Sustainable Environment Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Sustainable Environment. Here they are! All 200 of them:

People 'over-produce' pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it.
Ha-Joon Chang (23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism)
We are such spendthrifts with our lives, the trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.
Paul Newman
Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.
George Monbiot
Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible--it's to dismantle those systems.
Lierre Keith (The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability)
To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them. At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?
Derrick Jensen (Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization)
If the demographic of your target market is extremely environmentally conscious, then they are going to feel dissatisfied if your packaging is not biodegradable.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
The understanding of the environment - political, economic, social, technological, and legal is very crucial for the success of a business.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
We don't understand the power of nature and the world because we don't live with it. Our environment is designed to sustain us. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo called civilization.
Laurence Gonzales (Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why)
There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
Robert Lynd (The Blue Lion; And Other Essays)
You maybe able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.
Donella H. Meadows
Were we to confront our creaturehood squarely, how would we propose to educate? The answer, I think is implied in the root of the word education, educe, which means "to draw out." What needs to be drawn out is our affinity for life. That affinity needs opportunities to grow and flourish, it needs to be validated, it needs to be instructed and disciplined, and it needs to be harnessed to the goal of building humane and sustainable societies. Education that builds on our affinity for life would lead to a kind of awakening of possibilities and potentials that lie dormant and unused in the industrial-utilitarian mind. Therefore the task of education, as Dave Forman stated, is to help us 'open our souls to love this glorious, luxuriant, animated, planet.' The good news is that our own nature will help us in the process if we let it.
David Orr
The phenomenon of emergence takes place at critical points of instability that arise from fluctuations in the environment, amplified by feedback loops.
Fritjof Capra (The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living)
The greatest lesson came with the realization that good food cannot be reduced to single ingredients. It requires a web of relationships to support it.
Dan Barber (The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food)
Our entire system, in an economic sense, is based on restriction. Scarcity and inefficiency are the movers of money; the more there is of any resource the less you can charge for it. The more problems there are, the more opportunities there are to make money. This reality is a social disease, for people can actually gain off the misery of others and the destruction of the environment. Efficiency, abundance and sustainability are enemies of our economic structure, for they are inverse to the mechanics required to perpetuate consumption. This is profoundly critical to understand, for once you put this together you begin to see that the one billion people currently starving on this planet, the endless slums of the poor and all the horrors of a culture due to poverty and pravity are not natural phenomenon due to some natural human order or lack of earthly resources. They are products of the creation, perpetuation and preservation of artificial scarcity and inefficiency.
Peter Joseph
Nature is inexhaustibly sustainable if we care for it. It is our universal responsibility to pass a healthy earth onto future generations.
Sylvia Dolson (Joy of Bears)
It’s cool when fashion recycles itself, it’s not cool when sustainable living does because it means there was (and is as I write) a period of absolute and possibly irreversible destruction.
Cameron Conaway (Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet)
The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behavior it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern.
Herman E. Daly (For the Common Good: Redirecting the economy toward community, the environment, and a sustainable future.)
In an environment of turbulent change, as de Geus famously wrote: “The ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage.
Steven Kotler (The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance)
You are not stuck in traffic. You ARE traffic.
TomTom SATNAV Advertisement
Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. This we know: the earth does not belong to man - man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood that unites one's family. All things are connected.
Chief Seattle
We depend on this planet to eat, drink, breathe, and live. Figuring out how to keep our life support system running needs to be our number-one priority. Nothing is more important than finding a way to live together - justly, respectfully, sustainably, joyfully - on the only planet we can call home.
Annie Leonard (The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and our Health—and a Vision for Change)
If nonsatiety were the natural state of human nature then aggressive want-stimulating advertising would not be necessary, nor would the barrage of novelty aimed at promoting dissatisfaction with last year's model. The system attempts to remake people to fit its own presuppositions. If people's wants are not naturally insatiable we must make them so, in order to keep the system going.
Herman E. Daly (For the Common Good: Redirecting the economy toward community, the environment, and a sustainable future.)
Even if we could grow our way out of the crisis and delay the inevitable and painful reconciliation of virtual and real wealth, there is the question of whether this would be a wise thing to do. Marginal costs of additional growth in rich countries, such as global warming, biodiversity loss and roadways choked with cars, now likely exceed marginal benefits of a little extra consumption. The end result is that promoting further economic growth makes us poorer, not richer.
Herman E. Daly (For the Common Good: Redirecting the economy toward community, the environment, and a sustainable future.)
Don’t let us take doubts with exaggerated seriousness nor let them grow out of proportion, or become black-and-white or fanatical about them. What we need to learn is how slowly to change our culturally conditioned and passionate involvement with doubt into a free, humorous, and compassionate one. This means giving doubts time, and giving ourselves time to find answers to our questions that are not merely intellectual or “philosophical,” but living and real and genuine and workable. Doubts cannot resolve themselves immediately; but if we are patient a space can be created within us, in which doubts can be carefully and objectively examined, unraveled, dissolved, and healed. What we lack, especially in this culture, is the right undistracted and richly spacious environment of the mind, which can only be created through sustained meditation practice, and in which insights can be given the change slowly to mature and ripen. 129-130
Sogyal Rinpoche (The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)
A photograph of a disposable diaper floating in the arctic miles away from human habitat fueled my daily determination to save at least one disposable diaper from being used and created. One cloth diaper after another, days accumulated into years and now our next child is using the cloth diapers we bought for our firstborn.
Gloria Ng (Cloth Diapering Made Easy)
The idea of unlimited growth... needs to be seriously questioned on at least two counts: the availability of basic resources and... the capacity of the environment to cope with the degree of interference implied. - E.F. Schumacher
Wayne Ellwood (The No-Nonsense Guide to Degrowth and Sustainability)
I lead a life much below my level. Beyond the books, which trickle in slowly (I have to read what I can get, not what I have a mind to read), I have nothing to sustain my inner life; and everything around me exudes an indescribable prosiness, which presses down on me too with its brutal weight. Nothing on the order of a stroll with a dear person, not one hour of quiet and serene contemplation--all is tainted by mundane worry and staleness. I take it that productive creators fence themselves off from their environment by a certain regimen of living, a certain organization of their daily routine that does not allow the workaday banality, humdrum job, and the rest of it to get to them. I badly feel the lack of such a regimen, my incapacity to subject myself to such a discipline. One must, for instance, fence off one's inner life, not permit the vermin of ordinary cares to infest it. Some blindness used to protect me from this truth; I wore blinkers like a horse in harness. Now reality has won and penetrated my interior.
Bruno Schulz
In the end, despite the large volume of bad news, we can conclude with an affirmation. We can say with Wallace Stevens that 'after the final no there comes a yes.' Yes, we can save what is left. Yes, we can repair and make amends. We can reclaim nature and restore ourselves. There is a bridge at the end of the world.
James Gustave Speth (The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability)
if you cannot find your way back to your original trod, purchase a way out by using the gift mentioned earlier in this guide. If you enter into this type of bargain, make sure to phrase things appropriately. "i'm lost and can't get home" is sure to lead to trouble. Try something different like" I'll pay two jars of honey to a fey who will take me to the mortal realm, alive and whole, with my mind and soul intact, neither physically or mentally harmed, to be placed on solid ground at an altitude and in an environment that can readily sustain human life, no farther than a mile from a human settlement, at a time not more than thirty minutes from now." even then , be careful
Julie Kagawa (The Iron Legends (The Iron Fey, #1.5, 3.5, 4.5))
If we are to be women in power, then it must be power on very different terms. we have to find a new source of energy. New structures of power. Ones that don’t deplete us or our environment. We need to run our lives on sustainable energy.
Lucy H. Pearce (Burning Woman)
Knowledge generates interest, and interest generates compassion.
Douglas W. Tallamy (Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens)
The only truly dependable production technologies are those that are sustainable over the long term. By that very definition, they must avoid erosion, pollution, environmental degradation, and resource waste. Any rational food-production system will emphasize the well-being of the soil-air-water biosphere, the creatures which inhabit it, and the human beings who depend upon it.
Eliot Coleman (The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener)
There is no solution available, I assure you, to save Earth's biodiversity other than the preservation of natural environments in reserves large enough to maintain wild populations sustainably. Only Nature can serve as the planetary ark.
Edward O. Wilson (The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth)
This heated (environmental) debate is fundamentally about numbers. How much energy could each source deliver, at what economic and social cost, and with what risks? But actual numbers are rarely mentioned. In public debates, people just say “Nuclear is a money pit” or “We have a huge amount of wave and wind.” The trouble with this sort of language is that it’s not sufficient to know that something is huge: we need to know how the one “huge” compares with another “huge,” namely our huge energy consumption. To make this comparison, we need numbers, not adjectives.
David Mackay (Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air)
I am not an optimist; I am afraid that I won't live long enough to escape my bondage to the machines.
Wendell Berry (Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer)
When nature litters, it's beautiful. When humans litter, it's just shameful.
Noel Jhinku
Delusions are not harmful in themselves, they only hurt when one is alone in believing in them, when one cannot create an environment in which they can be sustained.
Alain de Botton (Essays in Love)
Creativity is the only energy that should never be saved.
Antonio Disi (10 Kilowatt)
We are no longer indigenous to our environments. We are overfeeding but malnourished, overprotected but weak, and somehow, we are both highly sanitised yet deeply infected.
Freequill (What's Going On? How Can We Help?: The Consequences of Capitalism and Actionable Steps Towards a Healthy and Sustainable Future)
Your leaf litter can be home to a rich assortment of native plants while it is fertilizing, mulching, and watering your land.
Douglas W. Tallamy (Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens)
The full costs of consumption beyond market prices are hard to determine and hard to see, and they are typically underestimated. The benefits of consumption, by contrast, are immediate and tangible, and they are typically overestimated, thanks in part to an enormous and enormously sophisticated marketing apparatus. This asymmetry contributes to our overconsumption.
James Gustave Speth (The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability)
Doesn't the Federal Farm bill help out all these poor farmers? No. It used to, but ever since its inception just after the Depression, the Federal Farm Bill has slowly been altered by agribusiness lobbyists. It is now largely corporate welfare ... It is this, rather than any improved efficiency or productiveness, that has allowed corporations to take over farming in the United States, leaving fewer than a third of our farms still run by families. But those family-owned farms are the ones more likely to use sustainable techniques, protect the surrounding environment, maintain green spaces, use crop rotations and management for pest and weed controls, and apply fewer chemicals. In other words, they're doing exactly what 80 percent of U.S. consumers say we would prefer to support, while our tax dollars do the opposite.
Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)
In paying attention to our wellbeing, we address the needs of our environment - the society that we live in and our planet. Sustainability depends on community - when we learn to be happily reliant on each other, we're less likely to turn to material consumption to meet our emotional needs.
