War and pestilence might kill large numbers of people, but in most cases the population recovers. But lose the soil and everything goes with it.

Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?

The institutions founded 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' have failed. Since the end of WW2, some thirty million people have been killed in armed conflict. Most of them were civilians.

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.

Every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.

Is the divine presence a Republican? Or is He/She/It running an inter-galactic fossil fuel conglomerate?...whatever the explanation may be, the Paraclete appears to be as determined as any terrestrial corporate frontman to prevent a successful conclusion to the climate talks. How I know? Because every time anyone gets together to try to prevent global climate breakdown, He swaths the rich, densely habited parts of the world with snow and ice, while leaving obscurer places to cook.

We would do well to ask why governments seem to find it so easy to raise the money required to wreck the biosphere, and so difficult to raise the money required to save it.