Climate Breakdown | Clare Hymer meets George Monbiot

Clare Hymer talked to George Monbiot about climate change, the media and his new book Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis.
--

The UK is facing an economic crisis, falling living standards, a climate crisis, the rise of the far-right. More than ever, we need a resilient Left. This means we need a strong Left media, capable of thinking honestly about the issues facing us, tackling these issues head-on, as well as reaching out to those who aren’t yet on side. Our wide range of output – from listicles to essays, from punchy videos to in-depth discussions – does exactly that.

But all this costs money: studio rent, equipment, contributor fees and digital infrastructure. We do a lot with a little, but we can’t do anything with nothing. We won’t charge for content or cash in on sponsorship deals with Pepsi. We don’t have private fortunes, or state backers, or big capital behind us – we just have you.

Not everyone can afford to give – but if you enjoy our work, and you believe in what we’re doing, maybe you could forego a couple of your preferred beverages this month and lend us a hand instead. In the longer term, growing our regular subscriber base will allow us to meet the future well-prepared – so if you can spare a few quid a month, why not sign up for a regular subscription?

We’ve achieved so much already – but the truth is, we’ve barely begun. Be a part of the change. Help us build a new media for a different politics.

[kaddybeck]

George Monbiot is the only person on the planet who always touches me really deeply whenever I listen to him talking or read what he says. It always resonates, and over a number of years this has generated the huge amount of respect I feel for his ideas. I am just so relieved that there is somebody able to speak for me.

[tadblackington]

Thank you Mr Monboit, you are up there with Bill Mollison, Allen Savory, E.O. Wilson etc. Restoration ecology/economy is what is needed. This is permaculture/rewilding.

[DumfRen]

I love George's concept of public luxury. It makes so much sense to have one really good swimming pool that is used by hundreds of people than to shut down the council's lido while people build personal swimming pools in their basements.

[GodlessXVIII]

Don't look at the comments, traveler

[KateFrancis-eorp]

I was shocked by the BBCs coverage of Queen Elizabeth's death. Also I was shocked by their coverage of the pandemic too. No mention of the cause.

[acdPnk]

thank you for this. i think you filmed it in too small a space however

[KateFrancis-eorp]

Ironic that there is an adevert for a package holiday halfway through! 😮

[philippj]

About the journalism and advocacy issue, I figure that nowadays the accurate description of a system is its best critique. That's probably always been true of capitalism though. People have just preferred to look the other way when confronted with the human and ecological costs of high productivity.

[joshthompson]

George Monbiot is such an inspiration!

[vampireducks]

Some clarification on Monbiot's somewhat confused final remarks. "Socialism" in its original sense musn't be confused with "statism". The two are really quite antithetical (even Marx and Engels looked forward to a time where socialism would lead to conditions under which the state would "withering away" - let alone anarchist thinkers who rejected the state more completely). What Monbiot means is something like what came to be called "social democracy", or a state system with social provision. Also, "anarchism" is not different to socialism; it is the libertarian wing of socialism - so, for example, whereas Marx was a socialist but not an anarchist, Bakunin and Kropotkin were both (since an anarchist is a libertarian socialist [so-called "anarcho-capitalism" is a later and uniquely American freak development that has little connection with mainstream anarchism]). I think a lot of this confusion comes from the misidentification of socialism/communism with the former Soviet Union, as well as basic ignorance or forgetting of the history of socialism. (For reading, see e.g. Anarcho-Syndicalism by Rudolf Rocker.)

[thisaccountisdead]

Off on one here. As a result of getting into post modernism (that I don't understand yet). Also, creative skepticism vs basically philistine skepticism - an extreme being the way Donald Trump just uses words like 'bad' or 'not good' as a way of dis-insentivising complex creative discussion and criticism... of which I guess Cinema Sins is similar I guess: -

Facts over feelings?

Are films just really expensive bullshit with overpaid actors?

I could’ve gone into the arts but went into the sciences instead – my thinking being that the arts were basically pretentious bullshit and tends to be political… Why use artistic methods to analyse and explain things when we have science which is far more accurate and useful?

But then I suppose a recording of the cosmic microwave background radiation isn't a chart topper... So post modern to say how is a tune any better than the sound of static?

Does a non-factual idea have any value... and, if it does have any value, to whom does it have value to? – relates to imagination.

I’m tempted to say that our dreams/visions – like when we are asleep – relate to manifestations of our emotional well-being/internal state, but I don’t know enough about psychology… I have however, been researching the brain (not professionally) for 3 years and understand the brain in terms of the biological processes involved in how talk therapy works (which was started in World War One to help soldiers get over ‘shell shock’) which basically uses the same process as R.E.M. sleep that is itself part of the same processes the brain uses during our conscious state... particularly while talking (though not in hypnotic states).

See ventro medial pre frontal cortex – which activates during conscious interactions with people, releases endorphins when we laugh, and is less active when dealing with aninimate objects and in hypnotic states… less active in sociopaths. Evolutionarly, the ventro medial pre frontal cortex is a more recent extention of the insula cortex (involved in intuition). The medial pre frontal cortex also encompasses the anterier cingulate cortex (pain, morality and emotion) and the limbic cortex (regulation of emotions and inhibition of the amygdala [base emotions like fear]).

There is nothing better than black humour is there.

[ahmedahmed-kfol]

Stalin in disguise...I and the majority of peoples refuse to live in your concentration camp