Quotes by George Monbiot

“The problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtract...”

“If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”

“Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the countrys most re...”

“Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.”

“Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.”

“The angry men know that this golden age (of fossil fuels) has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusi...”

“The schedules are crammed with shows urging us to travel further, drive faster, build bigger, buy more, yet none of them are deemed to offend the rules, which really means that they don't offend th...”

“Environment' is a term that creates no pictures in the mind, which is why I have begun to use 'natural world' or 'living planet' instead.”

“[I]f we truly value coral reefs, we must stop travelling around the world to see them, for long-haul flights are rapidly becoming one of the major sources of global warming. Why is it that tourism ...”

“To own a national newspaper or a television or radio station you need to be a multimillionaire. What multimillionaires want is what everybody wants: a better world for people like themselves. The j...”

“While there are many reasons for the growth of individualism in the UK, the extreme libertarianism now beginning to take hold here begins on the road. When you drive, society becomes an obstacle.”

“If you travel to Worth Matravers - the chocolate-box village in Dorset in which 60% of the houses are owned by ghosts - you will not find hordes of homeless people camping on the pavements in cardb...”

“No political challenge can be met by shopping.”

“Everything has been globalised, except our consent. Democracy alone has been confined to the nation state. It stands at the border, suitcase in hand, without a passport.”

“Our task is not to overthrow globalisation, but to capture it, and to use it as a vehicle for humanity’s first global democratic revolution.”

“We are the most fortunate generation that has ever lived. And we are the most fortunate generation that ever will.”

“Nobody ever rioted for austerity. (p. 96)”

“Faced with a choice between the survival of the planet and a new set of matching tableware, most people would choose the tableware.”

“[T]he most devoted member of her inner circle was Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve. Among the essays he wrote for Rand were those published in a book he co-edited with her call...”

“People in eastern Congo are massacred to facilitate smart phone upgrades of ever diminishing marginal utility. Forests are felled to make personalised heart shaped wooden cheese board sets. Rivers ...”