A lone voice of reason

I think it's blatantly obvious I'm a big fan of George Monbiot. He is a proper journalist, who bases his arguments on facts that he digs out for himself, and which he carefully footnotes in all of his articles on his web site, so people can judge for themselves. Unlike the vast majority of people in his profession, he is careful to check facts and base his judgements on those facts. For this reason alone, whether you considered yourself left or right-wing, his arguments and articles should be required reading. Nowhere else will you find someone trying to tell the truth as opposed to spinning out what other people - governments, big companies, individuals - want you to believe.

His latest piece, in yesterday's Guardian, talks about the madness behind the world's consumption of oil, and the fact the economic downturn is the one thing helping us to meet our carbon targets as people drive and fly less. He points out the hypocrisy of Gordon Brown's comments about meeting the challenge of climate change on the one hand, and trying to bully OPEC into producing more oil on the other. Click here for the full article, and then consider why the government has no contigency plan for a future shortage of oil supply. But then, just because it doesn't shouldn't mean individuals shouldn't plan for the future without ready access to oil. We're human beings, not lemmings, so don't let other people's determination to stick their head in the sand influence how you act going forward.