Quotes About Impact

The whole modern world has been shaped by lopsided outcomes.

Severe problems of overpopulation, environmental impact, and climate change cannot persist indefinitely: sooner or later they are likely to resolve themselves, whether in the manner of Rwanda or in some other manner not of our devising, if we don't succeed in solving them by our own actions.

Montana would have been better off in the long run if it had never mined copper at all but had just imported it from Chile, leaving the resulting problems to the Chileans! It

But the question for our purposes is whether the broad pattern of world history would have been altered significantly if some genius inventor had not been born at a particular place and time. The answer is clear: there has never been any such person. All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.

small changes at a lower level of organization can lead to emergent changes at a higher level. A typical example is the effect of that one truck driver's braking response, in Hitler's nearly fatal traffic accident of 1930, on the lives of a hundred million people who were killed or wounded in World War II.

Atahuallpa's presence at Cajamarca thus highlights one of the key factors in world history: diseases transmitted to peoples lacking immunity by invading peoples with considerable immunity. Smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus, bubonic plague, and other infectious diseases endemic in Europe played a decisive role in European conquests, by decimating many peoples on other continents.

Fueron muchos más los indígenas americanos que murieron en la cama por gérmenes euroasiáticos que en los campos de batalla por las armas y las espadas europeas.

The greatest single epidemic in human history was the one of influenza that killed 21 million people at the end of the First World War.

La historia de las interacciones de los pueblos distintos es lo que configuró el mundo moderno mediante la conquista, las epidemias y el genocidio.

China's achievement of First World standards will approximately double the entire world's human resource use and environmental impact. But it is doubtful whether even the world's current human resource use and impact can be sustained. Something has to give way.

BECAUSE TECHNOLOGY BEGETS more technology, the importance of an invention's diffusion potentially exceeds the importance of the original invention.

The Americas span a much greater distance north–south (9,000 miles) than east–west: only 3,000 miles at the widest, narrowing to a mere 40 miles at the Isthmus of Panama. That is, the major axis of the Americas is north–south. The same is also true, though to a less extreme degree, for Africa. In contrast, the major axis of Eurasia is east–west. What effect, if any, did those differences in the orientation of the continents' axes have on human history?

In that spirit, a lower-impact society is the most impossible scenario for our future—except for all other conceivable scenarios.

The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its tree species extinct. Immediate consequences for the islanders were losses of raw materials, losses of wild-caught foods, and decreased crop yields.

Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference. So

climate. Perhaps

Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords.

That news was enough to induce 900 Maori to sail to the Chathams. The outcome clearly illustrates how environments can affect economy, technology, political organization, and fighting skills within a short time.

En toda América, las enfermedades introducidas con los europeos se propagaron de una tribu a otra mucho antes que los propios europeos, causando la muerte de aproximadamente el 95 por ciento de la población indígena americana precolombina.

Cumulative mortalities of these previously unexposed peoples from Eurasian germs ranged from 50 percent to 100 percent. For instance, the Indian population of Hispaniola declined from around 8 million, when Columbus arrived in A.D. 1492, to zero by 1535.

the Indian population of Hispaniola declined from around 8 million, when Columbus arrived in A.D. 1492, to zero by 1535.

Something big and bad suddenly happening motivates us more than do slowly developing problems, and also more than the prospect of something big and bad happening in the future. I'm reminded of Samuel Johnson's saying: "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Great-Man" view of the British historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), who asserted that history is dominated by the deeds of great men, such as Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great.

averaged over many cases, leadership does tend to affect economic growth.