Louisa Thomsen Brits (The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Living Well)
Businesses are better positioned in cities that prioritize sustainability. For example, business leaders look at the architectural environment - whether or not the buildings in the city designed for efficiency and resiliency. Business leaders look at energy - whether or not solar and other renewable energy sources are designed into the city's systems. And business leaders look at a variety of other factors regarding sustainability when they're deciding where to establish or relocate a business. So cities that prioritize sustainable development are positioning themselves to be hubs of business success.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr (Principles of a Permaculture Economy)
If you can't reuse or repair an item, do you ever really own it? Do you ever really own it? Do you ever develop the sense of pride and proprietorship that comes from maintaining an object in fine working order? We invest something of ourselves in our material world, which in turn reflects who we are. In the era of disposability that plastic has helped us foster, we have increasingly invested ourselves in objects that have no real meaning in our lives. We think of disposable lighters as conveniences -- which they indisputably are; ask any smoker or backyard-barbecue chef -- and yet we don't think much about the tradeoffs that that convenience entails.
Susan Freinkel (Plastic: A Toxic Love Story)
Recycling is better--I won't write "good"--for the environment. But without economics--without supply and demand of raw materials--recycling is nothing more than a meaningless exercise in glorifying garbage. No doubt it's better than throwing something into an incinerator, and worse than fixing something that can be refurbished. It's what you do if you can't bear to see something landfilled. Placing a box or a can or a bottle in a recycling bin doesn't mean you've recycled anything, and it doesn't make you a better, greener person: it just means you've outsourced your problem. Sometimes that outsourcing is near home; and sometimes it's overseas. But wherever it goes, the global market and demand for raw materials is the ultimate arbiter. Fortunately, if that realization leaves you feeling bad, there's always the alternative: stop buying so much crap in the first place. (269)
Adam Minter (Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade)
A useful analogy for what [Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick] calls 'reparative reading' is to be fundamentally more invested in finding nourishment than identifying poison. This doesn't mean being naïve or undeceived, unaware of crisis or undamaged by oppression. What it does mean is being driven to find or invent something new and sustaining out of inimical environments.
Olivia Laing (Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency)
You’ve got to pull yourself out of the materialistic environments—the environments that are reinforcing the materialistic values,” he says, because they cripple your internal satisfactions. And then, he says, to make that sustainable, you have to “replace them with actions that are going to provide those intrinsic satisfactions, [and] encourage those intrinsic goals.
Johann Hari (Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions)
The problem isn’t just the type of energy we’re using; it’s what we are doing with it. Even if we had a 100%-clean-energy system, what would we do with it? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, trawl more fish, mine more mountains, build more roads, expand industrial farming, and send more waste to landfill – all of which have ecological consequences our planet can no longer sustain. We will do these things because our economic system demands that we grow production and consumption at an exponential rate.
Jason Hickel (Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World)
The plain fact is that this country and other industrial countries are deeply dependent on animal exploitation to sustain their present economic structures. The plain fact is that we are more dependent on animal exploitation than were the states of the southern United States on human slavery…. So, although there are more people concerned about animals and the environment, little progress has been made because those who profit from animal exploitation and the government that exists to serve their interests have a lot to lose and are not budging—not an inch.
Gary L. Francione
Cognitive mapping and processing are aimed at self-preservation through the reduction of helplessness, terror, and pervasive anxiety. They are introduced and sustained by our first two model components, ineffective social environment and unresolved traumatic formative events, and become established in the patterned responses.
Robert K. Ressler (Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives)
Here is part of the problem, girls: we’ve been sold a bill of goods. Back in the day, women didn’t run themselves ragged trying to achieve some impressively developed life in eight different categories. No one constructed fairy-tale childhoods for their spawn, developed an innate set of personal talents, fostered a stimulating and world-changing career, created stunning homes and yardscapes, provided homemade food for every meal (locally sourced, of course), kept all marriage fires burning, sustained meaningful relationships in various environments, carved out plenty of time for “self care,” served neighbors/church/world, and maintained a fulfilling, active relationship with Jesus our Lord and Savior. You can’t balance that job description. Listen to me: No one can pull this off. No one is pulling this off. The women who seem to ride this unicorn only display the best parts of their stories. Trust me. No one can fragment her time and attention into this many segments.
Jen Hatmaker (For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards)
There needs to be an intersection of the set of people who wish to go, and the set of people who can afford to go...and that intersection of sets has to be enough to establish a self-sustaining civilisation. My rough guess is that for a half-million dollars, there are enough people that could afford to go and would want to go. But it’s not going to be a vacation jaunt. It’s going to be saving up all your money and selling all your stuff, like when people moved to the early American colonies...even at a million people you’re assuming an incredible amount of productivity per person, because you would need to recreate the entire industrial base on Mars. You would need to mine and refine all of these different materials, in a much more difficult environment than Earth. There would be no trees growing. There would be no oxygen or nitrogen that are just there. No oil.Excluding organic growth, if you could take 100 people at a time, you would need 10,000 trips to get to a million people. But you would also need a lot of cargo to support those people. In fact, your cargo to person ratio is going to be quite high. It would probably be 10 cargo trips for every human trip, so more like 100,000 trips. And we’re talking 100,000 trips of a giant spaceship...If we can establish a Mars colony, we can almost certainly colonise the whole Solar System, because we’ll have created a strong economic forcing function for the improvement of space travel. We’ll go to the moons of Jupiter, at least some of the outer ones for sure, and probably Titan on Saturn, and the asteroids. Once we have that forcing function, and an Earth-to-Mars economy, we’ll cover the whole Solar System. But the key is that we have to make the Mars thing work. If we’re going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation. That’s the next step.
Elon Musk
Teaching to care for the Environment is teaching to value Life.
Mohith Agadi
Animal agriculture causes more environmental damage than any other industry, but it makes no sense to hate bovines with hamburger in hand.
Lisa Kemmerer (Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice)
Thanks to animal agriculture, our water contains an abundance of manure, pesticides, antibiotics, nitrates, and arsenic.
Lisa Kemmerer (Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice)
When we look at nature, we see ourselves.
Elliot Connor (Human Nature: How to be a Better Animal)
Seed sovereignty should not be sacrificed at the altar of food security
Royal Raj S
The aquatic environment must be safeguarded by men. God created mankind to care for the environment and all the living resources.
Lailah Gifty Akita (The Alphabets of Success: Passion Driven Life)
The hormonal and metabolic environment of the body within which calories enter determines how your body deals with those calories.
Scott Abel (Understanding Metabolism: The Truth About Counting Calories, Sustainable Weight Loss, and Metabolic Damage)
We have a duty to care for the environment.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
In our present toxic food environment, many have lost the ability to connect with the body signals
Joel Fuhrman (Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss)
I live in one of the best places, bar none, to appreciate the wild natural environment. I also live in one of the most politically difficult places to work on its behalf: Alaska.
Kate Troll (The Great Unconformity: Reflections on Hope in an Imperiled World)
A fish only discovers its need for water when it is no longer in it. Our own culture is like water to a fish. It sustains us.
Fons Trompenaars
Reusing and repurposing is one of the most effective ways to contribute to environmental sustainability.
Mohith Agadi
There is no life without the conditions of life that variably sustain life, and those conditions are pervasively social, establishing not the discrete ontology of the person, but rather the interdependency of persons, involving reproducible and sustaining social relations, and relations to the environment and to non-human forms of life, broadly considered. This mode of social ontology (for which no absolute distinction between social and ecological exists) has concrete implications for how we re-approach the issues of reproductive freedom and anti-war politics. The question is not whether a given being is living or not, nor whether the being in question has the status of a “person”; it is, rather, whether the social conditions of persistence and flourishing are or are not possible. Only with this latter question can we avoid the anthropocentric and liberal individualist presumptions that have derailed such discussions.
Judith Butler (Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?)
Your environment plays a key factor in living a fulfilled life. In order to bear fruit, gain fulfillment, and meet fruition, you must intentionally create an environment that will sustain you.
Farshad Asl
Focus can become an obsession... But your ability to sustain the drive to focus will depend upon how enjoyable and productive it is. So create an environment that makes you want to remain focused.
Mani S. Sivasubramanian (How To Focus - Stop Procrastinating, Improve Your Concentration & Get Things Done - Easily!)
On what reasonable grounds would sincere, informed environmentalists refuse to join animal advocates in a campaign to protect increasingly threatened fish populations from the snapping teeth of humanity?
Lisa Kemmerer (Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice)
Darwin, with his Origin of Species, his theories about Natural Selection, the Survival of the Fittest, and the influence of environment, shed a flood of light upon the great problems of plant and animal life. These things had been guessed, prophesied, asserted, hinted by many others, but Darwin, with infinite patience, with perfect care and candor, found the facts, fulfilled the prophecies, and demonstrated the truth of the guesses, hints and assertions. He was, in my judgment, the keenest observer, the best judge of the meaning and value of a fact, the greatest Naturalist the world has produced. The theological view began to look small and mean. Spencer gave his theory of evolution and sustained it by countless facts. He stood at a great height, and with the eyes of a philosopher, a profound thinker, surveyed the world. He has influenced the thought of the wisest. Theology looked more absurd than ever. Huxley entered the lists for Darwin. No man ever had a sharper sword -- a better shield. He challenged the world. The great theologians and the small scientists -- those who had more courage than sense, accepted the challenge. Their poor bodies were carried away by their friends. Huxley had intelligence, industry, genius, and the courage to express his thought. He was absolutely loyal to what he thought was truth. Without prejudice and without fear, he followed the footsteps of life from the lowest to the highest forms. Theology looked smaller still. Haeckel began at the simplest cell, went from change to change -- from form to form -- followed the line of development, the path of life, until he reached the human race. It was all natural. There had been no interference from without. I read the works of these great men -- of many others – and became convinced that they were right, and that all the theologians -- all the believers in "special creation" were absolutely wrong. The Garden of Eden faded away, Adam and Eve fell back to dust, the snake crawled into the grass, and Jehovah became a miserable myth.
Robert G. Ingersoll
People were expensive; the way to display, or to enjoy, great wealth was to build an environment that could only have been wrought, and could only be sustained from one hour to the next, by unceasing human effort.
Neal Stephenson (Termination Shock)
It is an exciting time to be reshaping the dialogue about the environment that brings all political viewpoints to the same table, with common goals for a sustainable future, and catalyzes solutions through innovation.
Daniel C. Esty (A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future)
Even in the best of times, life aboard a seventeenth-century privateering ship was a challenging and claustrophobic experience. The fact that a community of a hundred or more people could survive on the open seas for months at a time, in a vessel with dimensions not much larger than a tennis court, should go down as one of the great achievements in our long history of creating life-sustaining habitats in fundamentally inhospitable environments.
Steven Johnson (Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt)
Et là-bas, au fin fond de "l'enfer vert", un chasseur indien, plus clairvoyant que tant de spécialistes, donnait en une phrase la clé de tout le problème : nous sommes tous, individuellement et collectivement, responsables de notre terre.
Christian Kempf (Les forêts meurent aussi : Pluies acides et dépérissement forestier)
ESG is already built into our Principles of Permaculture Capital Stewardship. By modeling nature, we operate in a way that respects the environment, promotes thriving beyond sustainability, and applies high ethical standards to governance.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth
Nothing is more important to human beings than an ecologically functioning, life sustaining biosphere on the earth. It is the only habitable place we know of in a forbidding universe. We all depend on it to live and we are compelled to share it; it is our only home... the earth's biosphere seems almost magically suited to human beings and indeed it is, for we evolved through eons of intimate immersion within it. We cannot live long or well without a functioning biosphere, and so it is worth everything we have.
