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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the potential for reforestation to restore ecosystems and combat climate change.
George Monbiot highlights the transformative power of reforestation in areas devastated by corporate exploitation. By acknowledging the urgent need for ecological restoration, he believes that large-scale efforts can lead to significant recovery of ecosystems on land and in the sea, ultimately benefiting the planet and reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
In practice
During a community meeting about environmental restoration, this quote could inspire volunteers.
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.
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.
If the national park is, as Lord Bryce suggested, the best idea America has ever had, wilderness preservation is the highest refinement of that idea.
We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune.
And at that moment a wind came out of the northwest, and entered the woods and bared the golden branches, and danced over the downs, and led a company of scarlet and golden leaves, that had dreaded this day but danced now it had come; and away with a riot of dancing and glory of colour, high in the light of the sun that had set from the sight of the fields, went wind and leaves together.
Planet Earth is our shared island, let us join forces to protect it
We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.
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