are bursting. So what is the link between all the statistics?  The answer is inequality, argues George Monbiot.

James Hansen is right about lobbyists sponsoring the junk science of climate change denial, writes George Monbiot. But prosecuting energy executives is not the answer.

Guantánamo has proved a useful distraction from the secret detention camps run by the US around the world, writes George Monbiot.

An open letter to the leader of Opec's biggest oil producer, the one man who can force Britain to cut its carbon emissions.

They bleat about the free market, then insist that we subsidise them, writes George Monbiot.

Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch.

Human life is not a commodity. It cannot be traded against profits or exchanged for convenience. We have no right to decide that others should die to make us richer.

Now they might start sitting up. They wouldn't listen to the environmentalists or even the geologists. Can governments ignore the capitalists? A report published last week by Citibank, and so far unremarked on by the media, proposes "genuine difficulties" in increasing the production of crude oil, "particularly after 2012".

I cannot avoid the subject any longer. Almost every day I receive a clutch of emails about it, asking the same question. A frightening new report has just pushed it up the political agenda: for the first time the World Food Programme is struggling to find the supplies it needs for emergency famine relief. So why, like most environmentalists, won't I mention the p-word?

Don't believe all this nonsense about waiting for the next president to sort it out - this is a much bigger problem than George Bush.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart, I offer it to you for free. 

When you warn people about the dangers of climate change, they call you a saint. When you explain what needs to be done to stop it, they call you a communist. Let me show you why.

An Agricultural Crime Against Humanity - Biofuels could kill more people than the Iraq war.

A few weeks ago I read what I believe is the most important environmental book ever written. It is not Silent Spring, Small Is Beautiful or even Walden... It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world.

Matt Ridley raged against the government - until he needed £16 billion.

Economic growth is a political sedative, snuffing out protest as it drives inequality. It is time we gave it up.

China has become the world’s excuse for inaction. If there is anything a government or a business does not want to do, it invokes the Yellow Peril. The Chinese are building a new power station every nanosecond. China is our looking-glass bogeyman. If you behave well, the bogeyman will get you, argues George Monbiot.

Given that the crises of inequality is the predictable effect of the dismantling of public services and the deregulation of business and given that it damages the interests of nearly everyone, how has neoliberalism come to dominate public life? asks George Monbiot.

A new paper suggests we have been greatly underestimating the impacts of climate change – and the size of the necessary response.

It is time once again for that touching annual ritual, in which the world's most powerful people move themselves to tears. At Heiligendamm they will emote with the wretched of the earth.

"The governments making genuine efforts to tackle global warming are using figures they know to be false."

It was first proposed, as far as I can discover, in 1842, by Alfred Tennyson. Since then the idea has broken the surface and sunk again at least a dozen times. But this time it could start to swim. The demand for a world parliament is at last acquiring some serious political muscle.

The IMF is a plutocracy whose loan conditions continue to condemn developing countries to a vicious cycle of misery

"If you want to know what real censorship looks like, let me show you what has been happening on the other side of the fence. Scientists whose research demonstrates that climate change is taking place have been repeatedly threatened and silenced and their findings edited or suppressed."

Oil produced from plants sets up competition for food between cars and people. People - and the environment - will lose.

Britain's level of defence spending isn't related to real threats we face, but the needs of our military-industrial complex

A US leader in his second term should have the power to rein in Israel. But George Bush is no ordinary president, writes George Monbiot.

The outcry over Bolivia's renationalization and the silence over Chad's betrays the hypocrisy of the critics

Academics and the media have failed dismally to ask the crucial question of scientists' claims: who is paying you?

 It's not just the common agricultural policy: the corporate sector relies on state handouts that dwarf their profits

No one knows how much is left, but humankind can't wait any longer before coming up with alternatives

The UK and EU are keeping the poorer nations exactly where they want them: beholden to their patrons

We can deal with climate change only with the help of governments. So far, however, when confronted with a choice between the two sacred commodities - market freedom and human life - the one they have chosen to preserve is market freedom, writes George Monbiot.

Liberal handwringing over the World Bank simply reflects a failure to recognise the role it exists to fulfil.

US and British aid is dwarfed by the billions both spend on slaughter