Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.
Interpretation
The quote compares climate change denial to Holocaust denial, emphasizing the irrationality and unacceptability of denying well-established truths.
George Monbiot's quote highlights the absurdity of denying climate change by equating it with the denial of the Holocaust, an atrocity that is universally recognized as a horrific fact of history. This parallel serves to criticize those who refuse to accept the scientific consensus on climate change, suggesting that such denial is not only misguided but morally reprehensible, thereby calling for a greater awareness and action regarding environmental issues.
In practice
In a debate about environmental policy, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of acknowledging climate change.
The notions that nature exists to serve us; that its value consists of the instrumental benefits we can extract; that this value can be measured in cash terms; and that what can't be measured does not matter, have proved lethal to the rest of life on Earth.
I believe that anyone who wants to stand in a national election should receive a course of psychotherapy. Completing the course should be a qualification for office. This wouldn't change the behaviour of psychopaths, but it might prevent some people who exercise power from imposing their own deep wounds on others.
I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering.
Places that have become agricultural deserts, trashed by giant corporations, could be reforested, drawing carbon dioxide from the air on a vast scale. The ecosystems of land and sea could recover, not just in pockets but across great tracts of the planet.
Never underestimate the power of intrinsic values. They inspire every struggle for a better world.
Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?
Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.
The whole language of nature informs us, that in animated beings there is something above our powers of investigation; something which employs, combines, and arranges the gross elements of matter - a spark of celestial fire, by which life is kindled and preserved, and which, if even the instruments it employs are indestructible in their essence, must itself, of necessity, be immortal.
'Science in itself' is nothing, for it exists only in the human beings who are its bearers. 'Science for its own sake' usually means nothing more than science for the sake of the people who happen to be pursuing it.
At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs-as long as no one is watching, anything goes.
As history proves abundantly, mathematical achievement, whatever its intrinsic worth, is the most enduring of all.
The science shows that the best way to use money is to take the issue of money off the people. Pay people enough so that money isn't an issue, and they can focus on doing great work.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.