George Monbiot’s unedited letter to the Globe and Mail

( a re-posting following the great Blogger crash)

The other day we looked at a column in which Margaret Wente described George Monbiot as Elizabeth May’s “biggest critic”. Monbiot had sent along a copy of his response to the Globe and Mail, an edited version of which was published. Globe editors removed Monbiot's references to Wente’s "outrageous misrepresentations and distortions”, and to his articles being “radically misconstrued”. They also removed a sentence in which he described himself as “a great admirer” of Ms. May. Below is his full letter, with the excised bits in bold.

Dear Sir,

Margaret Wente's column, in which she claims to summarize and support two articles of mine, contains a number of outrageous misrepresentations and distortions. She suggests I said that environmentalists "don't understand the science and they don't understand the economics." I've said nothing of the kind.

She also claims that I am Elizabeth May's "biggest critic." If so, May has little to worry about. I am a great admirer of hers, and I'm delighted that she is now a member of parliament. I am sure that, like Caroline Lucas, the sole Green MP in the UK, she will do an excellent job of holding the government to account, and will enrich the political life of the nation. Her "biggest critic" has never said a word against her.

Elizabeth and I could, if we tried, doubtless find issues on which we disagree, but that, I believe, is something to celebrate. Environmentalism is perhaps the most politically diverse movement in history, accommodating a wide range of views and perspectives, while drawing people together through a shared concern for the planet, its people, its places and its living creatures. The fact that we are able to hold a wide range of views without excoriating each other suggests that the green movement is a haven of free and independent thought, all too rare in the current political climate of micro-management and control freakery.

My articles sought to lay out the difficulties and dilemmas we environmentalists face, and to contribute to an open, public discussion of the kind that few other movements are prepared to contemplate. It is hard to understand how they could have been so radically misconstrued.

Yours Sincerely,

George Monbiot

Globe and Mail version:

Margaret Wente suggests I said that environmentalists “don’t understand the science and they don’t understand the economics” (Hard Questions For Ms. May – May 10). I’ve said nothing of the kind.

She also claims that I am Elizabeth May’s “biggest critic.” If so, Ms. May has little to worry about. I am delighted that she is now a member of Parliament. I am sure that she will do an excellent job of holding the government to account, and will enrich the political life of the nation. Her “biggest critic” has never said a word against her.

Elizabeth and I could, if we tried, doubtless find issues on which we disagree, but that, I believe, is something to celebrate. Environmentalism is perhaps the most politically diverse movement in history, accommodating a wide range of views and perspectives. The fact that we are able to hold a wide range of views without excoriating each other suggests that the green movement is a haven of free and independent thought, all too rare in the current political climate of micro-management and control freakery.

George Monbiot

****

Monbiot writes to Globe about Wente's "outrageous misrepresentations” . Globe responds by misrepresenting his letter, and removing criticism.

More on Wente, laziness and plagiarism, plus May and Monbiot

George Monbiot is a serious thinker. Too bad the Globe and Mail only has Margaret Wente. It’s remarkable how many words one can take from another writer, and still manage to distort them.

We’ve already looked at Wente and plagiarism here - where, along with various near identical passages, she casually re-assigns or invents identities – for example, turning Dr. Mike Carron, a scientist at Mississippi State University, into "a fisherman" in one of many un-attributed bits of other articles.

Wente: “Red snapper are unbelievable right now,” one fisherman said. “You could put a rock on the end a string and they’d bite it.”

AP: "Red snapper are unbelievable right now," said Mike Carron, head of the Northern Gulf Institute in Mississippi. "Now you could put a rock on the end of string and they'll bite it."

Today’s piece on Elizabeth May again shows real effort at recycling, with Wente still being somewhat sparing with quotation marks:

Wente: “But as Mr. Monbiot writes, ‘The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel but too much.’ As oil declines, economies will switch to oil sands, shale gas, coal and ultra-deep reserves”.

Monbiot: “The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much. As oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal; as accessible coal declines, they'll switch to ultra-deep reserves.”

Why does Wente limit her quote to the first bit? To turn ‘tar sands’ into ‘oil sands’?

Or here.

Wente: “As Mr. Monbiot writes gloomily, ‘All of us in the environment movement – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess.’ He hopes that by laying out the problem, he can encourage environmentalists to ‘abandon magical thinking’ and recognize the contradictions they confront”.

Monbiot: “All of us in the environment movement, in other words – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess…I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront.”

Again, why so stingy with those little things? They don’t take much space.

Wente offers little other than carefully skewed and selected Monbiot and cheap shots at May. The observations that seem to be her own are a bit wacky: “But greens neglect to mention that hundreds of millions of Chinese people have begun consuming stupendous quantities of brick, copper and manufactured goods in their rise from poverty – nearly all of it produced with fossil fuels”.

“Consuming stupendous quantities of brick… produced with fossil fuels”? Of all the things to complain about in China - brick?

In 2001 China announced a ban on traditional bricks made with fossil fuels, in favour of “using brick made of ash from power plants in cleaner kilns” - recycling the byproduct from coal plants, rather than using fossil fuels to produce clay bricks. China is apparently now a leader in “state of the art technology for brick manufacturing”, producing “energy efficient… flyash bricks as an alternative… to the commonly used burnt clay bricks, which use fossil fuel for their production”.

Now, "non-baked bricks account for 55-60 per cent of building materials used in China."

But the most spectacular dishonesty is Wente’s assertion that George Monbiot is Elizabeth May’s “biggest critic”. For this, her central argument, she produces not a single word from the man. One can’t find anything Monbiot has said that is “critical” of Elizabeth May. Nor does he refer to her as a “hyperactive chipmunk” with “a matchless ability to hog the spotlight”.

The two are most well known for debating together on the same side, in the Munk Debates on Climate Change. If Wente can substantiate her claim that Monbiot is May’s “biggest critic”, she should offer up some evidence. And please, Ms. Wente, try doing it the professional way, with quotes.