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.

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

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.

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.

Nobody ever rioted for austerity.

Development which has no regard for whom or what it harms is not development. It is the opposite of progress, damaging the Earth's capacity to support us and the rest of its living systems.

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 country’s most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management.