Joseph Guth
De retour au village, nous demandons aux Indiens : "Pourquoi n'avez-vous tué qu'un seul caïman ?" Le guide n'a pas l'air de comprendre. Nous reposons la question. Et le petit chasseur de répondre : "Il faut laisser des animaux pour nos fils et les fils de nos fils.
Christian Kempf
The only sustainable approach to thinking today about problems, he argues, “is thinking without a box.” Of course, that doesn’t mean having no opinion. Rather, it means having no limits on your curiosity or the different disciplines you might draw on to appreciate how the Machine works. Wells calls this approach—which I will employ in this book—being “radically inclusive.” It involves bringing into your analysis as many relevant people, processes, disciplines, organizations, and technologies as possible—factors that are often kept separate or excluded altogether. For instance, the only way you will understand the changing nature of geopolitics today is if you meld what is happening in computing with what is happening in telecommunications with what is happening in the environment with what is happening in globalization with what is happening in demographics. There is no other way today to develop a fully rounded picture.
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world. Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination. Surely, this process is not relationship, but mere imposition, and it is therefore essential to understand the difficult and complex desire to dominate. It takes many subtle forms; and in its self-righteous aspect, it is very obstinate. The desire to "serve" with the unconscious longing to dominate is difficult to understand. Can there be love where there is possessiveness? Can we be in communion with those whom we seek to control? To dominate is to use another for self-gratification, and where there is the use of another there is no love. When there is love there is consideration, not only for the children but for every human being. Unless we are deeply touched by the problem, we will never find the right way of education. Mere technical training inevitably makes for ruthlessness, and to educate our children we must be sensitive to the whole movement of life. What we think, what we do, what we say matters infinitely, because it creates the environment, and the environment either helps or hinders the child. Obviously, then, those of us who are deeply interested in this problem will have to begin to understand ourselves and thereby help to transform society; we will make it our direct responsability to bring about a new approach to education. If we love our children, will we not find a way of putting an end to war? But if we are merely using the word "love" without substance, then the whole complex problem of human misery will remain. The way out of this problem lies through ourselves. We must begin to understand our relationship with our fellow men, with nature, with ideas and with things, for without that understanding there is no hope, there is no way out of conflict and suffering. The bringing up of a child requires intelligent observation and care. Experts and their knowledge can never replace the parents' love, but most parents corrupt that love by their own fears and ambitions, which condition and distort the outlook of the child. So few of us are concerned with love, but we are vastly taken up with the appearance of love. The present educational and social structure does not help the individual towards freedom and integration; and if the parents are at all in earnest and desire that the child shall grow to his fullest integral capacity, they must begin to alter the influence of the home and set about creating schools with the right kind of educators. The influence of the home and that of the school must not be in any way contradictory, so both parents and teachers must re-educate themselves. The contradiction which so often exists between the private life of the individual and his life as a member of the group creates an endless battle within himself and in his relationships. This conflict is encouraged and sustained through the wrong kind of education, and both governments and organized religions add to the confusion by their contradictory doctrines. The child is divided within himself from the very start, which results in personal and social disasters.
J. Krishnamurti (Education and the Significance of Life)
We have allowed alien plants to replace natives all over the country. Our native animals and plants cannot adapt to this gross and completely unnatural manipulation of their environment in time to negate the consequences. Their only hope for a sustainable future is for us to intervene to right the wrongs that we have perpetrated.
Douglas W. Tallamy (Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens)
The basic common denominator of all life is the urge to survive, and the survival of life on Planet Earth is achieved only as a shared initiative with and through all life-forms. Life is a joint effort; no 'man' separate from 'nature.' Homo sapiens as individuals and as species are as much a part of life's overall thrust for survival as any other species. As living organisms, we are part if the greater whole, and as such, we are embodied with exactly the same fundamental purpose: to survive. And to do so--as individuals, families, groups, and as a species--we have to live in dynamic collaboration with the plant and animal kingdoms in a healthy, life-sustaining environment.
Lawrence Anthony (Babylon's Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo)
Environmental protection has become an arena for bitter partisan battles, leading to inaction on critical agenda items including reframing the nation’s energy strategy and confronting the existential threat of climate change. What is going on? Why has a policy area that once enjoyed broad bipartisan support become a source of deep division?
Daniel C. Esty (A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future)
Ecologically, bourgeois exploitation and manipulation are undermining the very capacity of the earth to sustain advanced forms of life. The crisis is being heightened by massive increases in air and water pollution; by a mounting accumulation of nondegradable wastes, lead residues, pesticide residues and toxic additives in food; by the expansion of cities into vast urban belts; by increasing stresses due to congestion, noise and mass living; and by the wanton scarring of the earth as a result of mining operations, lumbering, and real estate speculation. As a result, the earth has been despoiled in a few decades on a scale that is unprecedented in the entire history of human habitation of the planet.
Murray Bookchin (Post-Scarcity Anarchism)
Well, it's been obvious for centuries that capitalism is going to self-destruct: that's just inherent in the logic of system―because to the extent that a system is capitalist, that means maximizing short-term profit and not being concerned with long-term effects. In fact, the motto of capitalism was, "private vices, public benefits"―somehow it's gonna work out. Well, it doesn't work out, and it's never going to work out: if you're maximizing short-term profits without concern for the long-term effects, you are going to destroy the environment, for one thing. I mean, you can pretend up to a certain point that the world has infinite resources and that it's an infinite wastebasket―but at some point you're going to run into the reality, which is that that isn't true. Well, we're running into that reality now―and it's very profound. Take something like combustion: anything you burn, no matter what it is, is increasing the greenhouse effect―and this was known to scientists decades ago, they knew exactly what was happening. But in a capitalist system, you don't care about long-term effects like that, what you have to care about is tomorrow's profits. So the greenhouse effect has been building for years, and there's no known technological fix on the horizon―there may not be any answer to this, it could be so serious that there's no remedy. That's possible, and then human beings will turn out to have been a lethal mutation, which maybe destroys a lot of life with us. Or it could be that there's some way of fixing it, or some ameliorating way―nobody knows.
Noam Chomsky (Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky)
Millions of people across the world live in a state of acute environmental crises caused by the lack of access to safe and usable water resources, because of natural disasters, socio-economic conditions, wars and conflicts. At Green the Gene, we are developing extremely simple yet highly technology and data intensive solutions tailored to address extremely specific problems faced by communities.
Madhav Datt
Framework For Trust This book offers a framework for: Developing and sustaining others’ trust in you by consistently and intentionally speaking and acting in ways that other people consider to be trustworthy, even in today’s fast paced, demanding and constantly changing work environments; Talking constructively with people about distrust when you need to; and Restoring trust with others when it has been broken.
Charles Feltman (The Thin Book of Trust; An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work)
Armed with the new right to sell their products back to host societies, they can bleed both producing and buying populations at the same time. That is why under new international "free trade" agreements private corporations and businesses have increasingly demanded that governments deregulate and lower taxes so that they are not obliged to pay the cost of sustaining the life of host-societies or their environments.
John McMurtry (The Cancer Stage of Capitalism)
Jake, think of the population of this planet for one moment; we live for money, we fight for land then divide the land up and establish different currencies represented by different flags. The governments chosen to lead us are rife with corruption and at any given time one will be at war with another. And despite knowing that we are damaging the very environment that sustains us, we continue to pollute our skies and oceans.
Vincent Amato (Disclosing the Secret)
I gave a magic wand to Amanda Rinderle of Tuckerman & Co., maker of probably the world's most sustainable dress shirts. If she could use it, I asked, to change one thing in order to help create an economy of better but less, what would that one thing be?...she would make prices tell the whole truth. Right now, prices reflect demand for goods and services and the costs of producing them: materials, energy, manufacturing, shipping. Mostly excluded are the consequences of production and consumption, from pollution to soil erosion to carbon emissions to habitat loss and onward to the human health effects of all these, the incredible destruction wrought by wildfires, floods and storms in the age of climate chaos, the burden of two billion tonnes of garbage each year, and the incalculable moral injury of driving million-year-old species into extinction.
J.B. MacKinnon (The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves)
It is only our limited time frame that creates the whole "natives versus exotics" controversy. Wind animals, sea currents, and continental drift have always dispersed species into new environments... The planet has been awash in surging , swarming species movement since life began. The fact that it is not one great homogeneous tangled weed lot is persuasive testimony to the fact that intact ecosystems are very difficult to invade.
Toby Hemenway
Internalizers may have an exceptionally alert nervous system from birth. Some research has found that differences in babies’ levels of attunement to the environment can be seen at a very early age (Porges 2011). Even as five-month-old infants, some babies show more perceptiveness and sustained interest than others (Conradt, Measelle, and Ablow 2013). Further, these characteristics were found to be correlated with the kinds of behaviors children engaged in as they matured.
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
You may feel like your future is slipping from your grasp, that if you don’t rush now to greet your dreams you might lose out on them, but please wait. If you are coming from an unsupportive environment with regards to your sexual orientation, the best thing to do is to establish your independence. Make sure you have a support network of loving and loyal friends. Make sure you have somewhere to live. Make sure you have an income to sustain you. Place a premium on your life. Always, always place a premium on your life. When all these elements have been configured and your psychic compass is at the ready, go forth in the knowledge that you’ve created a self-preserving future for yourself. Go forth in the knowledge that you have a safe space to call home. Go forth in the knowledge that not only are you kicking ass but you are kicking ass on a major scale. Go forth in the knowledge that not only are you winning at life but you have already won.
Diriye Osman
We can make these changes if we are willing to unite and stand together. The road to a sustainable future is clear, and the technologies are ready and cost-efficient. The only thing holding us back is the lack of political will. And with the crisis at hand, this is no excuse for failing to fight for the future we want for generations to come. We must move forward fearlessly to build a mass movement with the political power necessary to create a truly sustainable energy future. We must do this - it's a matter of life and death.
Wenonah Hauter (Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment)
While we are all forced to participate in the games of office politics; it is very defeatist position for a Black woman. Many would argue that White men in America write the rules, mange the courses, and call all the plays. They are trusted to lead organizations and are in key positions to make positive change. I believe that at this moment in time, the onus shouldn't be places on the underdogs to pull themselves up. The onus is on White men in power to create work environments that are both inclusive and sustainable for marginalized people.
