Quotes About Sustainability

What is sustained in a sustainable community is not economic growth but the entire web of life on which our longterm survival depends.

The illusion of the viability of unlimited growth is maintained by economists who refuse to include the social and environmental costs of economic activities in their theories.

We must teach our children, our students, and our political and corporate leaders the fundamental facts of life—for example, that one species' waste is another species' food; that matter cycles continually through the web of life; that the energy driving the ecological cycles flows from the sun; that diversity assures resilience; that life, from its beginning more than three billion years ago, did not take over the planet by combat but by networking.

Farmers used to plant different crops every year, rotating them so that the balance in the soil was preserved. No pesticides were needed, since insects attracted to one crop would disappear with the next. Instead of using chemical fertilizers, farmers would enrich their fields with manure, thus returning organic matter to the soil to reenter the ecological cycle.

la nueva forma de incuria es conservarlo todo.

How did I make a living? I haven't. I have eked out an existence. - Ella Baker

it may be time to stop worrying about what we are making extinct and start nurturing what will outlast us.

Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.

But we can never do nothing. That which we have done for thousands of years is also action

It is rarely the quick fix that goes the farthest. So don't get tempted by political cycles and the lure of electoral wins.

No one wins in the industrial food system.

It's the whole big picture that we have to look at to create an organization that wins over the long term. And to just shoot from the hip on a decision based on winning over a 10-game period. No, that doesn't make sense.

Every spring, I begin cutting my firewood for the upcoming winter. It should be cut months ahead of time so it will dry and cure.

You have to take it upon yourself and preserve and can foods that you'll want for the winter.

I'm obsessed with not chucking away food. I'm lucky enough to have a gardener, so we grow sweetcorn, tomatoes, beetroots, cabbages, pumpkins, lettuce. I'm trying to get into blanching it and freezing so I don't have to buy veg over the winter, but then you need loads of freezers, and that's not ideal.

The idea is to freeze the water in the winter and use it in late spring. The conical tower shape ensures that the surface exposed to the sun is minimal, so premature melting is avoided.

A big part of the equation for 'Winter's Bone' was making it for so little that we owe nobody. We had a guaranteed loan and were able to pay it back.

I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected.

If we wipe out the fish, the oceans are going to die. If the oceans die, we die. We can't live on this planet with a dead ocean.

I think about what's going down my sink. So I won't pour oil down my sink. I won't - if I'm cleaning a pan, I'll wipe it and bin because I've seen - I've been down sewers.

The basic ability to not wipe oneself out, to endure, to use your technological interaction with the world in such a way that has the possibility of the likelihood of lasting and not being temporary - that seems like a pretty good definition of intelligence.

If you're looking for can-do, earthy-crunchy attitude then you've got to go to Wisconsin.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

The British economy of the future must be built not on the shifting sands of boom and bust, but on the bedrock of prudent and wise economic management for the long term. It is only these firm foundations that we can raise Britain's underlying economic performance.