We are living, it seems, into the culmination of a long warfare — at first merely commercial and then industrial, always unabashedly violent — against human beings and other creatures, and of course against the earth itself. The purpose of this warfare has been to render the real goods of the world into various forms of abstract wealth: money, gold, shares, etc.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist

Speech (2005-05-14), Commencement, Lindsey Wilson College, Columbia, Kentucky
    (Source)

This was either excerpted from, or included in, his undated essay "Letter to Daniel Kemmis," collected in The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays, Part 2 (2005).