Age of Consent

Naomi Klein's ‘No Logo’ told us what was wrong. Now, George Monbiot shows us how to put it right. Provocative, brave and beautifully argued, ‘The Age of Consent’ is nothing less than a manifesto for a new world order. ‘Our task is not to overthrow globalisation, but to capture it, and to use it as a vehicle for humanity's first global democratic revolution.’ All over our planet, the rich get richer while the poor are overtaken by debt and disaster. The world is run not by its people but by a handful of unelected or underelected executives who make the decisions on which everyone else depends: concerning war, peace, debt, development and the balance of trade. Without democracy at the global level, the rest of us are left with no means of influencing these men but to shout abuse and hurl ourselves at the lines of police defending their gatherings and decisions. Does it have to be this way? George Monbiot knows not only that things ought to change, but also that they can change. Drawing on decades of thinking about how the world is organized and administered politically, fiscally and commercially, Monbiot has developed an interlocking set of proposals all his own, which attempts nothing less than a revolution in the way the world is run. If these proposals become popular, never again will people be able to ask of the critics of the existing world order, ‘we know what they don't want, but what do they want?’ Fiercely controversial and yet utterly persuasive, the ingenious solutions Monbiot suggests for some of the planet's most pressing problems mark him as perhaps the most realistic utopian of our time and a man whose passion is infectious and whose ideas, many will surely come to agree, are becoming irresistible.

'A bracing challenge to the complacency of all varieties of establishment thinking. Argues powerfully that protest is not enough. An arresting contribution to new thinking.' Independent ‘A book that must be engaged with. A simple and revolutionary Manifesto, a weighty political vision. At last, the global justice movement has found a vision as expansive and planet-wide as that of the US neoconservatives. Let the battle of ideas commence.' Independent on Sunday 'An extremely important book. A searchingly rigorous analysis of the sources of American power. Monbiot presents a package of proposals that would radically redraw the present world order. It is breathtaking in its radicalism, but for anyone who is serious about tackling the current US hegemony, it is difficult to fault the logic. This is not a whinge, but a very well argued statement of a positive alternative agenda. And if it is far too radical for some tastes, can they suggest any lesser options that will produce the same vast improvement in world justice and prosperity? The floor is theirs.' Michael Meacher, Guardian

George Monbiot, 40, the son of a former President of the Conservative Party, has been persona non grata in seven countries, had a life sentence in absentia given to him by an Indonesian court, has been shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a coma during seven years of investigative journeys across Africa, Asia and the Americas. He was even pronounced clinically dead of cerebral malaria in Kenya, only to rise again, return to Britain’s comparative safety, and turn himself into the country’s most articulate, most enterprising and most effective non-conformist political commentator.