George Monbiot Quotes

The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency.

Basically, I think 21st century conservation is moving toward preserving ecosystems by dealing with the needs of people.

Doing what's best for our kids means restoring balance, commonsense and conservation to the management of our natural resources.

The premise is simple: One economy and one environment, and they're interdependent.

Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs.

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect

Sustainability is a very tough thing in our government because there are so many different competing priorities.

Conservation must become before recreation.

We must subject the machine—technology—to control and cease despoiling the earth and filling people with goodies merely to make money.

Conservation is not without a cost.

If you develop in the old fashioned way there are enormous costs (to the environment)….but we have to demonstrate it, not just tell people.

Waste of resources must ultimately result in National decay. This subject therefore ought to be dealt with in a sympathetic, inquiring spirit, being entirely non-political and non-sectarian.

The primary task of developing countries is to develop the economy and eradicate poverty. Without economic growth, there would be no material basis for a better life or better environment for the people. But economic growth must not be achieved at the cost of environment or resources. In the absence of proper resource and environmental protection, there could be no sustainable economic development.

If I were emperor of the world, I would put the pedal to the floor on energy efficiency and conservation for the next decade.

Humanity stands ... before a great problem of finding new raw materials and new sources of energy that shall never become exhausted. In the meantime we must not waste what we have, but must leave as much as possible for coming generations.

The world must now either accept long-term chaos for the sake of short term comforts or make short term sacrifices for the sake of long term comforts.

They go together, a strong environment and a strong economy. In Florida the environment is the economy.

Conservation’s grand challenge is to save nature in a world that will soon have 9 billion hungry, thirsty, energy-using people.

We're at peak oil, peak water, peak resources, and so either we figure it out and let science lead or we head down a very bad, dark trail to where a lot of people aren't going to make it.

The 'environmental left' tells us that, though we have natural resources like natural gas and oil and coal, and though we can feed the world, we should keep those things in the ground, put up fences, and be about prohibition.

It is essential to ensure that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a sustainable one for people and planet. It could even drive greater innovation, not only for short-term benefits and solutions for human wealth but also long-term solutions that benefit all and enable planetary stability.

We have to prove to the disinherited majority of the world that ecology and conservation will not work against their interest but will bring an improvement in their lives.

This is the kind of balance people expect: both environment and the economy - not one or the other.

The challenge of weaning ourselves off fossil fuel even as it becomes more abundant will make the old fights about energy conservation seem like child's play.