Quotes About Sustainability

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.

as the nuclear physicist Al Bartlett warned, 'The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function

With sufficient international support, these countries can seize the opportunity to leapfrog the wasteful and polluting technologies of the past. And if they channel GDP growth into creating economies that are distributive and regenerative by design, they will start bringing all of their inhabitants above the Doughnut's social foundation without overshooting its ecological ceiling.

what determines whether or not we can actually move into its safe and just space? Five factors certainly play key roles: population, distribution, aspiration, technology and governance.

It's important to note, however, that the decoupling required would not be a one-off phase: if GDP were to keep on growing, then the rate of decoupling would have to more than keep pace with it, year on year on year.

Rethinking economics is not about finding the correct one (because it doesn't exist); it's about choosing or creating one that best serves our purpose—reflecting the context we face, the values we hold, and the aims we have.

Analysts such as Jeremy Rifkin believe that today's emerging horizontal networks of renewable energy generation and 3D printing are set to amplify this trend. If they do, it could result in a great deal of economic value that was once sold at a profit in the marketplace being shared for low or no cost in the collaborative commons.

We remake it by: moving our savings to ethical banks; using peer-to-peer complementary currencies; enshrining living purpose in the enterprises that we set up; exercising our rights to parental leave from work; contributing to the knowledge commons; and campaigning with political movements that share our economic vision.

First, change the goal. For over 70 years, economics has been fixated on GDP, or national output, as its primary measure of progress. That fixation has been used to justify extreme inequalities of income and wealth coupled with unprecedented destruction of the living world. For the twenty-first century, a far bigger goal is needed: meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet.

For the twenty-first century, a far bigger goal is needed: meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet.

Around 40 percent of the world's agricultural land is now seriously degraded, and by 2025 two out of three people worldwide will live in water-stressed regions.

And here's the rub. Humanity's journey through the twenty-first century will be led by the policymakers, entrepreneurs, teachers, journalists, community organisers, activists and voters who are being educated today. But these citizens of 2050 are being taught an economic mindset that is rooted in the textbooks of 1950, which in turn are rooted in the theories of 1850. Given the fast-changing nature of the twenty-first century, this is shaping up to be a disaster.

What if we started economics not with its long-established theories but with humanity's long-term goals, and then sought out the economic thinking that would enable us to achieve them?

population matters, distribution matters just as much because extremes of inequality push humanity beyond both sides of the Doughnut's boundaries.

the idea of ever-growing output fits snugly with the widely used metaphor of progress being a movement forwards and upwards.

Don't wait for economic growth to reduce inequality—because it won't. Instead, create an economy that is distributive by design.

improving designs online for free. His idea soon grew into the Global Village Construction Set, which aims to demonstrate step-by-step how to build from scratch 50 universally useful machines, from tractors, brick makers and 3D printers to sawmills, bread ovens and wind turbines.

Such an economy must help to bring everyone above the Doughnut's social foundation. To do so, however, it must alter the distribution not only of income but also of wealth, time and power.

meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet.

We have an economy that needs to grow, whether or not it makes us thrive. We need an economy that makes us thrive, whether or not it grows.

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.

By largely ignoring the core economy, mainstream economics has also overlooked just how much the paid economy depends upon it. Without all that cooking, washing, nursing and sweeping, there would be no workers—today or in the future—who were healthy, well-fed and ready for work each morning.

If there is one task that merits the attention of the twenty-first-century economist, it is this: to come up with economic designs that would enable nations coming towards the end of their GDP growth to learn to thrive without it.

Rather than presiding at the pinnacle of nature's pyramid, however, humanity is woven deep into nature's web. We are embedded in the living world, not separate from or above it: we live within the biosphere, not on the planet.