The big polluters’ masterstroke was to blame the climate crisis on you and me | George Monbiot
Fossil fuel giants have known the harm they do for decades. But they created a system that absolves them of responsibility
Let’s stop calling this the Sixth Great Extinction. Let’s start calling it what it is: the “first great extermination”. A recent essay by the environmental historian Justin McBrien argues that describing the current eradication of living systems (including human societies) as an extinction event makes this catastrophe sound like a passive accident.
While we are all participants in the first great extermination, our responsibility is not evenly shared. The impacts of most of the world’s people are minimal. Even middle-class people in the rich world, whose effects are significant, are guided by a system of thought and action that is shaped in large part by corporations.
The Guardian’s series reports that just 20
