George Monbiot quotes

George Monbiot is a British writer, environmental activist, and journalist known for his work on ecological and political issues. His books and articles often challenge corporate power and advocate for systemic change to address climate breakdown. He has become a leading voice in the environmental movement, calling for transformative solutions. Here are 21 of his quotes:

Faced with a choice between the survival of the planet and a new set of matching tableware, most people would choose the tableware. (George Monbiot)
If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. View quote
George Monbiot
Nobody ever rioted for austerity. View quote
George Monbiot
Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity. View quote
George Monbiot
People in eastern Congo are massacred to facilitate smart phone upgrades of ever diminishing marginal utility. Forests are felled to make "personalised heart shaped wooden cheese board sets”. Rivers are poisoned to manufacture talking fish. This is pathological consumption: a world-consuming epidemic of collective madness, rendered so normal by advertising and the media that we scarcely notice what has happened to us. View quote
George Monbiot
Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life. View quote
George Monbiot
Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government. View quote
George Monbiot
No political challenge can be met by shopping. View quote
George Monbiot
[About the Paris Agreement:] By comparison to what it could have been, it's a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it's a disaster. View quote
George Monbiot
While there are many reasons for the growth of individualism in the UK, the extreme libertarianism now beginning to take hold here begins on the road. When you drive, society becomes an obstacle. View quote
George Monbiot
We are the most fortunate generation that has ever lived. And we are the most fortunate generation that ever will. (George Monbiot)
Because we cannot save ourselves without contesting oligarchic control, the fight for democracy and justice and the fight against environmental breakdown are one and the same. Do not allow those who have caused this crisis to define the limits of political action. Do not allow those whose magical thinking got us into this mess to tell us what can and cannot be done. View quote
George Monbiot
Climate breakdown could be rapid and unpredictable. We can no longer tinker around the edges and hope minor changes will avert collapse. View quote
George Monbiot
Everything has been globalised, except our consent. Democracy alone has been confined to the nation state. It stands at the border, suitcase in hand, without a passport. View quote
George Monbiot
Of all the varieties of media bias, the deepest is the bias against relevance. The more important the issue, the less it is discussed. View quote
George Monbiot
While we call ourselves animal lovers, and lavish kindness on our dogs and cats, we inflict brutal deprivations on billions of animals that are just as capable of suffering. The hypocrisy is so rank that future generations will marvel at how we could have failed to see it. View quote
George Monbiot
There are two ways this could go. We could, as some people have done, double down on denial. Some of those who have dismissed other threats, such as climate breakdown, also seek to downplay the threat of Covid-19... Or this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life... View quote
George Monbiot
Capitalism has three innate characteristics that drive us towards destruction... firstly, that it generates and relies upon perpetual growth... (Second:)...the idea that our right to own natural wealth equates to the amount of money that we've got in the bank or we can borrow. So, you can take as much natural wealth away from other people as you like.... The third characteristic is the one that really ensures that people go along with capitalism, the idea that everyone can pursue - and can expect to find - private luxury. View quote
George Monbiot
The power of consumerism is that it renders us powerless. It traps us within a narrow circle of decision-making, in which we mistake insignificant choices between different varieties of destruction for effective change. It is, we must admit, a brilliant con. It's the system we need to change, rather than the products of the system. It is as citizens that we must act, rather than as consumers. [...] Only mass political disruption, out of which can be built new and more responsive democratic structures, can deliver the necessary transformation. View quote
George Monbiot
It was a moment of the kind that changes lives. At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn't it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims? [...] Softer aims might be politically realistic, but they are physically unrealistic. Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crises have any prospect of averting them. Hopeless realism, tinkering at the edges of the problem, got us into this mess. It will not get us out. View quote
George Monbiot
Those to whom we look for solutions trundle on as if nothing has changed. As if the accumulating evidence has no purchase on their minds. Decades of institutional failure ensures that only "unrealistic” proposals – the repurposing of economic life, with immediate effect – now have a realistic chance of stopping the planetary death spiral. And only those who stand outside the failed institutions can lead this effort. Two tasks need to be performed simultaneously: throwing ourselves at the possibility of averting collapse, as Extinction Rebellion is doing, slight though this possibility may appear; and preparing ourselves for the likely failure of these efforts, terrifying as this prospect is. Both tasks require a complete revision of our relationship with the living planet. (George Monbiot)