Talisa Lavarry (Confessions From Your Token Black Colleague: True Stories & Candid Conversations About Equity & Inclusion In The Workplace)
A sustainable firm provides employees and customers with an inspiring vision to make the world a better place; efficiently delivers value to its customers, consistent with the firm’s vision, thereby earning economic returns, over the long term, that at least equal the cost of capital; builds long-term, win–win relationships with all its stakeholders; and applies creative systems thinking to the design, manufacturing, delivery, and recycling of its products, including their supply chains, so as to reduce waste and harm to the environment. The
Bartley J Madden (Value Creation Thinking)
Observing Nature teaches us that all living organisms are built on the basis of caring for others. cells in an organism connect to each other by mutual giving for the purpose of sustaining the whole organism. Each cell in the body receives what it needs for its existence and spends the rest of its efforts caring for the entirety of the organism. An inconsiderate cell that does not take its environment into consideration and harnesses it for its own good is a cancerous cell. Such a selfish act eventually leads to the death of the entire organism.
Michael Laitman (Unlocking the Zohar)
many Christians wonder if it is good for children to have them in the regular service. After all, they cannot understand what is going on. But imagine saying that you’re not going to have toddlers sit at the table for meals with the family because they do not understand the rituals or manners. Or keeping infants isolated in a nursery with nothing but mobiles and squeaky toys because they cannot understand the dialogue of the rest of the family around them. We know, instinctively, that it’s important for our children to acquire language and the ordinary rituals of their family environment in order to become mature.
Michael S. Horton (Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World)
What I longed for most at the end of my imagined participant-observation of a post-Vatican II liturgy was sustained silence, genuine stillness, and the curvature of liturgical indirection–either this or an unthrottled exuberance, unbridled improvisation, and kinesthetic exertion. Everything I observed in my mind's eye was swift, clean, decorous, and aimed at the middle range of human emotions. The extremities were forgotten. The liturgy was cordial, friendly, open, upbeat, and more or less democratized. But neither God nor the world is cordial, friendly, open, upbeat, or democratized. The “scandal of Christianity” is largely displaced by such a safe, comfortable environment.
Ronald L. Grimes (Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory)
To make good choices, you need to make sense of the complexity of your environment. The strategy logic flow can point you to the key areas of analysis necessary to generate sustainable competitive advantage. First, look to understand the industry in which you play (or will play), its distinct segments and their relative attractiveness. Without this step, it is all too easy to assume that your map of the world is the only possible map, that the world is unchanging, and that no better possibilities exist. Next, turn to customers. What do channel and end consumers truly want, need, and value-and how do those needs fit with your current or potential offerings? To answer this question, you will have to dig deep-engaging in joint value creation with channel partners and seeking a new understanding of end consumers. After customers, the lens turns inward: what are your capabilities and costs relative to the competition? Can you be a differentiator or a cost leader? If not, you will need to rethink your choices. Finally, consider competition; what will your competitors do in the face of your actions? Throughout the thinking process, be open to recasting previous analyses in light of what you learn in a subsequent box. The basic direction of the process is from left to right, but it also has interdependencies that require a more flexible path through it.
A.G. Lafley (Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works)
Seit Jahr und Tag ist notorisch, daß unsere Erde das vorausberechenbare Wachstum der Bevölkerung, die Erschöpfung der natürlichen Ressourcen und die Auszehrung der Umwelt nicht lange erträgt. Wir leben seit geraumer Zeit auf Kosten kommender Generationen. [...] Die Gefahr, daß die Menschheit sich selbst zerstört, ist auch dann nicht gebannt, wenn der Atomkrieg ausbleibt." ("It has been an obvious fact for the longest time that our earth will not be able to sustain for long the foreseeable growth of its population, the exhaustion of its natural resources, and the emaciation of its natural environment. We have been living for quite a while at the expense of our future generations. [...] The absence of a nuclear war does not, by itself, diminish the danger of humanity's self-destruction.")
Willy Brandt (Erinnerungen (Spiegel-Edition, #15))
Nations and their economies grow in large part because they increase their collective knowledge about nature and their environment, and because they are able to direct this knowledge toward productive ends. But such knowledge does not emerge as a matter of course. While most societies that ever existed were able to generate some technological progress, it typically consisted of one-off limited advances that had limited consequences, soon settled down, and the growth it generated fizzled out. In only one case did such an accumulation of knowledge become sustained and self-propelling to the point of becoming explosive and changing the material basis of human existence more thoroughly and more rapidly than anything before in the history of humans on this planet. That one instance occurred in Western Europe during and after the Industrial Revolution.
Joel Mokyr (A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy)
what is known as a neutron moderator, which, in an RBMK reactor, is comprised of vertical graphite blocks surrounding the fuel channels. Each RBMK contains 1850 tons of graphite. This graphite slows - moderates - the speed of neutrons moving in the fuel, because slowed neutrons are far more likely collide with uranium235 nuclei and split. When playing golf, for example, if your ball is a few centimeters from the hole, you don’t hit it as hard as you possibly can, you give it a slow tap to the target. It’s the same principle with neutrons in a reactor. The more often the resulting atomic split occurs, the more the chain reaction sustains itself and the more energy is produced. In other words, the graphite moderator creates the right environment for a chain reaction. Think of it as oxygen in a conventional fire: even with all the fuel in the world, there will be no flame without oxygen.
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
Note some odd things about the self’s world. One is that it is not the same as the Cosmos-environment. The planet Venus may be a sign in the self’s world as the evening star or the morning star, but the galaxy M31 may not be present at all. Another oddity is that the self’s world contains things which have no counterpart in the Cosmos, such as centaurs, Big Foot, détente, World War I (which is past), World War III (which may not occur). Yet another odd thing is that the word apple which you utter is part of my world but it is not a singular thing like an individual apple. It is in fact understandable only insofar as it conforms to a rule for uttering apples. But the oddest thing of all is your status in my world. You—Betty, Dick—are like other items in my world—cats, dogs, and apples. But you have a unique property. You are also co-namer, co-discoverer, co-sustainer of my world—whether you are Kafka whom I read or Betty who reads this. Without you—Franz, Betty—I would have no world.
Walker Percy (Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book)
Mughals to the importance of sea power. The Mughals had a predominantly continental outlook. Preoccupation with cavalry warfare blinded the Indian rulers to the maritime challenge of the European powers. The Mughals would only take an enemy seriously if he confronted them with large contingents of cavalry. Thus, they neglected the Indian Ocean as the most important element of the total Indian environment. They knew the monsoon would not permit a sustained maritime invasion of India. Thus, a maritime invader would find his supply lines cut in a short time-frame. The European powers, however, never attempted such an invasion. India itself had a huge military manpower pool with a mercenary orientation. It generally flocked to the banner of whichever local ruler paid the best. The European success lay in nativisation. They built up their military contingents in India by drilling local infantry troops who were far less expensive to maintain but in the end proved fatal to the Indian cavalry.
G.D. Bakshi (The Rise of Indian Military Power: Evolution of an Indian Strategic Culture)
The traditional Islamic worldview is totally opposed to the prevalent modern paradigm of the relation between human beings and nature, which has caused unprecedented harm to the natural environment, has led to the loss of many species, and now threatens the very future of human life on earth. Islam sees men and women as God’s vicegerents on earth. Therefore, in the same way that God has power over His creation but is also its sustainer and protector, human beings must also combine power over nature with responsibility for its protection and sustenance. The Quran is replete with references to nature, and the phenomena of nature are referred to as God’s signs and are therefore sacred. In traditional Islamic society human beings lived in remarkable harmony with their natural environment, as can be seen in the urban design of traditional Islamic cities and also in the life in the villages, which, as in other premodern parts of the world, is still based on remarkable harmony with the rhythms of nature and makes full use of what is now called recycling.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr (The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity)
Much of the so-called environmental movement today has transmuted into an aggressively nefarious and primitive faction. In the last fifteen years, many of the tenets of utopian statism have coalesced around something called the “degrowth” movement. Originating in Europe but now taking a firm hold in the United States, the “degrowthers,” as I shall characterize them, include in their ranks none other than President Barack Obama. On January 17, 2008, Obama made clear his hostility toward, of all things, electricity generated from coal and coal-powered plants. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal . . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. . . .”3 Obama added, “. . . So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”4 Degrowthers define their agenda as follows: “Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions.”5 It “is an essential economic strategy to pursue in overdeveloped countries like the United States—for the well-being of the planet, of underdeveloped populations, and yes, even of the sick, stressed, and overweight ‘consumer’ populations of overdeveloped countries.”6 For its proponents and adherents, degrowth has quickly developed into a pseudo-religion and public-policy obsession. In fact, the degrowthers insist their ideology reaches far beyond the environment or even its odium for capitalism and is an all-encompassing lifestyle and governing philosophy. Some of its leading advocates argue that “Degrowth is not just an economic concept. We shall show that it is a frame constituted by a large array of concerns, goals, strategies and actions. As a result, degrowth has now become a confluence point where streams of critical ideas and political action converge.”7 Degrowth is “an interpretative frame for a social movement, understood as the mechanism through which actors engage in a collective action.”8 The degrowthers seek to eliminate carbon sources of energy and redistribute wealth according to terms they consider equitable. They reject the traditional economic reality that acknowledges growth as improving living conditions generally but especially for the impoverished. They embrace the notions of “less competition, large scale redistribution, sharing and reduction of excessive incomes and wealth.”9 Degrowthers want to engage in polices that will set “a maximum income, or maximum wealth, to weaken envy as a motor of consumerism, and opening borders (“no-border”) to reduce means to keep inequality between rich and poor countries.”10 And they demand reparations by supporting a “concept of ecological debt, or the demand that the Global North pays for past and present colonial exploitation in the Global South.”11
Mark R. Levin (Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future)
Urban planning is a scientific, aesthetic and orderly disposition of Land, Resources, Facilities and Services with a view of securing the Physical, Economic and Social Efficiency, Health and well-being of Urban Communities. As over the years the urban population of India has been increasing rapidly, this fast tread urbanization is pressurizing the existing infrastructure leading to a competition over scare resources in the cities. The objective of our organization is to develop effective ideas and inventions so that we could integrate in the development of competitive, compact, sustainable, inclusive and resilient cities in terms of land-use, environment, transportation and services to improve physical, social and economic environment of the cities. Focus Areas:- Built Environment Utilities Public Realm Urban planning and Redevelopment Urban Transport and Mobility Smart City AMRUT Solid Waste Management Master Plans Community Based Planning Architecture and Urban Design Institutional Capacity Building Geographic Information System Riverfront Development Local Area Planning ICT
Citiyano De Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
By one billion years ago, plants, working cooperatively, had made a stunning change in the environment of the Earth. Green plants generate molecular oxygen. Since the oceans were by now filled with simple green plants, oxygen was becoming a major constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-rich character and ending the epoch of Earth history when the stuff of life was made by nonbiological processes. But oxygen tends to make organic molecules fall to pieces. Despite our fondness for it, it is fundamentally a poison for unprotected organic matter. The transition to an oxidizing atmosphere posed a supreme crisis in the history of life, and a great many organisms, unable to cope with oxygen, perished. A few primitive forms, such as the botulism and tetanus bacilli, manage to survive even today only in oxygen-free environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and therefore much more benign than oxygen. But it, too, is biologically sustained. Thus, 99 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere is of biological origin. The sky is made by life.
