George Monbiot
The Guardian
May 30, 2007
Motorised transport is a form of time travel. We mine the compressed time of other eras – the infinitisimal rain of plankton onto the ocean floor, the settlement of trees in anoxic swamps – and use it to accelerate through our own. Every tank of fuel contains thousands of years of accretions. Our future depends on the expectation that the past will never be exhausted.
George Monbiot
The Guardian
May 15, 2007
Corporate social responsibility often resembles the adventures of The Good Soldier Svejk. In 1914, about to be conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army, Svejk puts on his old uniform and a volunteer’s buttonhole and, waving his borrowed crutches and shouting “to Belgrade, to Belgrade!”, has his landlady push him to the recruiting office in a bath chair. Jaroslav Harsek’s marvellous creation is lauded by the newspapers for his extraordinary patriotism.
