If we want to prevent both climate and ecological catastrophes, the key task is to minimise the amount of land we use to feed ourselves, while changing the way the remaining land is farmed. Instead, governments almost everywhere pour public money into planetary destruction.
Interpretation
To tackle climate change, we must optimize land use for agriculture and improve farming practices rather than subsidizing harmful activities.
George Monbiot emphasizes the urgent need to address both climate and ecological crises by suggesting that the best approach involves reducing the land dedicated to food production and enhancing the methods of farming on the remaining land. He critiques the current trend where governments, instead of supporting sustainable practices, allocate public funds that contribute to environmental degradation.
In practice
In a speech about environmental policies, one might quote Monbiot to advocate for sustainable agriculture.
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?
A fish is more valuable swimming in the sea maintaining the integrity of oceanic eco-systems than it is on anyone's plate.
The sequoias belong to the silences of the milleniums. Many of them have seen a hundred human generations rise, give off their little clamors and perish. They seem indeed to be forms of immortality standing here amoing the transitory shapes of time.
So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.
As long as one has a garden, one has a future. As long as one has a future, one is alive.
After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.
The apple blossom exists to create fruit; when that_x000D_ comes, the petal falls.
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