It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes a campaign focused on self-restraint and moderation rather than excess and liberation.
George Monbiot's quote highlights a paradoxical movement that advocates for austerity rather than abundance, suggesting that true freedom may lie not in having more, but in embracing less. It challenges the notion that societal progress relies on external changes alone, pointing out that the most profound shifts must occur within ourselves as we combat our own desires and excesses.
In practice
During a speech about sustainable living, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of moderation.
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?
However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts.
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.
He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and greatest lessons in Christianity.
Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exercised, a space in which to stretch out its arms ... As long as I know there exists in the world someone who does tricks only for the love of the trick, as long as I know there is a woman who loves reading for reading's sake, I can convince myself that the world continues ... And every evening I, too, abandon myself to reading, like that distant unknown woman.
In many climbing cultures, it seems that dirty ethics and poor style are acceptable. In mine they are not.
Most evolving lineages, human or otherwise, when threatened with extinction, don't do anything special to avoid it.
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