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
A beautiful example of a long-term intention was presented by A. T. Ariyaratane, a Buddhist elder, who is considered to be the Gandhi of Sri Lanka. For seventeen years there had been a terrible civil war in Sri Lanka. At one point, the Norwegians were able to broker peace, and once the peace treaty was in effect, Ariyaratane called the followers of his Sarvodaya movement together. Sarvodaya combines Buddhist principles of right livelihood, right action, right understanding, and compassion and has organized citizens in one-third of that nation’s villages to dig wells, build schools, meditate, and collaborate as a form of spiritual practice. Over 650,000 people came to the gathering to hear how he envisioned the future of Sri Lanka. At this gathering he proposed a five-hundred-year peace plan, saying, “The Buddha teaches we must understand causes and conditions. It’s taken us five hundred years to create the suffering that we are in now.” Ari described the effects of four hundred years of colonialism, of five hundred years of struggle between Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists, and of several centuries of economic disparity. He went on, “It will take us five hundred years to change these conditions.” Ariyaratane then offered solutions, proposing a plan to heal the country. The plan begins with five years of cease-fire and ten years of rebuilding roads and schools. Then it goes on for twenty-five years of programs to learn one another’s languages and cultures, and fifty years of work to right economic injustice, and to bring the islanders back together as a whole. And every hundred years there will be a grand council of elders to take stock on how the plan is going. This is a sacred intention, the long-term vision of an elder. In the same way, if we envision the fulfillment of wisdom and compassion in the United States, it becomes clear that the richest nation on earth must provide health care for its children; that the most productive nation on earth must find ways to combine trade with justice; that a creative society must find ways to grow and to protect the environment and plan sustainable development for generations ahead. A nation founded on democracy must bring enfranchisement to all citizens at home and then offer the same spirit of international cooperation and respect globally. We are all in this together.
Jack Kornfield (Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are)
Egocentrism is the problem, then, not Egos. Egocentric people are agents for themselves only (and perhaps also for their immediate families), without awareness of or tending of the social and natural environments that sustain their lives. Their consciousness is Ego-centered. A person with a healthy, mature Ego, in contrast, is ecocentric; she understands herself as, first and foremost, an agent for (the health of) her ecosystem (and second, as an agent for the health of her human community, which dwells within that ecosystem; and third, as an agent for her immediate family and self). Spiritual practice helps mature our Egos. Faced with the assertion that the goal of spiritual practice is to eliminate the Ego, the East facet of the Self might respond with a hearty laugh and the blended perspectives of the Trickster, Fool, and Sage, as, for example, expressed by Jay Leeming: Trying to get rid of your ego Is like trying to get rid of your garbage can. No one believes you are serious. The more you shout at the garbage man The more your neighbors remember your name.6 Rather than attempting to jettison the Ego, a sensible person draws on the resources of her East Self to cultivate her relationship to innocence, wisdom, humor, and the great, transpersonal, and universal mysteries of life.
Bill Plotkin (Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche)
NO MATTER WHAT PART OF THE WORLD we come from, fundamentally we are all the same human beings. We all seek happiness and want to avoid suffering. We all have essentially the same needs and similar concerns. As human beings, we all want to be free, to have the right to decide our own destiny as individuals as well as the destiny of our people. That is human nature. The problems that confront us today are created by man, whether they are violent conflicts, destruction of the environment, poverty, or hunger. These problems can be resolved thanks to human efforts, by understanding that we are brothers and sisters and by developing this sense of fraternity. We must cultivate a universal responsibility toward each other and extend it to the planet that we have to share. I feel optimistic that the ancient values that have sustained mankind are reaffirming themselves today, preparing the way for a better, happier twenty-first century. I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, so that together we can succeed in building a better world through mutual understanding and love, and that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.3 On December 10, 1989, the Dalai Lama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, quoted in part above, was broadcast throughout the world. The cause of Tibet had become international. But it was not as the leader of a government in exile, or as a Tibetan, that the Dalai Lama accepted the Nobel Prize. He shared this distinction as a human being with all those who recognize each other’s basic human values. By claiming his humanity in the universal language of the heart, which goes beyond ideological rifts and notions of cultural identity, the Dalai Lama gave us back our humanity. In Oslo on December 10, 1989, we all received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Dalai Lama XIV (My Spiritual Journey)
The trends speak to an unavoidable truth. Society's future will be challenged by zoonotic viruses, a quite natural prediction, not least because humanity is a potent agent of change, which is the essential fuel of evolution. Notwithstanding these assertions, I began with the intention of leaving the reader with a broader appreciation of viruses: they are not simply life's pathogens. They are life's obligate partners and a formidable force in nature on our planet. As you contemplate the ocean under a setting sun, consider the multitude of virus particles in each milliliter of seawater: flying over wilderness forestry, consider the collective viromes of its living inhabitants. The stunnig number and diversity of viruses in our environment should engender in us greater awe that we are safe among these multitudes than fear that they will harm us. Personalized medicine will soon become a reality and medical practice will routinely catalogue and weigh a patient's genome sequence. Not long thereafter one might expect this data to be joined by the patient's viral and bacterial metagenomes: the patient's collective genetic identity will be recorded in one printout. We will doubtless discover some of our viral passengers are harmful to our health, while others are protective. But the appreciation of viruses that I hope you have gained from these pages is not about an exercise in accounting. The balancing of benefit versus threat to humanity is a fruitless task. The viral metagenome will contain new and useful gene functionalities for biomedicine: viruses may become essential biomedical tools and phages will continue to optimize may also accelerate the development of antibiotic drug resistance in the post-antibiotic era and emerging viruses may threaten our complacency and challenge our society economically and socially. Simply comparing these pros and cons, however, does not do justice to viruses and acknowledge their rightful place in nature. Life and viruses are inseparable. Viruses are life's complement, sometimes dangerous but always beautiful in design. All autonomous self-sustaining replicating systems that generate their own energy will foster parasites. Viruses are the inescapable by-products of life's success on the planet. We owe our own evolution to them; the fossils of many are recognizable in ERVs and EVEs that were certainly powerful influences in the evolution of our ancestors. Like viruses and prokaryotes, we are also a patchwork of genes, acquired by inheritance and horizontal gene transfer during our evolution from the primitive RNA-based world. It is a common saying that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder.' It is a natural response to a visual queue: a sunset, the drape of a designer dress, or the pattern of a silk tie, but it can also be found in a line of poetry, a particularly effective kitchen implement, or even the ruthless efficiency of a firearm. The latter are uniquely human acknowledgments of beauty in design. It is humanity that allows us to recognize the beauty in the evolutionary design of viruses. They are unique products of evolution, the inevitable consequence of life, infectious egotistical genetic information that taps into life and the laws of nature to fuel evolutionary invention.
Michael G. Cordingley (Viruses: Agents of Evolutionary Invention)
When you harvest from nature’s garden, you indirectly become a part of that life cycle and a source of sustaining the environment.
Anthony Barrett (Master the World of Edible Wild Plants: A Beginner Friendly Guide to Foraging)
Effective teachers create and sustain a safe, organized, caring, and intellectually challenging environment.
Leslie S. Kaplan (Culture Re-Boot: Reinvigorating School Culture to Improve Student Outcomes)
THE CORNER - "The thing about coming home is though the environment may change, the places I knew so well may have passed on, the houses may be empty, the experience of life and the precious memories are sustained within my Nana. All of those places were touched in some way by her love - be it the butcher shop or the church on the corner or the tiny cottage on North Road. Somewhere in each of them, Nana has had a hand of influence, even if it is just a small influence. I connect with here because she is here
Dean Mayes (The Night Fisher Elegies)
To reform the most important aspects of the social contract such as education, health care, environment and pensions, requires boldness and steadfastness. It takes a generation to determine whether reforms have been successful so government policy must hold its course despite changes in prime ministers and control of parliament.
R. James Breiding (Too Small to Fail: Why Small Nations Outperform Larger Ones and How They Are Reshaping the World)
Our climate is being destroyed by unadulterated, free-market capitalism—an ideology that simply cannot be sustained on a small planet with limited resources. It is a system that has no interest in the greater good and that rewards inordinate capital and the few that have it, rather than the majority who don’t. It cares nothing for the environment or biodiversity and doesn’t give a fig about the fate of future generations. In fact, it is exactly the wrong economic system to have in place at a time of global crisis. The bankruptcy of the system is especially well upheld in the grossly asymmetric portioning of carbon emissions between the rich elite and everyone else.
Bill McGuire (Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant's Guide)
In Belinda's dark Craftsman, we drank Riley's cocktails, then ate Belinda's impeccable entrées: roast vegetable lasagna, chicken piccata, shrimp and grits, roast pork with prunes. "This pork is amazing," said Jennie, present for the first time in weeks. "But I move that from now on, we don't have red meat or pork---not because I'm vegetarian but because those farming practices are so bad for the environment." In fact, I didn't cook pork or red meat at home (except for brisket at Passover) for precisely Jennie's reason. As a restaurant critic, I ate---or at least tasted---everything. And as a guest, I'd taken the no-asshole pledge and ate whatever my hosts put on the table, though I drew the line at eel. (Some things are too ugly to eat.) Murmured protests came from the meat-and-potato contingent (Charlotte, Belinda, Sam, and Adrian), but even they agreed that we could stick with chicken and fish. "And only fish on the safe lists---low-mercury, sustainably farmed," said Jennie. Adrian said, "Best quit while you're ahead, Jen.
Michelle Huneven (Search)
The environment we’re used to is designed to sustain us. We live like fish in an aquarium. Food comes mysteriously down, oxygen bubbles up. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo we call civilization. Then we go into nature, where we are least among equals with all other creatures. There we are put to the test. Most of us sleep through the test. We get in and out and never know what might have been demanded. Such an experience can make us even more vulnerable, for we come away with the illusion of growing hardy, salty, knowledgeable: Been there, done that.
Laurence Gonzales (Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why)
There is a need for leadership that recognises the value and essence of creating and promoting a good and sustainable business environment.
DON SANTO
Economics, environment & society: Are they always in conflict? Can they go in tandem? Welcome to an intellectually stimulating exercise in urban planning and sustainability. This book discusses these and other relevant issues in various occasions such as spatial identity formation in cases of Asian urban identities and in the case of the planning of a peninsular town in Vietnam, in terms of biodiversity and ethics in an urban context among others. You will not regret to read this book if you are one of those who have been amazed by rapid urbanization and the challenges and opportunities coming along.
Ulaş Başar Gezgin (Economics, Environment & Society)
Tyson Dirksen grew up in a family very concerned about the environment, especially California's devastating drought of the 1980's. He started Evolve to try and reduce the use of energy, water, and other raw resources through sustainable design and development and use of green technologies. Tyson is an expert in the high-performance building industry and frequently speaks on the subject at conferences and symposiums. Tyson’s extensive knowledge of real estate investment combined with his expertise in healthy, sustainable, smart and resilient design and construction sets him and Evolve apart.. Tyson received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University and holds a Masters in Real Estate Development from MIT. Tyson is a licensed General Contractor, Real Estate Broker, LEED AP certified, Green Point and HERS Rater, and Passive House builder.
