We are often told we are materialistic. It seems to me, we are not materialistic enough. We have a disrespect for materials. We use it quickly and carelessly. If were genuinely materialistic people, we would understand where materials come from and where they go to. But, at the moment, the entire global economy seems to be built on the model of digging things up from one hole in the ground on one side of the earth, transporting them around the world, using them for a few days, and sticking them in a hole in the ground on the other side of the world.

Those who consume far more resources than they require destroy the life chances of those whose survival depends upon consuming more.

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.

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

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating normally.

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.