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Quote by Lester R. Brown

“A sustainable economy represents nothing less than a higher social order one as concerned with future generations as with our own, and more focused on the health of the planet and the poor than on material acquisitions and military might. While it is a fundamentally new endeavor, with many uncertainties, it is far less risky than continuing with business as usual.”

Quote by Lester R. Brown

Author

Lester R. Brown

Lester R. Brown, born on March 28, 1934, is a renowned environmentalist and sustainable development advocate. He is a prominent environmental policy analyst and has dedicated his career to studying global environmental issues and proposing solutions. more

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“Although population and consumption are societal issues, technology is the business of business. If economic activity must increase tenfold over what it is today to support a population nearly double its current size, then technology will have to reduce its impact twenty-fold merely to keep the planet at its current levels of environmental impact. For example, to stabilize the climate we may have to reduce real carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, while simultaneously growing the world economy by an order of magnitude.”

Source: Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World

“For those who believe that ecological disaster will somehow be averted, it must also be clear that, over the next decade or so, sustainable development will constitute one of the biggest opportunities in the history of commerce. And innovation will be the name of the game.”

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Book:Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World

Source: Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World

“Be Thou praised, my Lord, of our Sister Mother Earth, which sustains and hath us in rule, and produces divers fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.”

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Book:The Little Flowers of St. Francis: The Mirror of Perfection; The Life of St. Francis

Source: The Little Flowers of St. Francis: The Mirror of Perfection; The Life of St. Francis

“Because by definition they lack any sense of mutuality or wholeness, our specializations subsist on conflict with one another. The rule is never to cooperate, but rather to follow one's own interest as far as possible. Checks and balances are all applied externally, by opposition, never by self-restraint. Labor, management, the military, the government, etc., never forbear until their excesses arouse enough opposition to force them to do so.”

“The good of the whole of Creation, the world and all its creatures together, is never a consideration because it is never thought of; our culture now simply lacks the means for thinking of it.”

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Book:The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Source: The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nothing can be gained or lost and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced. Payment of this price cannot be avoided; it can only be delayed. The present environmental crisis is a warning that we have delayed nearly too long.”

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Author:Barry Commoner

“But the basic value of a sustainable society, the ecological equivalent of the Golden Rule, is simple: each generation should meet its needs without jeopardizing the prospects for future generations to meet their own needs.”

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Author:Alan Thein Durning

“But we can do nothing for the human future that we will not do for the human present. For the amelioration of the future condition of our kind we must look, not to the wealth or the genius of the coming generations, but to the quality of the disciplines and attitudes that we are preparing now for their use.”

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Book:A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural

Source: A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural

“Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of "environmental refugees", people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it - and often their possessions as well - in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement? Can we remain impassive in the face of actual and potential conflicts involving access to natural resources? All these are issues with a profound impact on the exercise of human rights, such as the right to life, food, health and development.”

Source: The Garden of God

“Capitalism rules worldwide, and a society whose economic fabric depends on constant growth requires that its citizens have ever-expanding needs and wants... In the West, it will take one with soul force equal to Gandhi's to change the prevailing dogma of ever increasing GNP. We may be forced to change our profligate ways some day, when the soil is depleted, the aquifers drained, the icecaps melted, and all the oil wells pumped dry. But the crisis will wait another fifty years or so; we'll leave those problems to a generation yet unborn.”