Tyson Dirksen, tyson Holbrook dirksen
In an effort to help decode these buyer actions, researchers from consumer intelligence firm Motista found specific “emotional motivators” that provide a critical indicator of customers’ potential affinity to a company.2 In fact, these emotional motivators, a proxy for value, were more compelling than any other metric in terms of driving key buying sentiments such as brand awareness and customer satisfaction. While hundreds of emotional motivators were found to drive consumer behavior, the study found ten that drove significant levels of customer value across all of the categories studied. I am inspired by a desire to: Brands can leverage this motivator by helping customers: Stand out from the crowd Project a unique social identity; be seen as special Have confidence in the future Perceive the future as better than the past; have a positive mental picture of what’s to come Enjoy a sense of well-being Feel that life measures up to expectations and that balance has been achieved; seek a stress-free state without conflicts or threats Feel a sense of freedom Act independently, without obligations or restrictions Feel a sense of thrill Experience visceral, overwhelming pleasure and excitement; participate in exciting, fun events Feel a sense of belonging Have an affiliation with people they relate to or aspire to be like; feel part of a group Protect the environment Sustain the belief that the environment is sacred; take action to improve their surroundings Be the person I want to be Fulfill a desire for ongoing self-improvement; live up to their ideal self-image Feel secure Believe that what they have today will be there tomorrow; pursue goals and dreams without worry Succeed in life Feel that they lead meaningful lives; find worth that goes beyond financial or socioeconomic measures
David Priemer (Sell the Way You Buy: A Modern Approach To Sales That Actually Works (Even On You!))
If digital technologies are not leveraged for sustainable environmental utilisation, they will most likely be used to destroy it.
Sally Njeri Wangari
At The Oriri Partnership we help businesses change. We provide expertise on people, their operations and the environments that surround them. We help you adapt, transform and develop by working alongside you to bring about a better, more improved way of working. That improvement creates profitability, efficiency and sustainability. We deliver real transformation and improved performance through people. In short, we help build better businesses.
The Oriri Partnership
Creating sustainable human energy systems is a new competitive advantage for companies operating in fast-changing environments
Sukant Ratnakar (Quantraz)
Humans...The land provides everything that anybody would need. If you take only what you need, the land renews itself so that it can provide more. Medicines, water, plants, meat. In exchange, because we don’t really have anything the land wants, we honor it for what it gives us...When you take more than the land can provide, it stops giving. It can’t give. That’s what’s happened here. That’s what happens with humans.
David Alexander Robertson (The Barren Grounds (The Misewa Saga, #1))
From the moment Seadon set foot on this earth, we set our intention to build a sustainable outdoor brand and product experience that echoed the environment. One that worked with nature, not against it. All Seadon fabrics, materials and packaging are made from recycled resources to limit our - and your - environmental footprint. Operating as an official Climate Neutral company with WRAP compliance, we're all for being human-kind so nature's not left behind. We specialize entirely in men's and women's sustainable clothing that's ethical and 100% eco-friendly. From hiking pants to sustainable t-shirts to tote bags and more, we're committed wholeheartedly to our customers as well as our beautiful planet.
Seadon
We have all embraced technology. It makes our lives easier and more comfortable. Unfortunately, it has harmed nature in may different ways. It has worked against nature and the environment that we live in. Imagine if technology was built and used in a way that both simulated and augmented nature so as not to impair it. Imagine if we could use the colors of the rainbow to grow plant life. Harvest the wind as a natural energy source without the use of wind turbines as they now are. Re-growing arid areas with a flowable water system that reforested the world. We had a company that put money into development and life instead of putting money into shareholder's pockets. It may come true...one day.
Anthony T. Hincks
Investors shouldn’t always be suppressed; they’re allies in reforming capitalism to a more purposeful and more sustainable form. Business and society aren’t adversaries, but play for the same team. When all members of an organisation work together, bound by a common purpose and focused on the long term, they create shared value in a way that enlarges the slices of everyone – shareholders, workers, customers, suppliers, the environment, communities and taxpayers.
Alex Edmans (Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit – Updated and Revised)
If we understand that we are dirt, that God is the ground of all that is, well, then, we might think twice about how we treat soil. If water is the river of spiritual and physical life, we will care about what we are doing to watersheds. If air sustains us and we are made of stardust, then the sky and what happens to it matters. Knowing our own roots is the first step in knowing ourselves and recognizing our common humanity. Making a home is a radical act of claiming a place in the world. Being neighborly is the path to empathy, of enacting the Golden Rule. Building the commons, the “we” of our world house, is to pull the vision of heaven out of the clouds to earth here and now. We are constantly creating a sacred architecture of dwelling—of God’s dwelling and ours—as we weave nature and the built environment into a web of meaning. Awe and action are of a piece.
Diana Butler Bass (Grounded: Finding God in the World-A Spiritual Revolution)
Eco-friendly stores are those that do not have a negative impact on the environment. These are items created entirely of natural and organic materials. They're also packaged in biodegradable or cotton-based materials. Let's take a look at all of the eco-friendly home products we have used in your home right now to help save the earth. How many times a billion annually would you go looking for different clothes? Do you ever put off wearing new clothes because you don't think they're fashionable? Clarkia Home is a store that sells fashionable clothing, recyclable products, and a lot of trash. Clarkia Home was a well-known brand in the anti-fast fashion movement, providing recyclable and reusable products. This ethical clothing brand offers long-lasting fashion at an affordable price that may be worn throughout the year. With a little attention, the everyday item may be transformed into a remarkable design statement. In the kitchen products, you most likely keep recycling or recycling more than is essential. You've decided to start buying eco-friendly kitchen products in order to save money in your home. It is true that it is not always simple. With a few minor changes, though, it is possible to achieve. Here are some eco-friendly home products to assist you in achieving your goal of a completely green kitchen. Strap with elastic: Cotton Reusable Bags with Large Handles Drawstring These beautiful Re - usable Organic Sacks are one of Clarkia Home's best known Recyclable products.
Autheee
In Firestone’s dialectic of tech (or specifically reprotech), it is the revolutionary capacity of technological progress that establishes the crucial link between feminism, population control, and ecological sustainability. Greater technological control over both production and reproduction is thus the ultimate ethical and political imperative that links the future of the female to the future of the human race, as the rate of population growth eventually becomes a matter of human survival, against which biology can no longer be protected as a “moral” question. “Thus,” she argued, in view of accelerating technology, a revolutionary ecological movement would have the same aim as the feminist movement: control of the new technology for humane purposes, the establishment of a new equilibrium between man and the new artificial environment he is creating, to replace the destroyed “natural” balance.
Mandy Merck (Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone)
The term “real” is a misnomer. You could say that the life forms that occupy earth are real. They appear as physical structures and they are based on mathematical formula and geometry. We are, in a sense, code. This code interacts with the physical senses, which decodes the formula and we are transformed to flesh and blood “life forms.” But at a quantum level we are, as I said, code. Underneath or beyond the quantum level—call it the pre-quantum level—we are infinite beings. We are Sovereign Integrals. What I am suggesting is that the term real, applies to the Sovereign Integral state of being and consciousness. The term is relative, however, because the Sovereign Integral consciousness is not considered real in the three-dimensional plane, and the human instrument is not real in the Domain of Unity. It is the reality of the dominant environment that determines the reality of the subjects and objects of that environment. The environment of three and four dimensional planes like earth, establishes a consensual, subjective reality—propagated by our unconscious and genetic mind. The environment of the infinite establishes a reality that has no mediation or signal transformation. It is elemental and core. There is no sensory “middleman” or propagation of perception. It is one and all in action. The individual is allowed to decide what is real and what is not. Illusion is a Russian doll; it has many layers, some of which transmit a sense of true awareness. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase: Perception is reality. The subjective realm defines the seemingly objective. Illusion, the outermost doll, is the only one that is seen and therefore, known. However, if you open the outermost doll, you find another, albeit smaller one waits. This repeats seven times until you find the indivisible. We would call this core, innermost doll: the Sovereign Integral. This is where you want your imaginative faculty trained and honed in. This is where you want your life to progress, not satisfied that perception is reality, or that the outermost “doll” is real and worthy of your devotion. All of that said, it does not mean that the outer world—physical reality—is a waste of time or so mired in illusion that it isn’t worth developing. Quite the opposite. The outer world is your workshop, the place you can experiment, build things, create, try and fail, and so on. It is a place of severe challenges at time, but also of beauty and joy. The illusion isn’t in the physical things of this world. The illusion is in the self-perception of the individual life form.As long as the individual perceives themselves as a human instrument, maybe with a soul, maybe not, they will see all life as a place of separation and disunity. They will accept the illusion that life emits, which is one of separation. In this, they become lost, lost to themselves as infinite beings, and unable, as a result, to generate and sustain the vision into their true self.
James Mahu (James Q and A WingMakers (WingMakers Anthology))
That’s the course of human history. Cities, highways, factories, modern civilization require tearing up land and displacing people and other living things. It’s impossible to get the resources we need to live as we do without disturbing at least some people and doing some harm to—or at least changing—the natural environment. Civilization disrupts the natural world. We disrupt the natural world. But we’re not going to go back to living in caves. We’re not going to stop cutting down trees or damming rivers or, least of all, digging up sand. The challenge is to figure out ways to do those things that are responsible, sustainable, and limited. We have to do as little of them as we can get away with. In the specific case of frac sand, though, there’s a valid argument to be made that we shouldn’t be doing it at all, because fracking itself is especially fraught with serious environmental hazards. There are plenty of reports of fracking operations contaminating aquifers and even causing earthquakes, as well as possibly elevating the risk of cancer and silicosis among people living near them.27 What’s more, society doesn’t necessarily need the oil and gas it yields. In an ideal world, it could be replaced with solar and wind power.
Vince Beiser (The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization)
In 1993, a group of ICC member companies formed the World Industry Council for the Environment (WICE), which, in the beginning of 1995, merged with the BCSD to form the WBCSD
Charles O. Holliday Jr. (Walking the Talk: The Business Case for Sustainable Development)
T1 consisted of nineteen settlements distributed throughout the valley. It was an immense human-engineered environment, in which the ancient Mosquitia people transformed the rainforest into a lush, curated landscape. They leveled terraces, reshaped hills, and built roads, reservoirs, and irrigation canals. In its heyday T1 probably looked like an unkempt English garden, with plots of food crops and medicinal plants mingled with stands of valuable trees such as cacao and fruit, alongside large open areas for public ceremonies, games, and group activities, and shady patches for work and socializing. There were extensive flower beds, because flowers were an important crop used in religious ceremonies. All these growing areas were mixed in with residential houses, many on raised earthen platforms to avoid seasonal flooding, connected by paths. “Having these garden spaces embedded within urban areas,” said Fisher, “is one characteristic of New World cities that made them sustainable and livable.
Douglas Preston (The Lost City of the Monkey God)
Because feeding grains to farmed animals is wasteful, only 37% of current croplands are needed if we shift to a vegan diet
Lisa Kemmerer (Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice)
To feed a vegan nation, less land is required. More than 60% of lands now in production can be returned to wilderness (or used for other needs) if we go vegan.
