[Sust-mar] TGI News Release: Canada under Harper becoming "a thuggish petro-state, " says George Monbiot

[Laura Landon]

Text Box: www.thegreeninterview.com

NEWS RELEASE
May 30, 2013

 

Canada under Harper becoming "a thuggish petro-state," says George Monbiot

 

Tar-sands oil and a regressive Conservative government are turning Canada
into a "thuggish petro-state," says acclaimed British journalist and
climate-change expert George Monbiot.

"It's an extraordinary thing to witness from this side of the Atlantic: to
watch Canada, this highly sophisticated, liberal, outward-looking nation,
turning into a thuggish petro-state," Monbiot told Silver Donald Cameron in
a new  <http://www.thegreeninterview.com/> Green Interview conversation
filmed recently in Oxford, England. "It's really scary to see how, in some
ways, Harper has taken it to a far more extreme level of neo-conservatism
and neo-liberalism even than George Bush contemplated."

Monbiot, best-selling author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, and
six other books, said Canada is succumbing to the "resource curse" in the
same way as Nigeria or Saudi Arabia, "where you basically have a group of
oligarchs who control the fossil fuel revenues and end up controlling the
political system."

Furthermore, the development of Canada's tar sands is having horrendous
environmental consequences. His advice to citizens worldwide who are
concerned about climate change and social justice is to "mobilize, mobilize,
mobilize." 

George Monbiot received the United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding
environmental achievement. His columns for The Guardian have made
www.monbiot.com the most popular columnist's website in the world. In his
2006 book, Heat, Monbiot demonstrated that Britain could achieve a 90 per
cent reduction in carbon emissions without economic or social catastrophe.
His eighth book, Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of
Rewilding, will be released May 30.

In his hour-long Green Interview, Monbiot discusses what fuels his
courageous environmental journalism: a profound hatred of undemocratic
power, corruption, deception of the public, environmental destruction,
injustice, inequality and complacency.

"George Monbiot is an extraordinary man," says Green Interview host Silver
Donald Cameron. "He's an elegant, penetrating writer with an adamantine
conscience and a dazzling capacity to sift through complex scientific
subjects. We had a bracing and unforgettable conversation."

The Green Interview is a subscription website of extended interviews
produced and directed by Chris Beckett in association with Silver Donald
Cameron. The programs feature some of the world's greatest thinkers, writers
and observers-people whose ideas and perceptions are leading the way to a
new era of sustainability. Visitors to the site can watch one interview free
of charge. In addition, the interviews are available in thousands of
libraries worldwide through GreenR <http://www.gale.cengage.com/greenr/> ,
the environmental database service of Gale Cengage Learning.

For further information about this interview or others at
www.thegreeninterview.com, please contact: Silver Donald Cameron, host and
executive producer, at sdc at silverdonaldcameron.ca or 902-446-5577.

 

-30-

 

 

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