The angry men know that this golden age (of fossil fuels) has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings.
Interpretation
The quote discusses how angry individuals resist societal constraints while failing to articulate their true frustrations, which stem from the moral responsibilities they have towards others.
In this quote, George Monbiot critiques those who are upset about the end of an era marked by abundant fossil fuels. He suggests that their anger is rooted in a refusal to acknowledge the necessary societal limitations that exist for the benefit of others. Despite their claims of oppression through labels such as communism or fascism, their real aversion lies in the ethical obligations humanity has towards one another. This tension reveals a deeper conflict between individual desires and collective decency.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about environmental policies and individual freedoms.
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?
I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm-house.
When you're Black in the United States, you grudgingly grow accustomed to having people deny that your existence is integral to everything that makes this country what it is.
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so; life's business being just the terrible choice.
The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.
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