Consumption Quotes - Page 8

• Too many people I've loved dearly have left this earth. And some I've lost are still here breathing the same air. That grief can be comparable if not worse in its consumption.

  Aunjanue Ellis

  Grief, Air, Breathing

  "Exclusive: Actress Aunjanue Ellis and Director Russell Costanzo Discuss 'The Tested'". IndieWire Interview, www.indiewire.com. April 29, 2011.

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• America today has insufficient savings to finance both crucial investment and its consumption of imports.

  James Dale Davidson

  America, Gold, Saving

  James Dale Davidson, William Rees-Mogg (1991). “The great reckoning: how the world will change in the depression of the 1990s”

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• The new markets that arise from ecological constraints will dominate the 21st century economy, and so will markets for knowledge.

  Graciela Chichilnisky

  Growth, Economy, Century

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• I just don't like conspicuous consumption. I find it distasteful.

  Tim Gunn

  Conspicuous Consumption, Distasteful

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• In the United States those bits of our history that remain are paved over, sanitized, packaged for easy consumption. At those sites not already lost to commercial development, we walk between velvet ropes, herded by guides, warned not to touch. Our icons are preserved under glass, their magic demystified in glossy brochures.

  Biloine W. Young

  Glasses, Icons, History

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• We have an overdraft with the earth something in excess of 130 per cent. We currently consume something like 30 per cent over and above what we are replacing and rather like an overdraft at a bank that can't go on.

  Michael Meacher

  Growth, Excess, Goes On

  "Michael Meacher MP: humans only have 200-300 years left on earth". Interview with Tom Levitt, theecologist.org. July 22, 2010.

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• New technology lets you grow the resource pie, which is the only way you can get out between that pincer of rising consumption (as we end poverty) and environmental and natural resource depletion.

  Ramez Naam

  Technology, Pie, Environmental

  "Q&A with Ramez Naam: Dialogues on the Environment". Interview with Mark Tercek, bigthink.com.

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• No civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural support systems. Nor will ours.

  Lester R. Brown

  Civilization, Support Systems, Growth

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• All I am asking is that we follow the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This is fundamentally a moral issue, not an economic issue. Given what we know now, it is simply unethical to impose risk of grave damage on future generations just so that we can have a few more consumer products today.

  Ken Caldeira

  Issues, Risk, Growth

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• I only started to understand the concept of "environmental protection" 14 years ago. I was an ambassador for a charity event, and the staff told me that the consumption of disposable chopsticks in China, per year, could result in the devastation of unimaginable acres of forest.

  Li Bingbing

  Years, Environmental, Events

  "Interview with Li Bingbing on Elephants and Ivory Poaching". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• Energy is significantly underpriced in many parts of the world, leading to wasteful consumption, price volatility and fuel smuggling. It's also undermining the competitiveness of renewables.

  Fatih Birol

  Business, Energy, Climate

  "Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies 'could provide half of global carbon target'" by Duncan Clark, www.theguardian.com. January 19, 2012.

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• I just feel like everyone (including myself) on the planet is a little confused; we are all so driven by consumption - shopping, eating, getting high, whatever - anything to not "feel" what is really going on.

  Princess Superstar

  Confused, Shopping, Getting High

  Source: therumpus.net

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• We can learn that reward comes in creation and re-creation, no just in the consumption of the world around us. Active participation in the process of creation is our right and our privilege. We can learn to measure the success of our ideas not by our bank accounts by their impact on the world.

  Tim Brown

  Creativity, Ideas, Impact

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• The potential gains from improved stabilization policies are on the order of hundredths of a percent of consumption, perhaps two orders of magnitude smaller than the potential benefits of available supply-side fiscal reforms.

  Robert Lucas, Jr.

  Order, Two, Reform

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• Contrary to any claim of a systematically “neutral” effect of taxation on production, the consequence of any such shortening of roundabout methods of production is a lower output produced. The price that invariably must be paid for taxation, and for every increase in taxation, is a coercively lowered productivity that in turn reduces the standard of living in terms of valuable assets provided for future consumption. Every act of taxation necessarily exerts a push away from more highly capitalized, more productive production processes in the direction of a hand-to-mouth-existence.

  Hans-Hermann Hoppe

  Hands, Taxation, Mouths

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• Climate change is not a major issue because it will cause sea level rises or temperature increases, since we know how to live at higher elevations and regulate the temperature within our homes. It is a major issue because ecosystems are finding it difficult to adapt to the rapidity of the climate and environmental changes and are dying off, thereby accelerating the species extinction that is already underway due to our consumption habits.

  Shailesh Rao

  Nature, Home, Sea

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• If we continue to think of ourselves mostly as consumers, it's going to be very hard to bring our environmental troubles under control. But it's also going to be very hard to live the rounded and joyful lives that could be ours. This is a subversive volume in all the best ways!

  Bill McKibben

  Thinking, Growth, Environmental

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• I desire to have a dialogue that's positive, and communicative and moves forward, and is about something real, not just consumption.

  Mike Vallely

  Real, Moving, Desire

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• The transformation of capitalism is unstoppable because we need limits on resources for humans to survive.

  Graciela Chichilnisky

  Growth, Needs, Limits

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• I don't want to be an object of consumption. I like to get out there and participate because I care about it. It's not because I've gotten filthy rich off the hides of young skaters that I feel some sickening obligation to act on, and make myself look like I'm not that bad of a guy. It's because I actually care.

  Mike Vallely

  Guy, Looks, Care

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• We created a way of raising standards of living that we can't possibly pass on to our children.

  Joseph J. Romm

  Children, Growth, Way

  "The Inflection Is Near?" by Thomas L. Friedman, www.nytimes.com. Match 7, 2009.

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• Therefore, this is a question of whether we, humans, can change our culture and begin to truly care for all Creation, nurture all Life and thereby avert our own extinction. As such, this is a deeply spiritual issue and we can begin to act today, regardless of age. But the good news is that this is not a question of whether we will change our culture, but a question of when.

  Shailesh Rao

  Spiritual, Issues, Growth

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• Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come. I think people in the mass media, journalists, film makers and others, you can contribute to the collective awakening if you are awake and then your life will embody that awakening.

  Nhat Hanh

  Thinking, Media, People

  "The role of journalists and corporates in combating climate change" by Jo Confino, www.theguardian.com. August 26, 2010.

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• The pattern is clear: if we could speed up time, it would seem as if the global economy is crashing against the earth - the Great Collision.

  James Gustave Speth

  Growth, Earth, Patterns

  James Gustave Speth (2008). “The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability”, p.1, Yale University Press

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• The point is to explore whatever may be helpful for thinking, understanding, and acting responsibly over long periods of time.

  Stewart Brand

  Thinking, Long, Understanding

  Stewart Brand (1999). “The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility”, p.12, Basic Books

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