BG Green Quotes
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Quotes CornerSustainability “And here is the conflict: How can we continue on our path of economic growth and embrace sustainability at the same time? The answer is we cannot. Sustainability requires a fundamental rethinking of the basis of our economy; it requires a new way of creating wealth because our current practice of extraction and expansion is, well, unsustainable.” -From Sustainability is Radical, by John Gardner, Boise State University's Assoc. VP for Energy Research, Policy and Campus Sustainability. It's true, sustainability is a radical concept, one that rightfully takes its place in the long line of radical ideas that have shaped the course of human history but are now accepted as common sense. Democracy is a great example, as is the concept that all people are created equal - whether they walk the Earth today or a hundred years from now.” -From Sustainability is Radical, by John Gardner, Boise State University's Assoc. VP for Energy Research, Policy and Campus Sustainability. "We need to challenge the notion that environmental resources are there for the taking, that Nature provides a free lunch…We are borrowing from the future, and leaving the next generation with an environmental overdraft.” -From an IIED report: Failed: 20 Years of Sustainable Development Effort "In the long term, the economy and the environment are the same thing. “One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation, “The more clearly we focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” –Rachel Carson, Author "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." “According to new research emerging from many quarters that our continued devotion to growth above all is, on balance, making our lives worse, both collectively and individually.” "There is no longer a way of thinking about growth for growth's sake. Today we are “Global sustainability will be the driving force changing the way we work and live in the 21st century.” -Global Sustainability Institute RMIT University
“Now so many of us have lost our jobs, our savings—we are starting new businesses out of our garages. Out of our personal computers. We discover that our hobbies can make money. We teach in the home. Trading, bartering, thrifting… we are doing what we can. We are making things. The old shuttered storefronts can be re-opened …” “Appalachians tend to look back more than most other Americans. They define who they are by how they fit into an extended family, which includes ancestors. Their roots run deep in the mountain soil, deeper than corporate greed and political corruption.” –Janice Nease, Executive Director of Coal River Mountain Watch, “Our connectedness with each other and the world is steadily becoming more apparent as we have just about worn out the Eden that God gave us. Love thy neighbor as thyself means ‘every living thing’ to me - whether it is a farmer in Chiapas trying to feed his family in spite of NAFTA or the IMF or a river asking for a chance to continue supplying us with decent water. We are connected and "in our own interest" must include the interest of other people and Nature as well.”-Marty Deputy, Citizen and BGGreen member “These numbers show how far in the wrong direction the world is poised to go…This rapid building of global-warming machines – which is what coal-power plants are – should be a wakeup call to politicians that we're driving ever faster toward the edge of the cliff." -From David Hawkins, Natural Resources Defense Council. See report at www.csmonitor.com/2007/0322/p01s04-wogi.html?page=2 "The twin challenges of climate change and economic stagnation can be solved by the same action – broad, aggressive, sustained deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency.” -Brad Collins, Executive Director, American Solar Energy Society “What makes me uneasy is simply knowing how quickly humans adopt new phrases and how readily we confuse them with the reality — or the unreality — of our actions. The two things we seem to do most instinctively are manipulate language and create markets, and those two instincts converge when it comes to carbon footprints. Creating a market in moral carbon — offsets that counter our energy rich lifestyle — feels a little like Rotisserie baseball, more illusion than reality. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a climate-change skeptic. In fact, I believe that the idea of a carbon footprint is a little too glib, a little too soothing, a little too likely to persuade us that we can get out of this mess by an easy incrementalism. The same with carbon offsets, only more so. There is nothing trivial about grasping the idea that lies behind carbon footprints, trying to understand the scale of our consumption and its widespread environmental costs. Think about it properly, and it leads you to a profound critique of who we are and how we behave. Act on it, and you immediately see how carbonaceous our lives have become.” "I’m writing a column about rhododendrons right now. And I think my conclusion is going to have to be not to plant rhododendrons. We have heated our way out of the rhododendron zone." (NYT, 5/3/07) -Tara Dillard, a landscape designer and garden writer, on the effects of warming trends on gardening. "As important as it is to change the light bulbs, it’s more important to change the laws. When we change our behavior in our daily lives, we sometimes leave out the citizenship part and the democracy part. In order to be optimistic about this we have to become incredibly active as citizens in our democracy…In order to solve the climate change crisis, we need to solve the democracy crisis." -Al Gore
“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world-we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.” -Joanna Macy, Scholar of Buddhism and Deep Ecology “A man who possesses a veneration of life will not simply say his prayers. “Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society that you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now!” -Paul Goodman (1911–1972), Author and Sociologist “America—this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of the NO into the YES, needs citizens who love it enough to re-imagine and remake it.” -Cornel West, Professor of Religion at Princeton “My heart is moved by all I cannot save; so much has been destroyed. I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, With no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”
-Adrienne Rich, Poet “Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.” -Wendell Berry, Kentucky author, poet, educator, and humanitarian “All of us necessarily hold many casual opinions that are ludicrously wrong simply because life is far too short for us to think through even a small fraction of the topics that we come across.” -Julian Simon (1932 - 1998)
"For the last 100 years we built plants like this one. It takes crushed coal, ignites it to heat water that produces steam and that turns a turbine and produces electricity. ... You build that smokestack real high so the nasty stuff goes to someone else's backyard. Well, we've run out of backyards." -Montana's Gov. Schweitzer reflecting on coal-fired power in a Jan., 2007 NY Times column “Renewable energy is proven technology, the price is dropping, the rest of the world is going that way, that's where our investment should be going as well.” “Be grateful for high gas prices. Nothing else works!” -Rona, Editor, SustainableBusiness.com
“No sustainable development, environmental harmony or lasting security will happen if we are unable to eradicate hunger and extreme inequality.” -Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazilian President “The struggle against corruption is fundamental to sustainable development. “Where are we since September 11th? What coordinates do we mark out for ourselves? Hopefully those that find us closer to, rather than further from, each other. Where we are driven to sing our songs together rather than have them sung at us. Where greed gives way to generosity. Where bravery is redefined as those countless small acts of selflessness that do not require tragedy or weaponry “As citizens of a state [Kentucky] that has made doing the bare minimum required of us for our environmental policy, can we honestly claim to value our children and their futures?” -Tom Fitzgerald - 14th Public Institute, Filson Club
"Until now man has been up against Nature; from now on he will be up against his own nature." -Dennis Gabor (1963) “There are those who would quickly love each other if once they were to speak to each other; for when they spoke they would discover that their souls were only separated by phantoms and delusions.” -Ernesto Hello, 19th century French philosopher “The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence. If we are serious about innovation, must we not conclude that we need something new to replace our perpetual ‘war to end war’"? "The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian “It is no longer good enough to cry peace, we must act peace, live peace, and live in peace.” -Shenandoah proverb “With a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the Iraq war, ”When we are firmly established in nonviolence, all beings around us cease to feel hostility. When we are firmly established in truthfulness, action accomplishes its desired end.” -The Yoga Sutras, Patanjali2:35-39 “I dream of a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?’” - from the Split This Rock collaborative collage poem delivered by individual poets in front of the White House, March 23, 2008 “Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.” “The embrace of compassion knows no bounds and seeks no rest.” -Translation of “Wu Xian Ci Huai Xioa Bu Mei” (an incantation set to the cadence of Taoist Sung Ci poetry, 960-1279 A.D. |
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