Sustainability Quotes - Page 13

• Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces.

  Rachel Carson

  Men, Survival, Here And There

  Rachel Carson (2011). “Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson”, p.167, Beacon Press

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• Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.

  Barry Commoner

  Art, Law, Medicine

  "Interview with Barry Commoner" by Alan Hall, www.scientificamerican.com. June 23, 1997.

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• Sustainability is a seemingly laudable goal - it tells us we need to live within our means, whether economic, ecological, or political - but it's insufficient for uncertain times. How can we live within our means when those very means can change, swiftly and unexpectedly, beneath us?

  Jamais Cascio

  Mean, Goal, Political

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• That's not a utopian vision. It is a set of ideas that we think are important to discuss. Those ideas largely have to do with sustainability of cities. The ability of cities to, over time, remain in balance with the resource streams that are available to them, and they have to do with social justice and equity of the fundamental conditions of satisfactory citizenship.

  William J. Mitchell

  Thinking, Cities, Ideas

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The creative process ignites our imagination, and I believe that that same imagination is what will propel us forward with issues of social change. I do think we have to acknowledge that we are a very capitalistic and consumptive nation, and that talk about conservation or issues of sustainability is never going to be popular with the dominant culture because it means checks and balances on an economy that is reserved for the dollar, rather than an economy that honors and respects spiritual resources and the right of all life to participate on the planet, not just our species.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Spiritual, Believe, Mean

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• The planet's biggest problems have to do with sustainability, environmental decline, global poverty, disease, conflict and so forth. Really, they're all interconnected - it's one big problem, which is that the way we're doing things can't go on.

  Alex Steffen

  Environmental, Goes On, Disease

  CNN Interview, www.cnn.com. March 11, 2008.

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• What is now called "green architecture" is an opportunistic caricature of a much deeper consideration of the issues related to sustainability that architecture has been engaged with for many years. It was one of the first professions that was deeply concerned with these issues and that had an intellectual response to them.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Years, Issues, Intellectual

  "Reinventing the city: An interview with architect Rem Koolhaas". Interview with Paul Fraioli, www.csmonitor.com. July 20, 2012.

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• Climate change is destroying our path to sustainability. Ours is a world of looming challenges and increasingly limited resources. Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Challenges, Climate, Limited Resources

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• Several groups have information evaluating seafood sustainability. I wrote the first such guide, and seafood pocket-guides and detailed evaluations of different seafoods are available for download from the group I founded, Blue Ocean Institute.

  Carl Safina

  Ocean, Blue, Pockets

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• Learning about issues such as sustainability and locavorism are things that you need to have as part of you as a chef because it will make you cook more delicious food.

  Rene Redzepi

  Issues, Needs, Chef

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The Nuffield report suggests that there is a moral imperative for investment into GM crop research in developing countries. But the moral imperative is in fact the opposite.  The policy of drawing of funds away from low-cost sustainable agriculture research, towards hi-tech, exclusive, expensive and unsafe technology is itself ethically questionable.  There is a strong moral argument that the funding of GM technology in agriculture is harming the long-term sustainability of agriculture in the developing world.

  Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher

  Country, Strong, Technology

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• If we each take responsibility in shifting our own behavior, we can trigger the type of change that is necessary to achieve sustainability for our race or this planet. We change our planet, our environment, our humanity every day, every year, every decade, and every millennia.

  Yehuda Berg

  Responsibility, Race, Years

  "We All Have Oil on Our Hands" by Yehuda Berg, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 21, 2010.

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• A highly worthwhile read with prescriptive examples for authentic sustainability and social justice initiatives at companies - not all about the brand, the celebrity or corporate self-interest (about the book 'Compassion, Inc.').

  Rebecca Aguilar

  Book, Compassion, Self

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• a society driven mainly by selfish individualism has all the potential for sustainability of a collection of angry scorpions in a bottle.

  David Ehrenfeld

  Selfish, Scorpions, Bottles

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• I want to be really proactive in working with the progressive business community in Australia and also reaching out to rural and regional Australia in order to assist in the sustainability crisis and the food security crisis.

  Christine Milne

  Order, Australia, Community

  "Milne baulks at more bucks for big business". "The World Today" with Sabra Lane, www.abc.net.au. April 16, 2012.

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• The only technology that helps to create a plethora of business and employment opportunity while promoting the green environment, is serving good for the society and, therefore, the sustainability.

  Anuj

  Technology, Opportunity, Employment

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• ... why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of the species but so few concerned about the extinction of the species?

  Brian D. McLaren

  Religious, People, Environmental

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• The wrecking ball is characteristic of our way with materials. We 'cannot afford' to log a forest selectively, to mine without destroying topography, or to farm without catastrophic soil erosion. A production-oriented economy can indeed live in this way, but only so long as production lasts.

  Wendell Berry

  Erosion, Long, Environmental

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• A sustainable economy represents nothing less than a higher social order one as concerned with future generations as with our own, and more focused on the health of the planet and the poor than on material acquisitions and military might. While it is a fundamentally new endeavor, with many uncertainties, it is far less risky than continuing with business as usual.

  Lester R. Brown

  Military, Order, Environmental

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• Although population and consumption are societal issues, technology is the business of business. If economic activity must increase tenfold over what it is today to support a population nearly double its current size, then technology will have to reduce its impact twenty-fold merely to keep the planet at its current levels of environmental impact. For example, to stabilize the climate we may have to reduce real carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, while simultaneously growing the world economy by an order of magnitude.

  Stuart L. Hart

  Real, Technology, Order

  Stuart L. Hart (2010). “Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World”, p.52, FT Press

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• But the basic value of a sustainable society, the ecological equivalent of the Golden Rule, is simple: each generation should meet its needs without jeopardizing the prospects for future generations to meet their own needs.

  Alan Thein Durning

  Simple, Environmental, Golden

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• But we can do nothing for the human future that we will not do for the human present. For the amelioration of the future condition of our kind we must look, not to the wealth or the genius of the coming generations, but to the quality of the disciplines and attitudes that we are preparing now for their use.

  Wendell Berry

  Attitude, Discipline, Quality

  Wendell Berry (2012). “A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural”, p.127, Counterpoint Press

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• Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of "environmental refugees", people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it - and often their possessions as well - in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement? Can we remain impassive in the face of actual and potential conflicts involving access to natural resources? All these are issues with a profound impact on the exercise of human rights, such as the right to life, food, health and development.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Exercise, Order, Issues

  Pope Benedict XVI (2014). “The Garden of God”, p.41, CUA Press

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• Capitalism rules worldwide, and a society whose economic fabric depends on constant growth requires that its citizens have ever-expanding needs and wants... In the West, it will take one with soul force equal to Gandhi's to change the prevailing dogma of ever increasing GNP. We may be forced to change our profligate ways some day, when the soil is depleted, the aquifers drained, the icecaps melted, and all the oil wells pumped dry. But the crisis will wait another fifty years or so; we'll leave those problems to a generation yet unborn.

  Philip Yancey

  Years, Oil, Aquifers

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• Certain elements of today's ecological crisis reveal its moral character. First among these is the indiscriminate application of advances in science and technology. Many recent discoveries have brought undeniable benefits to humanity. Indeed, they demonstrate the nobility of the human vocation to participate responsibly in God's creative action in the world. Unfortunately, it is now clear that the application of these discoveries in the fields of industry and agriculture have produced harmful long-term effects.

  Pope John Paul II

  Character, Technology, Agriculture

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