Stephanie Jane reviewed This Can't Be Happening by George Monbiot
A challenging read
5 stars
Penguin's 'Green Ideas' series is a new publication of twenty short books each written by an eminent environmental thinker and focusing on different aspects of our planet's environmental crisis. I am grateful to Penguin for sending me review copies of five of these works and, on the strength of what I have read so far, I look forward to completing the set myself.
I began with George Monbiot's book, This Can't Be Happening, which is a collection of eleven essays, ten of which were originally published between 2017 and 2019 in The Guardian newspaper and one was a TEDsummit talk. Although I am familiar with Monbiot's name and frequently encounter his words on Twitter, I tend to avoid newspapers as a rule so don't think I've previously read a complete article of his before. I need to change that! Through these essays, Monbiot did reinforce plenty of the ideas …
Penguin's 'Green Ideas' series is a new publication of twenty short books each written by an eminent environmental thinker and focusing on different aspects of our planet's environmental crisis. I am grateful to Penguin for sending me review copies of five of these works and, on the strength of what I have read so far, I look forward to completing the set myself.
I began with George Monbiot's book, This Can't Be Happening, which is a collection of eleven essays, ten of which were originally published between 2017 and 2019 in The Guardian newspaper and one was a TEDsummit talk. Although I am familiar with Monbiot's name and frequently encounter his words on Twitter, I tend to avoid newspapers as a rule so don't think I've previously read a complete article of his before. I need to change that! Through these essays, Monbiot did reinforce plenty of the ideas I had already learned myself, particularly since my own awakening to veganism, however he also challenged other assumptions I had made particularly around issues such as the devastation wrought by vast monoculture farms.
I recognised echoes of Nesrine Malik's influential work in Monbiot's call for new stories to tell about our culture and its path forward. Without drastic change very, very soon we are unlikely to have a recognisable future at all and I struggle to comprehend why so many people seem content to remain oblivious. Monbiot's thoughts around our pre-adapted blind spots and evolved biases helped to explain the paradox for me. I feel I have a lot to learn from his writings so am delighted to have been given this opportunity to sample a concise collection of his essays. I dearly hope that This Can't Be Happening's inclusion in the Green Ideas series leads to a far wider, actively engaged audience.