Quotes from George Monbiot

Thinking like ethical people, dressing like ethical people, decorating our homes like ethical people makes not a damn of difference unless we also behave like ethical people.

To seek enlightenment, intellectual or spiritual; to do good; to love and be loved; to create and to teach: these are the highest purposes of humankind. If there is meaning in life, it lies here.

J. G. Ballard reminded us that 'the suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.

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 subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales.

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 the interests of business or the pampered sensibilities of the Aga class. The media, driven by fear and advertising, are hopelessly biased towards the consumer economy and against the biosphere.

But rewilding, unlike conservation, has no fixed objective: it is driven not by human management but by natural processes. There is no point at which it can be said to have arrived. Rewilding of the kind that interests me does not seek to control the natural world, to re-create a particular ecosystem or landscape, but – having brought back some of the missing species – to allow it to find its own way.

Confronted with the twin disasters of climate change and an impending oil peak, it is hard to see how anyone could justify the assertion that the need to drive a car which can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles an hour in 4.5 seconds (the Audi S4 for example) overrides the Ethiopians' need to avoid recurrent famines, or the whole world's need to avoid the economic catastrophe we'll suffer if petroleum peaks too soon.

I thought of walks in the English countryside, where people start shouting at you as soon as you stray from the footpath.

All nationhood is to some extent the artificial, the product of historical accident, the convenience of tyrants and the disengagement of colonists.

I could not continue just sitting and writing, looking after my daughter and my house, running merely to stay fit, pursuing only what could not be seen, watching the seasons cycling past without ever quite belonging to them.

Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.

I thought of the places I would be leaving, of what they were and what they could become. I pictured trees returning to the bare slopes, fish and whales returning to the bay. I thought of what my children and grandchildren might find here, and of how those who worked the land and sea might prosper if this wild vision were to be realized.

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.

By rebuilding community, we become proud of our society, proud of our institutions, proud of our nations, proud of ourselves. By coming together we discover who we are. We ignite our capacity for empathy and altruism. Togetherness and belonging allow us to become the heroes of the story.

The amplification of our lives by technology grants us a power over the natural world which we can no longer afford to use. In everything we do we must now be mindful of the lives of others, cautious, constrained, meticulous. We may no longer live as if there were no tomorrow.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the connection between cause and effect seems so improbable. By turning on the lights, filling the kettle, taking the children to school, driving to the shops, we are condemning other people to death. We never chose to do this. We do not see ourselves as killers. We perform these acts without passion or intent.

In managing our transport systems, our governments must constantly negotiate the paradox of mass movement. They must create a system which, for the sake of speed and efficiency, treats us like a herd, constantly prodded and coralled, divided, re-formed and forced into line. At the same time it must grant us the illusion of autonomy.

The environmental movement up till now has necessarily been reactive. We have been clear about what we don't like. But we also need to say what we would like. We need to show where hope lies. Ecological restoration is a work of hope.

Rewilding is not about abandoning civilization but about enhancing it. It is to 'love not man the less, but Nature more'.

Evolutionary biologists have identified a rule they call the life/dinner principle. A predator puts less effort into the chase than its prey: if the hunter fails it loses only its dinner, if the hunted fails it loses its life.

Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favour? Well maybe She should have thought of that when She was besetting us with droughts and floods and poisonous snakes. Nature started the fight for survival and now She wants to quit because She's losing? Well I say 'Hard Chesse!

So if you don't fit in; if you feel at odds with the world; if your identity is troubled and frayed; if you feel lost and ashamed, it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

The trouble is that people hate coaches, and for good reason. Coach travel is a dismal and humiliating experience. When I take the bus, as I sometimes must, from Oxford to Cambridge, I arrive feeling almost suicidal.

The sheep has caused more extensive environmental damage in this country than all the building that has ever taken place here.