Lisa Kemmerer (Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice)
India and rest of the world has already taken the sustainable development concept, here two important key problems are context specific solutions and unity in diversity. As world has become one, hereafter no one can stop any foreign visitors, investments or anything that happens within nation. But due to pollution an over population everywhere is succumbed. To reduce population china took one child policy but failed due to lack of genetic diversity and male - femaela ratio and also working population. to meet this problem key solution only sustainable development that touches all scienctific and technological aspects. No technical advancements ahold be stopped but they have to regulated into eco friendly aspects. Industries should evolve into eco friendly and sustainable solutions and also banking sector. They should and should and should minimize pollution at any cost otherwise this chaos will continue and will lead disintegration of society and may also lead to civil war in future. so billionaires should consider humans ans humans just like them not as robots. So try to reach SDGs and policies for any industries that pollutes the environment. And once population is getting stabilized by 2030 as predicted by UN, if it stabilized then obviously fine and if it is not stabilized then it ie better to dismiss the concept of marriage and run into future with science.
Ganapathy K
None of this matters. I mean, those people—that man and his kids who you just fed—they matter, but no one cares about them. Those kids ar the future if they don't starve to death. But if they manage to grow up, what kind of men will they be?' 'That's what Earthseed was about,' I said. 'I wanted us to understand what we could be, what we could do. I wanted to give us a focus, a goal, something big enough, complex enough, difficult enough, and in the end, radical enough to make us become more than we ever have been. We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's the way things are. That's the way things have always been.' 'It is,' Len said. 'It is,' I repeated. 'There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren't, the cycles wouldn't keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfil the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They'll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it's only to begin a new one, a different one. 'Earthseed is about preparing to fulfil the Destiny. It's about learning to live in partnership with one another in small communities, and at the same time, working out a sustainable partnership with our environment. It's about treating education and adaptability as the absolute essentials that they are. It's...' I glanced at Len, caught a little smile on her face, and wound down. 'It's about a lot more than that,' I said. 'But those are the bones.' 'Makes a strange sermon.' 'I know.
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
It's not becoming abundantly clear that the way most of us currently eat is not sustainable -- either for the planet or for human health. The signs that modern food is unsustainable are all around us, whether you want to measure the problem in soil erosion, in the fact that so many farmers cannot make a living from producing food, or from the rising numbers of children having all their teeth extracted because of their sugary diet. Food is the single greatest user of water and one of the greatest drivers of the loss of biodiversity. We cannot carry on eating as we are without causing irreparable harm to ourselves and the environment.
Bee Wilson (The Way We Eat Now)
What is Life? Life is Self. Self Itself Is. So it is. The origin of Life is Self. Self created itself. Self experiences itself. Self sustains itself. It would be correct to note that Self has created the environment to sustain itself this although the environment is Self. There is only Self. Self itself is. Self always is. All that is here is Self perceiving itself as itself. There is no division. Division does not exist. There where otherness is perceived is but Self perceiving itself as variegated not to feel alone. Aloneness aka loneliness is the cause why Self veils itself as Life Diversified and Companionship aka Love is verily so the one and only purpose. Life Diversified is Self experiencing itself, as Life Diversified, not to feel alone, for Companionship, for Friendship, for Love. Love is as such correctly so the meaning of Life for Life is not Life but Self desiring Love. Love is all that matters rightfully so.
Wald Wassermann
As to the statement that the Universe is Self-caused; it is only partially correct to note that the reason why the Universe exists is that it caused itself to exist. Why? The Universe is not the Universe. The Universe is Self. Self was there in the beginning. Self is here now. Self will always be. Self always is. The answer to the question - how did the Universe begin? - is Self desiring Companionship. So it is. The Big Bang was Self desiring not to be alone. The Big Bang was Self desiring Companionship. The Big Bang was Self desiring to Love and Be Loved in return. I say 'was' although it should be 'is' because 'Time Exists for Love'. All that is here is Self not wanting to be alone. It is not good to be alone. Self desires not to be alone. Self desires to negate its aloneness; its own loneliness. Self desires Companionship. It is this what the Universe is. The Universe is Self desiring Companionship aka Love. Of course, Self is undivided. Division does not exists. Division is a sensory perception created for the very purpose not to feel alone. All that is here is Self. Self Itself Is. So it is. There is only One Self calling itself the Universe. The origin of the Universe is Self. Self created itself. Self experiences itself. Self sustains itself. It would be correct to note that Self has created the environment to sustain itself this although the environment is Self. There is only One Self. Self itself is. Self always is. All that is here is Self perceiving itself as itself. At the risk of sounding repetitive: there is no division; division does not exist. Division is the fallacy of all fallacies. There where otherness is perceived is but Self perceiving itself as variegated not to feel alone. Aloneness aka loneliness is the cause why Self veils itself as Life Diversified. Life Diversified is Self experiencing itself, as Life Diversified, not to feel alone, for Companionship, for Friendship, for Love. Love is as such correctly so the meaning of Life for Life is not Life but Self desiring Love. Love is all that matters; all that matter's Love.
Wald Wassermann
Public policies are not ‘interventions’ in the economy, as if markets existed independently of the public institutions and social and environmental conditions in which they are embedded. The role of policy is not one simply of ‘correcting’ the failures of otherwise free markets. It is rather to help create and shape markets to achieve the co-production, and the fair distribution, of economic value. Economic performance cannot be measured simply by the short-term growth of GDP, but requires better indicators of long-term value creation, social well-being, inequality and environment sustainability.
Michael Jacobs (Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Political Quarterly Monograph Series))
We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.” “It is,” Len said. “It is,” I repeated. “There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren’t, the cycles wouldn’t keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They’ll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it’s only to begin a new one, a different one.
Octavia E. Butler (Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents)
At the heart of this book is a belief best articulated by the artist Alan Gussow: “The catalyst that converts any physical location- any environment- into a place, is the process of experiencing deeply. A place is a piece of a whole environment that has been claimed by feelings. Viewed simply as a life-support system, the earth is an environment. Viewed as a resource that sustains our humanity, the earth is a collection of places.
Julian Hoffman (The Small Heart of Things: Being at Home in a Beckoning World)
Sometimes brands make a stand more quietly. Deep inside one of the world’s most famous factories, located in the tiny town of Billund, Denmark, more than a hundred engineers and scientists are collaborating to redesign a product that has worked perfectly for more than eighty years. The LEGO Sustainable Materials Centre, a well-funded group within LEGO, is dedicated to finding more sustainable materials within the next decade to make the company’s iconic bricks. In 2018 the group launched its first innovation, making flexible pieces such as leaves and palm trees from a plant-based plastic sourced from sugar cane. This sense of commitment to the environment is deeply felt at LEGO. Its efforts may inspire more such initiatives across the toy industry, especially if consumers take note of LEGO’s efforts and demand similar forward-looking commitments from other companies as well.
Rohit Bhargava (Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future (Non-Obvious Trends Series) (Non-Obvious Series Book 10))
There has been little work done on understanding what creates a highly peaceful country. If we can't quantify peace, then how can we work out which factors and policies make some countries more peaceful than others? For peace to be sustainable societies need to be resilient to shocks, manage disputes and adapt to changes in their environments.
Steve Killelea (Peace in the Age of Chaos : The Best Solution For A Sustainable Future)
Enviromental sustainability is key in naturing a healthy ecosystem that is mutually beneficial to a healthier quality of life today and in the future.
Wayne Chirisa
My call to action goes well beyond asking you to pressure your recruiting team to hire a couple of token employees. That's easy and you've been doing that for years. My call to action is that you dig deeper and place focus on making the work environment sustainable for the minorities you introduce to your team. I'm challenging you to refrain from the habitual practice of listening only to the jaded opinions of people that you are more familiar with. Consider that, although you may be under the impression that your employees have strong ethics, morals and values, there is a possibility that they mat not be telling you the entire truth when speaking about the performance or demeanor of minorities. Furthermore, I challenge you to accept that racism, ageism, ableism, classism, sizeism, homophobia, etc., are real and shaping the semblance of your organization. Accepting that fact does not mean that people you work with and trust are bad people. It simply means that many of them are naïve, fearful, and more comfortable with pointing fingers at the innocent than they are with facing and addressing their own unconscious and damaging biases.
Talisa Lavarry (Confessions From Your Token Black Colleague: True Stories & Candid Conversations About Equity & Inclusion In The Workplace)
The plastics conundrum lies in the great value to our everyday lives and simultaneous damage to the environment if plastic is treated as disposable rather than a resource.
Trent A. Romer (Finding Sustainability)
Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain restored land. Therefore, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contaminants. It is medicine for the earth.
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass)
color is an indication of the richness of our surroundings. It is an unconscious signal not only of immediate sustenance but of an environment that is capable of sustaining us over time.
Ingrid Fetell Lee (Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness)
Eco-friendly stores that are environmentally friendly are ones that have no negative impact on the environment. These are products made entirely of organic and natural materials. They're also packaged in materials that are compostable or biodegradable. Let's take a look at all of the sustainable products for home you can use right now to help save the environment. How many times a year do you go shopping for new clothes? Do you ever resist wearing new clothing because it is out of style? Clarkia Home, where you may buy trendy clothes, generates a lot of waste. Clarkia Home was one of the most well-known brands involved in the fight against fast fashion like recyclable and reused. This ethical clothing business offers long-lasting fashion at an affordable price that may be worn throughout the year. Every basic thing can be simply turned into a stunning fashion statement. In your kitchen products, you probably already reuse and recycle as much as possible. You've decided to start buying eco-friendly kitchen products in order to make your home more economically conscious. To be sure, this isn't always simple. However, with a little tweaks here and there, you can achieve it. Here are some eco-friendly home products to assist you achieve your goal of having a completely green kitchen. Eco Long Handle Reusable Cotton Bags drawstring: One of Clarkia home's best favorite Recyclable products is our trophy Reusable Produce Bags. Instead of tearing off and discarding plastic produce bags from the grocery store, anyone may use the Clarkia home reusable produce cotton bags and never tear off and discard a plastic produce bag again. They also let water and air pass through, allowing you to wash your fruits and vegetables once you reach home. Cotton Coffee Filters Cones - 3 Piece Size For your Clarkia home, the ideal reusable coffee filters Crafts are available in a range of materials and sizes to fit a variety of coffee-making machines. Here's a rundown of what's on offer. You'll be able to discover a filtration for any style of coffee maker . Just take in mind how much trouble it will be to clean up afterward, as well as how many your family will likely require at the same time. It's also a good idea to double-check that the filter you're buying is compatible with your coffee filter crafts. Contact Us: Eco-Friendly Home Products - Clarkia Home 214, Gautam Marg, Namdarpura, Urdupura, Ujjain, M. P. 456006 (+91) – 99989 – 39740 care@clarkiahome.com
Arun dhar
plastic, metal and glass. Develop and support local community initiatives and social networks that work together for the welfare of people, animals and the environment in the area where you live. Support complementary medicine, mindfulness practices, exercise and a sustainable lifestyle. Check ingredients in food, shampoos, and so on. Avoid junk food, cigarettes and all recreational drugs. Right Travel: Only use air travel, if at all, to serve others or to go to new destinations to change one’s life such as the monastery, the ashram, retreat centre, the rainforest, a pilgrimage, a visit to sacred places and through direct contact with nature. Use flights to reconnect with loved ones. If wealthy or the most senior of monks, still turn right when you step on board the plane and use economy class! Go camping or walking and take vacations in your own area. Minimise holiday hotels, beach resorts and flights for the pursuit of pleasure. Right Co-operation: Organisations and institutes need to co-operate together in the task of inquiry into all the key areas that make up our daily
Christopher Titmuss (The Political Buddha)
Unfortunately, our world doesn’t foster a healthy environment for our brain. Before Jim Kwik provides a road map to become limitless, he indicts the four growing villains that are challenging our capacity to think, focus, learn, grow, and be fully human. The first is digital deluge—the unending flood of information in a world of finite time and unfair expectations that leads to overwhelm, anxiety, and sleeplessness. Drowning in data and rapid change, we long for strategies and tools to regain some semblance of productivity, performance, and peace of mind. The second villain is digital distraction. The fleeting ping of digital dopamine pleasure replaces our ability to sustain the attention necessary for deep relationship, deep learning, or deep work.
