Show Notes
There is one question the environmental journalist and author George Monbiot is asked more than any other: how do you cope? When your job is to report on the climate crisis, where do you find hope? Monbiot’s answer is a very personal one: he goes sea kayaking – alone, often far off the coast, with (if he’s lucky) a pod of dolphins or a flock of shearwaters for company.
In this evocative essay from the New Statesman’s summer 2023 issue, Monbiot explores the sea off the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, his former home in Cardigan Bay, and his new home in South Devon – a coastline “featuring cliffs and rocky coves, clefts and chasms, reefs and skerries, sandy and shingle beaches and several estuaries”. He relives the dangers and joys of battling the waves in a very small boat, most recently with an underwater camera fixed to the hull. There is no permanent escape from ecological distress, he writes, from the warming seas and the waste pumped into them, “but for hours at a time, I lose myself”.
Written by George Monbiot and read by Chris Stone.
This article originally appeared in the 28 July-17 August 2023 New Statesman summer issue. You can read the text version here. https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2023/07/escpaing-climate-sea-kayaking-george-monbiot
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might also enjoy Rebecca Solnit on hope, despair and climate action. https://www.newstatesman.com/podcasts/audio-long-reads/2022/10/rebecca-solnit-on-hope-despair-and-climate-action
Download the New Statesman app: iOS: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/new-statesman-magazine/id610498525 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.progressivemediagroup.newstatesman&hl=en_GB&gl=US
Subscribe to the New Statesman from £1 per week: https://newstatesman.com/podcastoffer
Sign up to our weekly Saturday Read email https://saturdayread.substack.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman
How did one detective take on an international network of romance fraudsters?
They no longer have a stranglehold on Oxbridge and would lose tax breaks under Labour. So what is elite education really selling?
On 2 November 2023, Rishi Sunak closed his global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park by interviewing the richest man on Earth, Elon Musk. The mood was deferential (the PM towards the tech billionaire). Was Sunak eyeing up a post-politics job in San Francisco, some wondered, or calculating that Musk’s Twitter might be an effective campaigning tool come 2024?
What might be the long term impact of the Israel-Hamas war on global alliances? In this week’s audio long read, the New Statesman’s contributing writer John Gray reflects on three weeks of bloodshed, beginning with the massacres of 7 October, and their wider consequences. An escalating conflict will empower Iran and Russia, he writes, as well as strengthen swing states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The United States might abandon Ukraine, or dilute its commitment to defending Taiwan from China. And with a presidential election on the horizon, does the White House have the stamina for a protracted foreign war?
In May this year, an American woman sought the help of a chatbot on an eating disorders website. The bot, named Tessa and running on an evolving, generative AI, advised her to start counting calories. Perhaps she should get some calipers, it suggested, to measure her body fat. When it emerged that Tessa had given similarly dangerous advice to others, the bot was taken down.