Vision Quotes - Page 30

• It would be disastrous if bad planning policy meant that today's new developments become tomorrow's climate slums

  Tim Yeo

  Future, Today, Climate

  "Benn announces 'stronger' climate change bill" by Rosalind Ryan, Elizabeth Stewart, www.theguardian.com. October 29, 2007.

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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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• 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, Environmental

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• Without environmental sustainability, economic stability and social cohesion cannot be achieved

  Phil Harding

  Future, Environmental, Cohesion

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• The science is getting worse faster than the politics is getting better.

  David Miliband

  Future, Get Better, Faster

  "'We nearly threw it away. We must be more radical'". Interview with Patrick Wintour, www.theguardian.com. December 10, 2006.

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• The moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable...that what we take for granted may not be here for our children

  Al Gore

  Children, Future, May

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• The 'Big Green Debate' has entered a very interesting stage. Once there was endless controversy; now there is near unanimity. Once there was universal political indifference; now the bandwagon is abrim with politicians in catch-up mode. Once the media were semi-detached: now they're really getting stuck in. And they need to be! Many people are confused and disempowered, and the role of the media in getting then informed and engaged is critical

  Jonathon Porritt

  Confused, Future, Media

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• Fifteen per cent of the population believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona and somewhat fewer still believe the Earth is flat. I think they all get together with the global warming deniers on a Saturday night and party

  Al Gore

  Believe, Future, Party

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• If our economies are to flourish, if global poverty is to be banished, and if the wellbeing of the world's people enhanced - not just in this generation but in succeeding generations - we must make sure we take care of the natural environment and resources on which our economic activity depends.

  Gordon Brown

  Future, People, Generations

  Gordon Brown's speech to foreign finance and environment ministers on climate change, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2005.

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• Ever more people are alert to the challenge of global poverty and global warming. We know that solutions are at hand. We will not sleepwalk into catastrophe. We have the capacity to forsee and forestall, and I believe we will find the will to act

  Jonathan Dimbleby

  Future, Believe, Hands

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• The western model of growth that India and China wish to emulate is intrinsically toxic. It uses huge resources - energy and materials - and generates enormous waste... it remains many steps behind the problems it creates. India and China have no choice but to reinvent the development trajectory

  Sunita Narain

  Future, Choices, Growth

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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, May

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• The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labour, or technology. It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right

  Donella Meadows

  Nature, Future, Technology

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• Sustainability is here to stay or we may not be

  Niall FitzGerald

  Future, Agriculture, May

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• I also, as I think most people do, have a healthy instinct that if we upset the balance of nature, we are in all probability going to suffer a reaction. With world growth, and population as it is, this reaction must increase.

  Tony Blair

  Future, Thinking, People

  Blair's climate change speech, www.theguardian.com. September 15, 2004.

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• The three pillars of development (economic, social and environmental) must be strengthened together. But it is evident that two of the pillars - economic and social - are subsidiary to, and underpinned by, the third: a vibrant global ecology. Neither dollars nor our species will out-survive our planet. The earth can survive happily without people or profit

  Dave Hampton

  Future, Two, People

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• There can be no sustainable development without sustainable energy development

  Margot Wallstrom

  Future, Energy, Development

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• We live not, in reality, on the summit of a solid earth but at the bottom of an ocean of air

  Thales

  Ocean, Future, Reality

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• The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there's a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species

  David Attenborough

  Real, Future, Responsibility

  "State of the Planet". Documentary, www.imdb.com. (2000 - ).

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• Sustainable development is a process which enables all people to realise their potential and to improve their quality of life in ways which protect and enhance the Earth's life support systems

  Sara Parkin

  Future, Support Systems, People

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• We do not accept that human society should be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest

  Thabo Mbeki

  Future, Survival, Principles

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• We live on this very small and fragile planet: a world in which there is poverty and injustice is never going to be a safe and secure world

  Hilary Benn

  Future, World, Safe

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• A global human society, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable

  Thabo Mbeki

  Future, Islands, Sea

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• For the first time in human history, society has the capacity, the knowledge and the resources to eradicate poverty

  Thabo Mbeki

  Future, Poverty, Firsts

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• We all have an interest, and a duty to future generations, to ensure that the benefits of mobility that we now take for granted, do not place an intolerable burden on our environment

  Elliot Morley

  Future, Generations, Mobility

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