If global warming is not contained, the West will face a choice of a refugee crisis of unimaginable proportions, or direct complicity in crimes against humanity.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the dire consequences of global warming, warning of a looming refugee crisis or complicity in human rights violations.
George Monbiot's quote underscores the urgent need to address global warming. He suggests that if action is not taken, the consequences could lead to a massive influx of refugees fleeing environmental disasters, putting the West in a position where it must either address this humanitarian crisis or be complicit in the suffering of those affected, thus framing the climate crisis as a profound moral issue.
In practice
In a speech about climate change at a UN conference.
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?
Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.
It is astonishing that human brains, which evolved to cope with the everyday world, have been able to grasp the counterintuitive mysteries of the cosmos and the quantum.
There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance.
The economists will have to revise their theories of value.
In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields-mathematics, physics, some others-the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters.
The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance
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