George Monbiot, putting reality into perspective. Now what?

I’ve been reading a few of George Monbiot’s articles this morning and feel a need to drag him over here to see what other’s think.
For me, (and my admittedly narrow reading - only so many hours in a day), he has one of the sharper quils in today’s media ink well.
He seems a hard nosed realist like few. (For instant, any more Revkin tends to turn my stomach.)
I’m into learning about other good writers out there. If you have any favorites.
But in this thread, please keep it to writers who focus on the state of our planet and society.

http://www.monbiot.com The Man in the Mirror 28th October 2016 What is the worst thing about Donald Trump? The lies? The racist stereotypes? The misogyny? The alleged gropings? The apparent refusal to accept democratic outcomes? All these are bad enough. But they’re not the worst. The worst thing about Donald Trump is that he’s the man in the mirror. We love to horrify ourselves with his excesses, and to see him as a monstrous outlier, the polar opposite of everything a modern, civilised society represents. But he is nothing of the kind. He is the distillation of all that we have been induced to desire and admire. Trump is so repulsive not because he offends our civilisation’s most basic values, but because he embodies them. Trump personifies the traits promoted by the media and corporate worlds he affects to revile; the worlds that created him. He is a bundle of extrinsic values – the fetishisation of wealth, power and image – in a nation where extrinsic values are championed throughout public discourse. ...
The Drums of War By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 23rd November 2016 http://www.monbiot.com/2016/11/24/the-drums-of-war/ The combination of automation, complexity and climate change is dangerous in ways we haven’t even begun to grasp. Wave the magic wand and the problem goes away. Those pesky pollution laws, carbon caps and clean power plans: swish them away and the golden age of blue-collar employment will return. This is Donald Trump’s promise, in his video message on Monday, in which he claimed that unleashing coal and fracking will create “many millions of high-paid jobs". He will tear down everything to make it come true. But it won’t come true. Even if we ripped the world to pieces in the search for full employment, leaving no mountain unturned, we would not find it. Instead, we would merely jeopardise the prosperity – and the lives – of people everywhere. However slavishly governments grovel to corporate Luddism, they will not bring the smog economy back. No one can deny the problem Trump claims to be addressing. The old mining and industrial areas are in crisis throughout the rich world. And we have seen nothing yet. ...
The Deep History Behind Trump’s Rise How a ruthless network of super-rich ideologues killed choice and destroyed people’s faith in politics By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 14th November 2016 The events that led to Donald Trump’s election started in England in 1975. At a meeting a few months after Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative party, one of her colleagues, or so the story goes, was explaining what he saw as the core beliefs of conservatism. She snapped open her handbag, pulled out a dog-eared book, and slammed it on the table. “This is what we believe," she said. A political revolution that would sweep the world had begun. The book was The Constitution of Liberty by Frederick Hayek. Its publication in 1960 marked the transition from an honest, if extreme, philosophy to an outright racket. The philosophy was called neoliberalism. It saw competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. The market would discover a natural hierarchy of winners and losers, creating a more efficient system than could ever be devised through planning or design. Anything that impeded this process, such as significant tax, regulation, trade union activity or state provision, was counter-productive. Unrestricted entrepreneurs would create the wealth that would trickle down to everyone.
The Flight of Reason By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 19th October 2016 Sorry, but you cannot build new runways and prevent climate breakdown The correct question is not “where?". It is “whether?". And the correct answer is no. The prime minister has just announced that her cabinet will recommend where a new runway should be built. Then there will be a consultation on the decision. There is only one answer that doesn’t involve abandoning our climate change commitments and our moral scruples: nowhere. The inexorable logic that should rule out new sources of oil, gas and coal also applies to the expansion of airports. In a world seeking to prevent climate breakdown, there is no remaining scope for extending infrastructure that depends on fossil fuels. The prime minister cannot uphold the Paris agreement on climate change, that comes into force next month, and permit the runway to be built. While most sectors can replace fossil fuels with other sources, this is not the case for aviation. The airline companies seek to divert us with a series of mumbo-jumbo jets: mythical technologies never destined for life beyond the press release. ...

George Monbiot is one of the clearest thinkers and writers today.