Quotes About Consumption

The model is constructed in such a way that the global population will eventually level off and start declining, if industrial output per capita rises high enough. But we see little "real world" evidence that the richest people or nations ever lose interest in getting richer. Therefore, policies built into World3 represent the assumption that capital owners will continue to seek gains in their wealth indefinitely and that consumers will always want to increase their consumption.

If an eventual nine billion people all consumed materials at the rate of the average late-twentieth-century American, that would require an increase in worldwide steel production by a factor of five, copper by a factor of eight, and aluminum by a factor of nine.

Growth of what? For whom? At what cost? Paid by whom? What is the real need here, and what is the most direct and efficient way for those who have that need to satisfy it? How much is enough? What are the obligations to share?

The more users there are, the more resource is used. The more resource is used, the less there is per user.

No decision should be made on an empty shopping bag.

Books are worse than wine, I say. You read one and you need another - there's no end to it. What ails you that you cannot content yourself with just living on under the sun?

The more you eat, the more you poop.

Let me tell you something you probably already know. It's that second cord that should remain in the neck of the bottle. You can liberate 1, but two bottles of wine for 2 people is 1 bottle too many. There was a reason the French bottled wine the way they did. 2 and a half glasses was plenty of wine for 2 people to consume with dinner. But that's not how it went with us.

Let me tell you something you probably already know. It's that second cork that should remain in the neck of the bottle. You can liberate 1, but two bottles of wine for 2 people is 1 bottle too many. There was a reason the French bottled wine the way they did. 2 and a half glasses was plenty of wine for 2 people to consume with dinner. But that's not how it went with us.

He loves her like a gambler loves a fast racehorse or a desperate man loves whiskey. That kind of love eats a man up.

Other objects found in shark stomachs include a suit of armor, a barrel of nails, a roll of tar paper, coal, raincoats, shoes, plastic bags, goats, sheep, lizards, snakes, chicken, reindeer, and monkeys.

vacuuming up countless pages of the genre like a blue whale inhaling krill.

Energy is wealth. The two are one and the same. Think about how much money the world spends each year on power.

After Prohibition got under way, alcohol consumption spiked—and continued to rise even as the quality of the spirits plummeted. For a whole generation, across class lines, defying the dry law became an act of self-definition—a necessary rebellion against a sordid, hypocritical ruling class.

Home ownership,and the vast consumption of materials and energy it requires, forces some pretty exploitative foreign policy manoeuvres. This makes people in those resource-rich places as mad as natives were at the practices of the colonial empires exploiting them two hundred years ago.

The only real answer, the really simple one that neither philanthrocapitalists nor green technologists want to hear, is that we have to reduce our energy consumption altogether.

Such exponential growth does not occur in the natural world, except maybe for cancer—and that growth ceases once the host has been consumed.

many of us use what spare time and money we have earned undoing the impact of our jobs or companies. And that gets harder every day.

As "voyeurs of billionaires" (Goolsbee, 2007) material excess has become our metronome of modern living.

Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible - or even sinful - that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes

If Ayurveda were a religion Nature would be its Goddess, and overindulgence would be the sole sin She would punish. Ayurveda is meant to allow you to enjoy the pleasures of life up to the point that such enjoyment interferes with your health. Full-time gratification is in fact bondage, because the more we consume the more we become captives of our consumption.

Imma sip until I feel it, Imma smoke until its done

Im on a shoppin spree to get whatever is in store.

infinite growth on a finite planet