Jonathon Porritt Quotes

Peace, non-violence, human rights and the environment - if only everybody saw these as the seamless whole that they are

Jonathon Porritt

Future, Rights, Vision

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The future will be green, or not at all. This truth lies at the heart of humankind's most pressing challenge: to learn to live in harmony with the Earth on a genuinely sustainable basis.

Jonathon Porritt

Lying, Heart, Earth Day

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Many ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet. Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of society. More powerful than any religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism

Jonathon Porritt

Powerful, Future, Ideas

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If something is sustainable, it means we can go on doing it indefinitely. If it isn't, we can't

Jonathon Porritt

Future, Mean, Vision

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The future will be green, or not at all

Jonathon Porritt

Future, Vision, Green

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It's not enough simply to wear the badge of corporate responsibility. Business must accept that real change is the only response to climate change and other environmental crises

Jonathon Porritt

Business, Real, Responsibility

"Sustainability is central to survival" by Jonathan Porritt, www.theguardian.com. November 5, 2006.

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Humankind's greatest priority is to reintegrate with the natural world.

Jonathon Porritt

Nature, Animal, Priorities

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We're never going to scare people into living more sustainably! We have to be able to demonstrate just how dynamic and aspirational such a world could be

Jonathon Porritt

Future, People, Vision

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As more and more people wake up to the fact that further growth does not necessarily bring improvements in quality of life (and often exactly the opposite), sustainability is going to become one of the key characteristics with which places want to be associated.

Jonathon Porritt

Business, Opposites, Keys

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...the core values that underpin sustainable development - interdependence, empathy, equity, personal responsibility and intergenerational justice - are the only foundation upon which any viable vision of a better world can possibly be constructed

Jonathon Porritt

Responsibility, Justice, Empathy

Jonathon Porritt (2012). “Capitalism as If the World Matters”, p.347, Routledge

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Any regeneration project that fails to put environmental and social benefits at its very heart is unlikely to achieve anything more than a very short-lived spasm of spurious prosperity

Jonathon Porritt

Future, Heart, Vision

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Climate change is not an environmental issue, but much more to do with security and economics

Jonathon Porritt

Issues, Environmental, Climate

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A combination of very rapid population growth over the last 50 years and reckless economic growth during the same time has stored up massive problems for societies the world over. No nation is immune. The scientific evidence tells us all we need to know: carry on with business-as-usual growth-at-all-costs, and we're stuffed

Jonathon Porritt

Years, Growth, Usual

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Keeping people on side is a precondition of making any progress on sustainability issues

Jonathon Porritt

Future, Issues, People

"Why do we play down the horror of climate change?" by Jonathon Porritt, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2012.

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Fundamentally transforming the foundations of the economy is the biggest contribution we can make towards building a sustainable future. The current economic crisis may be painful, but it will be nothing compared with the crises we will face if we continue to grow in a way that threatens the life-support systems on which we rely

Jonathon Porritt

Support Systems, Foundation, May

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What may be possible for a minority of humankind, albeit at great cost, simply cannot work for the humankind. Our kind of progress depends on lacerating the Earth,on gouging out its riches, on stripping is life-sustaining skin of soil and forest

Jonathon Porritt

Progress, Skins, Minorities

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...deficit consumption is, in effect, drawing down on the capital entitlements of future generations

Jonathon Porritt

Future, Drawing, Vision

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We are now running out of time, and the question now is not what is happening to the climate, but how bad will it be before the world starts doing enough?

Jonathon Porritt

Running, Climate, World

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I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate.

Jonathon Porritt

Children, Responsibility, Thinking

"Go green: have fewer kids, says environmentalist" by Mark Tran, www.theguardian.com. February 1, 2009.

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...living more sustainably means living happier, more balanced and potentially more fulfilled lives than most of us 'choose' to live today, whatever Jeremy Clarkson may have to say about that!

Jonathon Porritt

Future, Mean, Vision

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The huge arrogance of the companies developing GMO crops and their determination to destroy the line of accountability which links the developer to the product is breath-taking. When something goes wrong, as it inevitably will, there will be a great benefit to those who have taken a stance against genetically modified organisms.

Jonathon Porritt

Determination, Taken, Gmos

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The collapse of the world's banking system and the impending disaster of accelerating climate change are not separate phenomena. They are simply the most visible symptoms of a particular model of capitalism that will bring civilisation to its knees. But those symptoms will not get sorted unless and until we commit to a radical transformation of the way we create and distribute wealth in the world today

Jonathon Porritt

Climate, Banking, World

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"The ultimate recession": a recession caused not by failed regulation and bankers' greed, but by very high oil prices, food and water shortages, disappearing forests, accelerating climate change, forced migration and mass civil disruption...The long and the short of it, unfortunately, is this: more politicians still believe that economic recovery depends on continuing to live beyond our means (financially and ecologically) than on learning to live within our means. And that's why the ultimate "Perfect Storm" recession still looms on the horizon

Jonathon Porritt

Business, Believe, Recovery

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I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible.

Jonathon Porritt

Children, Thinking, Two

"Go green: have fewer kids, says environmentalist" by Mark Tran, www.theguardian.com. February 1, 2009.

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The World Health Organization recently published some data showing that each overweight person causes and additional one tonne of CO2 to be emitted every year. With one billion people overweight around the world-of whom at least 300 million are obese-that's an additional one billion tonnes.

Jonathon Porritt

Years, Data, Organization

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Born: July 6, 1950
Occupation: Environmentalist
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