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.
What more delightful avocation than to take a piece of land and by cautious experimentation to prove how it works. What more substantial service to conservation than to practice it on one's own land?
People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.
I would prefer to stay up and watch the stars than sleep.
I have made my home among the mountain gorillas.
There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back.
If we do not act to curb climate change immediately, we will leave our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planetIt is the poor, those least responsible for climate change and least able to afford adaptation, who would suffer the most.
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