Quotes About Consumption

The inspector ate only two of my tiny sandwiches: the first because he hadn't expected it to taste so awful; the second, I think, because he'd thought surely the first must have been a mistake.

I drink Diet Coke from the minute I get up to the minute I go to bed.

The iPod completely changed the way people approach music.

The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.

The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.

Americans consume nearly a quarter of all their food in their cars, for crying out loud. Americans graze through the kitchen, popping precooked, heat-and-eat, bar-coded packages into the microwave for eating-on-the-run.

Populations that do not typically consume dairy products appear to exhibit lower rates of bone fracture despite consuming far less calcium than recommended.

The essence of that industrial system is the cradle-to-grave manufacturing supply chain of take, make, use, lose: extract Earth's minerals, metals, biomass and fossil fuels; manufacture them into products; sell those on to consumers who—probably sooner rather than later—will throw them 'away'.

We live now, says Daly, in 'Full World', with an economy that exceeds Earth's regenerative and absorptive capacity by over-harvesting sources such as fish and forests, and over-filling sinks such as the atmosphere and oceans.

It is an economic era that has come to be known as the Great Acceleration, thanks to its extraordinary surge in human activity. Between 1950 and 2010, the global population almost trebled in size, and real World GDP increased sevenfold. Worldwide, freshwater use more than trebled, energy use increased fourfold, and fertiliser use rose over tenfold.

W.W. Rostow's Five Stages of Growth (Twentieth-Century Journey) 1. Traditional society 2. Preconditions for take-off 3. Take-off 4. Drive to maturity 5. Age of high mass-consumption

Though claiming to be value-free, conventional economic theory cannot escape the fact that value is embedded at its heart: it is wrapped up with the idea of utility, which is defined as a person's satisfaction or happiness gained from consuming a particular bundle of goods.

he derived the law of diminishing returns: the more of a thing that you consume (be it bananas or shampoo), the less you will desire still more of it.

economy, the priority of the Depression era.55 Imagine, then, if a demurrage-bearing currency could be designed so that, instead of boosting consumption today, it boosted regenerative investments in tomorrow. It would transform the landscape of financial expectations: in essence, the search for gain would be replaced by the search to maintain value.

There is a 'well-documented lifestyle effect', he notes, in which 'people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviourism is very real.

Jevons drew up 'calculating man', whose fixation on maximising his utility had him constantly weighing up the consumption satisfaction that he might derive from every possible combination of his options.7 With this move, Jevons placed utility at the heart of economic theory —a spot it occupies to this day—and from it he derived the law of diminishing returns: the more of a thing that you consume (be it bananas or shampoo), the less you will desire still more of it.

Many people submit to excessive appetites without realizing that they do not need to eat so much food.

From The Jilting of Granny Weatherall ] You waste life when you waste good food.

We are concerned about the environment, but we avoid thinking very much about the gallons of clean hot water we use every day and the toxins in our cleansers that we pour down the drain. Living up to our hygienic standards takes huge amounts of energy, but cleanliness is such a sacred cow that to be told "cut down on your washing" would be even more repugnant than being urged to restrict our driving.

human needs are finite, but human greed is not …

Since human needs are finite, but human greed is not, economic growth can usually be maintained through artificial creation of needs by means of advertising. The goods that are produced and sold in this way are often unneeded, and thus are essentially waste. The pollution and depletion of natural resources generated by this enormous waste of unnecessary goods is exacerbated by the waste of energy and materials in inefficient production processes. Indeed, as we discuss in Chapter 17, the

The entire economy of the Western world is built on things that cause cancer.

Have you heard of the Faustian Bargain? It means that the top corporate money-makers push for more people, production, consumption and profits to fund their lavish lifestyles today—with no concern for the future. Yet, the future gallops toward humanity at breakneck speed.

Myrhvold, for instance, drank at least a six-pack a day of Diet Pepsi. He was, friends joked, "living proof there's no lethal dose for NutraSweet." Navigating