George Monbiot was a man for whom I used to have much respect. A noted environmentalist, a (fairly) witty writer, a leftwing(ish) iconoclast and thorn in the side of conservative Britain, a man with an opinion.
This was a man on our side. The side of those who are left-of-centre (or even more left), who don't worship greed for the sake of greed, who respect the basic tenets of a welfare state. A man who fights to combat climate change and writes a book entitled 'Heat: How To Stop the Planet from Burning".
Hell, this is a man who heads a campaign to have Tony Blair arrested for war crimes! This is definitely my kind of (intellectual) man.
Or so I thought.
Then this guy goes and writes the most preposterous ode to the 'wonders' of nuclear power on his blog, with the highly provocative heading " - http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/. He writes as if nuclear power is the absolute answer after all (shucks, Georgie, thanks for pointing that one out to us lesser beings), citing tedious 'scientific' fact after 'scientific' fact, deluging the reader with these facts in a ploy so typical of anyone trying to oh-so-prove-their-clever-and-so-very-iconoclastic-point.
He apparently makes light of what past nuclear disasters have meant to the environment and human health and, in appallingly poor taste, dismisses by implication what the people of Japan have been going through for the past few weeks.
Even more annoyingly, he writes that nuclear power is just so inevitable, so necessary because, after all, those other poxy, piddling energy sources (you know, clean, renewable, energies) will simply take too much time (boo) and money (hoo) to get right. As if nuclear power was a cynch and so wonderfully cheap.
Then this Turncoat of the Year has the chutzpah to write another nuclear cheerleading article, this time chiding us with "Evidence Meltdown", extolling further the wonder of nuclear power and how utterly misled the green movement has been on the 'exaggerated' health dangers of nuclear energy.
Where does one start?
What about nuclear waste, George? Where the hell does that go, hey? What about the exhorbitant cost of building a new nuclear plant or maintaining an old one? What of the fact that out of a turnover of over $60-billion last year, the Japanese nuclear company, Tepco, was only able to eke out a profit of $1.1-billion? What of the massive government subsidies to the nuclear industry in every single country that has nuclear power plants?
Hey, George? Oh, why bother.
Who is this guy? And what body snatcher from outer space took his mind over to result in this excrutiating volte-face in the past two weeks?
Gone is what I thought of him. He appears to me now as some intellectual who sashays around with his liberal-leaning pontifications in that (barely) liberal-leaning newspaper, The Guardian, and, like some creepy 21st Century Pied Piper, leads those entranced by him down the path of self-doubt, self-recrimination and dubious thought.
Yes, nuclear is an answer! Yes, the green movement has gotten it all wrong with their grubby little 'agendas'! Yes, all those anti-nuclear activists are just misled! George has the answers!
Jesus wept.
Why this? Why nuclear? Why now?
So I've been thinking, and it can only be this: You, George, are nothing more than an attention-seeking brat. You are a man who is an iconoclast not out of conviction, but sheer ego.
Your agenda is plain to see - pure ego and self-aggrandizement. It is a frankly pathetic agenda, an affliction hardly worthy of someone of your no-doubt excellent, if flawed, intellect.
George Monbiot is no longer someone I can hold up in high esteem. He is no longer someone who's intellect I can trust.
George Monbiot is an enemy in our midst.
Do you get my point?
