The age of consent : a manifesto for a new world order : [everything has been globalized except our 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. What Monbiot Offers In The Age Of Consent Is A Truly Global Perspective, A Sense Of History, A Defence Of Democracy, And An Understanding Of Power And How It Might Be Captured From Those Unfit To Retain It. The Ingenious Solutions He 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.--jacket. Prologue: Some Repulsive Proposals -- Ch. 1. The Mutation -- Ch. 2. The Least-worst System -- An Equivocal Case For Democracy -- Ch. 3. A Global Democratic Revolution -- The Case Against Hopeless Realism -- Ch. 4. We The Peoples -- Building A World Parliament -- Ch. 5. Something Snaps -- An International Clearing Union -- Ch. 6. The Levelling -- A Fair Trade Organization -- Ch. 7. The Contingency Of Power. George Monbiot. Includes Bibliographical References. Having made a hugely significant contribution to the increasingly irrefutable, if alarming, diagnosis of the ills of early 21st century consumerist culture and its free-market myths, George Monbiot sets out now with this new book to offer something more constructive, a set of proposals – political, democratic, economic, environmental – that might effect the cultural change that many in the West (not to mention those on the outside of the West looking in) now want but scarcely know how to make happen.'The Age of Consent' is provocative, brave, even utopian. But, with most of the 20th century's Big Ideas dead in the gutter, it's time for a book that can be a touchstone for real debate about the political and economic presumptions and prejudices on which our society has rested since World War II. If Naomi Klein's "No Logo" told us what was wrong, George Monbiot promises to show us how to put it right. "Our task," he says, "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? In this text, George Monbiot sets out to offer a set of proposals - political, democratic, economic and environmental - that might effect the cultural change that many in the West (not to mention those on the outside of the West looking in) now want but scarcely know how to make happen.