George Monbiot Quotes

People are prejudiced but water isn’t. The Katrina flood went everywhere.

Never in our country's history have we witnessed a natural disaster that has impacted so many people in such a wide area. In fact, as of the writing of this column, millions of people along the Gulf Coast have been displaced from their homes in a period of only five days.

You can see how an increase in the water level would wipe out hundreds of thousands of people's homes.

The reality of Katrina didn't really strike me until the first time I flew up in a helicopter and saw areas of the city that I had ridden my bicycle as a youth being fully flooded.

Companies that pollute should be taxed so that a product's cost to society is reflected in the price of that product.

If your child gets asthma, the fossil fuel industry doesn't pay. Or if there's a natural disaster, the bill is paid by the taxpayer, not the fossil fuel company.

Thousands of people may have been killed by hurricane Katrina and many more could die in its aftermath because of the President's refusal to heed the calls of governors for help in repairing the infrastructure in their states.

Today, we can see with our own eyes what global warming is doing. In that context it becomes truly irresponsible, if not immoral, for us not to do something.

Americans think they're the leader of the world and yet can say that they're putting their economic interests ahead of the lives of - quite possibly - tens of millions of people who over the next 50 years will die because of floods or storms or tropical diseases or whatever. I guess that sort of thing makes me angry.

Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth's treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply.

The way to reduce pollution in Detroit is to make automobile company executives drive in non-air-conditioned cars during summer rush hours. The way to get business to join the war on poverty is to make corporate executives drive through Harlem every day instead of going home on air-conditioned trains drinking martinis.

I just wished Katrina had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else, just had flooded them out, and I wouldn't have rescued them.

What is truly frightening is that, despite our knowledge, we continue to subsidize activities without regard to their environmental—and economic—impact.

White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet who is controlling the supposed revolution to change all that? White males.

You cannot affirm the power plant and condemn the smokestack, or affirm the smoke and condemn the cough.

We'll never move beyond oil until we stop rewarding oil companies with ridiculous taxpayer subsidies and start making them pay for the harm they cause our families and our planet.

For someone with a background of economic justice, what scared me about climate change is not just that the sea level will rise and we'll have more storms - it's how this intersects with that cocktail of inequality and racism.

We have to have a planet to pass on to the next generation, and these issues of climate change and climate justice and the disproportionate burdens that communities of color actually bear from our damaging climate is a huge issue.

If it turns out that global warming and ocean acidification are consequences of capitalism's carbon-based energy system, the entire world could end up dead from the external costs of capitalism.

I get a lot of mud slung at me, and yes, I do take planes, but I feel that's my life. My life is to travel and also to speak out about the horrors of an environment that is being abused at the hands of an irresponsible oil company.

Climate change and energy use are global problems - News Corp is a global company. Our operations affect the environment all over the world.

Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come. We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather.

We must act now and wake up to our moral obligations. The poor and vulnerable are members of God's family and are the most severely affected by droughts, high temperatures, the flooding of coastal cities, and more severe and unpredictable weather events resulting from climate change. We, who should have been responsible stewards preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, devouring irreplaceable natural resources.

There is good evidence that last year's European heat wave was influenced by global warming. It resulted in 26,000 premature deaths and cost $13.5bn.

Not using fossil fuels is tantamount to not using energy. It is economic suicide and eco-manslaughter.