Better to be vaguely right, than precisely wrong.- from the newsletter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (2003)
Terrorism is the warfare of the weak; warfare is the terrorism of the strong.- Peter Ustinov, British writer and actor
Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his interest in a society which believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to us all.- Garrett Hardin (1968)
A billion poor Chinese is a problem for the Chinese government. A billion rich Chinese would be a catastrophe.- Author unknown (referring to China's pollution problems)
A child born in the mid-1930s if he lives a normal life expectancy, will see the United States consume most of its oil during his lifetime. Similarly, a child born within the last 5 years will see the world consume most of its oil during his lifetime.- M. King Hubbert, geophysicist (1974)
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.- Robert Goddard (1927)
If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.- Thomas Hardy
The developed capitalist system, which later gave rise to modern imperialism, has finally imposed a neoliberal and globalized order that is simply unsustainable. It has created a world of speculation where fictitious wealth and stocks have been created that have nothing to do with actual production, as well as enormous personal fortunes, some of which exceed the gross domestic product of dozens of poor countries. No need to add the plundering and squandering of the world's natural resources and the miserable lives of billions of people. There is nothing this system can offer humanity. It can only lead to its own self-destruction and perhaps along with it to the destruction of the natural conditions that sustain human life on this planet.- Fidel Castro (2000)
Our numbness, our silence, our lack of outrage, could mean we end up the only species to have minutely monitored our own extinction. What a measly epitaph that would make: "they saw it coming but hadn't the wit to stop it happening."- Sara Parkin (1991)
Let us set as our national goal... that by the end of this decade we will have developed the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign source.- President Richard Nixon (1973)
Is there anyone who believes that making more money in a nation already gorging on record wealth will emancipate us from our moral deficit? More spending hasn't improved education. More income hasn't enhanced the quality of family life. Great wealth has failed to cure our cynicism about nearly everything. We enjoy new conveniences and more leisure time, but have less time for developing our character and human relationships. Might prosperity contribute to many of our social ills rather than cure them?- Cal Thomas (2000)
Doesn't it make you wonder if the last 100 years of eco-advocacy - and the billions of dollars pumped into it - have been for naught, when all it takes is for one administration to get into power to undo it all?- Doug Moss, E Magazine (2003)
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai he could count the rules of ethical behavior on the fingers of his two hands. In the complex global economy of the late twentieth century, in which the simple act of turning on an air conditioner sends greenhouse gases up into the atmosphere, the rules for ecologically sustainable living run into the hundreds. The basic value of a sustainable society, though, the ecological equivalent of the Golden Rule, is simple: each generation should meet its needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations to meet their own needs. What is lacking is the thorough practical knowledge - at each level of society - of what living by that principle means.- Alan Durning (1991)
He who knows he has enough is rich.- Tao Te Ching
We must make a distinction between making the rules and playing by those rules. Rule making involves collective decisions, or politics. Playing by the rules involves individual decisions, or market behavior. Unfortunately the distinction is rarely observed. People seem largely to vote their pocketbooks and they lobby for legislation that serves their personal interests. What is worse, elected representatives also frequently put their personal interests ahead of the common interest. Instead of standing for certain intrinsic values, political leaders want to be elected at all costs - and under the prevailing ideology of market fundamentalism, or untrammeled individualism, this is regarded as a natural, rational, and even perhaps desirable way for politicians to behave. This attitude toward politics undermines the postulate on which the principle of representative democracy was built. The contradiction between politicians' personal and public interests was, of course, always present, but it has been greatly aggravated by prevailing attitudes that put success as measured by money ahead of intrinsic values such as honesty. Thus the ascendancy of the profit motive and the decline in the effectiveness of the collective decision-making process have reinforced each other in a reflexive fashion. The promotion of self-interest to a moral principle has corrupted politics and the failure of politics has become the strongest argument in favor of giving markets an ever freer reign.
The functions that cannot and should not be governed purely by market forces include many of the most important things in human life, ranging from moral values to family relationships to aesthetic and intellectual achievements. Yet market fundamentalism is constantly attempting to extend its sway into these regions, in a form of ideological imperialism. According to market fundamentalism, all social activities and human interactions should be looked at as transactional, contract-based relationships and valued in terms of a single common denominator, money. Activities should be regulated, as far as possible, by nothing more intrusive that the invisible hand of profit-maximizing competition. The incursions of market ideology into fields far outside business and economics are having destructive and demoralizing social effects. But market fundamentalism has become so powerful that any political forces that dare to resist it are branded as sentimental, illogical, and naive.
Yet the truth is that market fundamentalism is itself naive and illogical. Even if we put aside the bigger moral and ethical questions and concentrate solely on the economic arena, the ideology of market fundamentalism is profoundly and irredeemably flawed. To put the matter simply, market forces, if they are given complete authority even in the purely economic and financial arenas, produce chaos and could ultimately lead to the downfall of the global capitalist system.
George Soros (1998)
Cut down the forest of your greed, before cutting real trees.- Buddhist meditation
Eco-efficiency is an outwardly admirable, even noble, concept, but it is not a strategy for success over the long term, because it does not reach deep enough. It works within the same system that caused the problem in the first place, merely slowing it down with moral prescriptions and punitive measures. It presents little more than an illusion of change. Relying on eco-efficiency to save the environment will in fact achieve the opposite; it will let industry finish off everything, quietly, presistently, and completely....
Plainly put, eco-efficeincy only works to make the old, destructive system a bit less so. In some cases, it can be pernicious, because its workings are more subtle and long-term. An ecosystem might actually have more of a chance to become healthy and whole again after a quick collapse that leaves some niches intact than with a slow, deliberate, and efficienmt destruction of the whole.
- William McDonough, "Cradle to Cradle" (2002)
That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set.- Robert Bellah (1975)
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.-J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
The only lost fight is the one you abandon.- Claudia Korol, Argentinian journalist (2002)
We have become addicted to our way of life and to our way of thinking. We must drive our cars, use our clothes dryers, smoke our cigarettes, drink our alcohol, earn a profit, look good, behave in a socially acceptable fashion, and never speak out of turn or speak the truth, for fear of rejection.
The problem with addicted people, communities, corporations, or countries is that they tend to lie, cheat, steal to get their "fix". Corporations are addicted to profit and governments to power, and as Henry Kissinger once said, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."
The only way to break addictive behavior is to love and cherish something more than your addiction. When a mother and a father look into the eyes of their newborn baby, do they need a glass of beer or a cigarette to make them feel better? When you smell a rose or a gardenia, do you think of work or do you forget for a brief, blissful moment everything but the perfection of the flower? When you see the dogwood flowers hovering like butterflies among the fresh green leaves of spring, do you forget your worries?
Now, try to imagine your life without healthy babies, perfect roses, and dogwoods in spring. It will seem meaningless. We take the perfection of nature for granted, but if we woke up one morning and found all the trees dying, the grass brown, and the temperature 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and if we couldn't venture outside because the sun would cause severe skin burns, we would recognize what we once had but didn't treasure enough to save.
- Helen Caldicott, If You Love This Planet (1992)
If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a happier or better population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.- John Stuart Mill (1870)
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