It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves.

Soil is an almost magical substance, a living system that transforms the materials it encounters.

The Christians stole the winter solstice from the pagans, and capitalism stole it from the Christians.

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.

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

It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves.

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.