Almost all systems of economic thought are premised on the idea of continued economic growth, which would be fine and dandy if we lived on an infinite planet, but there's this small, niggling, inconvenient fact that the planet is, in fact, finite, and that, unlike economic theory, it is governed by physical and biological reality

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.

Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?

Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.

Acknowledging our love for the living world does something that a library full of papers on sustainable development and ecosystem services cannot: it engages the imagination as well as the intellect. It inspires belief; and this is essential to the lasting success of any movement.

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.