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.
Interpretation
The quote indicates that a passion for the environment can coexist with a focus on human-made systems and technology.
In this quote, George Monbiot reflects on the duality of his interests as an environmentalist who appreciates the beauty of the natural world, while also recognizing the importance and impact of technology and industrial processes. This balance highlights the necessity of integrating environmental consciousness with engineering and industrial advancements to create a sustainable future.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at an environmental conference to emphasize the need for engineering solutions to ecological problems.
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.
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?
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.
Wine is sunlight, held together by water.
We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.
I noticed the plants growing around me. Tall with leaves like arrowheads. Blossoms with three white petals. I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the soft mud, and I pulled up handfuls of the roots. Small, bluish tubers that don’t look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato. “Katniss,” I said aloud. It’s the plant I was named for. And I heard my father’s voice joking, “As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.
The truth is, as most of us know, that global warming is real and humans are major contributors, mainly because we wastefully burn fossil fuels.
The future will belong to the nature-smart...Th e more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.
Lots of people talk to animals... Not very many listen, though... That's the problem.
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