Jim Kwik (Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life)
Competent, cross-cultural communication involves an ongoing and continuous process to develop and sustain attitudes, behaviors, and environments that demonstrate the ability to interact and communicate with individuals regardless of cultural background, and that are culturally safe.
cultural competence, cultural humility, cross-cultural communication, cultural safety
Organic Products Provide At Arendelle organics Organic products protect farm workers, their families, and customers from hazardous and persistent chemicals found on the farm and in food, as well as in the land they work and play in, the air they breathe, and the water they drink. Pollutants are especially dangerous to children. As a result, introducing organic food and feed products into the marketplace allows parents to select goods that are free of these pollutants. Not only can sustainable farming help reduce health hazards, although increasing evidence reveals that organically cultivated foods are higher in nutrients like Vitamin C, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus, but have lower levels of nitrates and pesticide residues when compared to conventionally grown foods. One of the simplest efforts to make short or medium cell regeneration and brightness is to care for our skin. Natural and organic skin care products, in particular, combine important vitamins, herbs, and minerals to heal and rejuvenate our skin while causing minimal harm to the environment. How to reduce hair fall? These natural skincare companies are dedicated to changing the beauty industry's standards for goods that are both good for us and good for the environment. We respect their dedication to maximum potency, maximum freshness, and full purity! Bhringraj oil is a natural treatment used to restore the appearance of fine lines in Ayurveda (Ayurvedic medicine medicine). Bhringraj oil is thought to prevent unintended greying and hair growth and is commonly used to stimulate hair growth, shine, softness, and strength. Ayurvedic practitioners also recommend taking bhringraj oil orally to heal everything from heart illness and respiratory problems to neurological and liver problems. You have doubts which is the best soap for dry skin. It's difficult to cope with sensitive skin. Forget about winter dryness; dry skin sufferers might experience tightness and pallor even in the summer! Warm showers, along with the improper soap like aloe vera face mist, might aggravate the situation. In order to keep your skin hydrated, you could use an after-shower lotion and emollients. Contact us: Arendelle Organics NRK BizPark, Behind C21 Mall, Scheme 54 PU4, Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India 8109099301 care@arendelleorganics.com
Arun (Antarctica: The Coming Impact)
1. Opportunity. What is the best opportunity for a new entrepreneur to build a successful business? Why is now the time to do it? How does the new landscape of e-commerce and social media create an environment of opportunity? And how do you fit into it all? You will discover why now is the perfect time to create your pie, and why there are others who are ready and willing to buy a slice. 2. Mindset. There’s a reason not every wantrepreneur becomes a successful entrepreneur, and psychology is a big piece of the puzzle. I’ll take you through the development of the right mindset to take a business from zero to one million in a year. 3. Getting customers. A million-dollar business doesn’t start with a product; it starts with a person. Your first step in building your business must be identifying your customer, and then answering his or her need. This builds a real brand, not just a revenue stream. If you get this piece right, you will have droves of repeat buyers who will eagerly “overpay” for your products, thank you for it, and tell all of their friends about you. 4. Product. Choosing your first product will be the biggest hurdle you face. It will take research, patience, and determination. Most importantly, it will require listening to what your customer is saying. I’ll take you through the whole process, from ideation to prototyping and refinement, helping you clear this hurdle in no time flat. 5. Funding. Sure, you’ve got a great product, and you know to whom you’re selling—but how do you fund your inventory? Here’s how to bootstrap, borrow, and build your way to a self-sustaining revenue machine, without stressing about money. 6. Stacking the deck. How do you nearly guarantee that your first product is successful, right out of the gate? Once you’ve decided what business you’re in, we will work to ensure that you don’t get stuck holding a product no one wants; this is where you stack the deck so your launch day is set up to blast off. 7. Launch. Your first product is ready to launch. What do you do now? Do you just let it ride? No. Here’s where building relationships and a few strategic marketing tips will take your business from a single product to a world-class brand, as we cover what you need to do to reach the key growth point of twenty-five sales per day.
Ryan Daniel Moran (12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur)
Life improves the capacity of the environment to sustain life,” his father said. “Life makes needed nutrients more readily available. It binds more energy into the system through the tremendous chemical interplay from organism to organism.
Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
Complex systems require a near infinite range of dynamics in order to sustain the system. Our reality membrane is form fitted to the complexity of our universe, which in turn created the environment of earth and its various life forms. Yes, our mistakes, our individuality, are a central part of our ability as a species to sustain itself in the face of a complex, interconnected structure of the quantum world and the cosmos. “The selfish motivations harvest the experience that facets our consciousness, which in turn are harvested by the unification force and used to transform reality membranes into passages through which a species can return to the God state. The mistakes weigh equally in this process, as do the unselfish contributions. Nothing is wasted.
WingMakers (Dr. Neruda Interviews (Interviews 1-5))
Archetype Other descriptions Achievement Performance, accountability, focus, speed, delivery, meritocracy, discipline, transparency, rigour Customer-Centric External focus, service, responsiveness, reliability, listening One-Team Collaboration, globalisation, internal customer, teamwork, without boundaries Innovative Learning, entrepreneurial, agility, creativity, challenging status quo, continuous improvement, pursuit of excellence People-First Empowerment, delegation, development, safety, care, respect, balance, diversity, relationships, fun Greater-Good Social responsibility, environment, citizenship, meaning, community, making a difference, sustainability
Carolyn Taylor (Walking the Talk: Building a Culture for Success (Revised Edition))
I can picture purchasing a product, such as a vehicle, a bicycle, or even grocery items, and seeing the emissions to produce the item and transport it to its location on its product tag, or by scanning its bar code. Items with top quartile emissions or high ESG performance for the category may have a different color-coded tag. The price tag will become a product tag and information about the item and the producer would be available in its online description,
Paul Pierroz (The Purpose-Driven Marketing Handbook: How to Discover Your Impact and Communicate Your Business Sustainability Story to Grow Sales, Retain Talent, and Attract Investors)
It’s about learning to live in partnership with one another in small communities, and at the same time, working out a sustainable partnership with our environment. It’s about treating education and adaptability as the absolute essentials that they are.
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
Don’t clutch your water bottle so smugly. This seems like a small issue, but I’m going somewhere with this! I don’t mean this in regards to the environment (love to see everyone with a sustainable bottle). What I object to is the way some women (mostly women, so sorry) clutch their water bottles proudly, bragging about the fact that they drink water throughout the day. WE GET IT! YOU’RE HYDRATED! CONGRATS! The constant clutching feels like a subtle cue you want me to catch that YOU PRACTICE SELF-CARE! YOU VALUE YOUR HEALTH!!! That’s great! But not everybody does, so keep it to yourself. And you certainly don’t need a jug the size of a tire. It’s visually distracting and aggressive. Please
Casey Wilson (The Wreckage of My Presence: Essays)
The core of the global bioplan is a simple idea. If every person on Earth planted one tree per year for the next six years, we would stop climate change in its tracks. The addition of those wonderful molecular machines, which pull carbon from our atmosphere, fix it in wood and bubble out oxygen in return, would halt the rise in global temperature and return it to a manageable level. Three hundred million years ago, trees took an environment with a toxic load of carbon and turned it into something that could sustain human life. They can do it again.
Diana Beresford-Kroeger (To Speak for the Trees: My Life's Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest)
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.
Jared Diamond (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed)
People are significant resource of the world that deserve to live in a safe and healthy environment. Thereby corporates need to maneuver conservative and strategic sustainable development principles to meet the demands of business in the present without compromising the needs of future civilization.
Henrietta Newton Martin - Legal Counsel & Author
Giving up is not an option; our current model of destroying the biosphere to expand the human footprint is not now and never has been sustainable.
Douglas W. Tallamy
All we need is to take an climate action now! Environment destruction of our common home increases every day. We need a better rain distribution on Earth, ecological awareness of minners, farmers and industry for the sustainable exploration of our natural resources.
Ronald Sanson Stresser Junior
Starting off this list of eco-friendly home products are my favorite reusable bamboo utensils. Cotton Bags are not only terrible for the environment, but they are terrible for you too and are not at all earth friendly products. Do you believe the issue is too massive for you to make a difference? Reconsider your position. sustainable products for home. We put together this list of environmentally friendly products to show you how simple it is to replace some of the cotton products you buy and to support companies who make recycled plastic products. You can almost eliminate your single-use cotton trash within this area by exchanging them. By purchasing recycled cotton products, eco-friendly kitchen products you are contributing to the circular economy's closure. Living by example and assuring that the items you purchase are produced with both ethics and the environment in mind is one of the most effective methods to combat plastic pollution. Also, don't forget to tell your friends and family about your adventure. cotton bag with drawstring The more friends you persuade, the more people you share articles like this with, the more people will begin to use environmentally friendly items in their daily lives, and that is how we can change the world. Scroll down to explore where you can make small changes using environmentally friendly goods to make a significant difference in your carbon footprint. coffee filter crafts Products which we are Selling as: Reusable Cotton Saree Cover Eco Long Handle Reusable Grocery Bags Unisex Cotton Cross-Body Sling Bag Cotton Coffee Filters Cones - 3 Piece Size Cotton Japanese Bento Bags for Lunchbox & Grocery Shopping-Set of 6 Reusable Makeup Remover Cotton Cloth For Face- Pack of 3 Plastic Mat Chatai for Floor for Home Decor Professional Idli Cloth-Set of 6 Pre-Cut Cotton Muslin Cheesecloth for Kitchen - Set of 4 Cotton Yogurt Strainer Pack of 3 - 2 Sets Cotton Drawstring Nut Milk Bags White- 2 Piece
Clarkia home
MAPLE RIDGE CONCRETE AND PAVING Maple Ridge Concrete & Paving has spent many years refining our concrete and paving services, and we are now delighted to offer our services to residential properties. We have helped many clients in the installation of their brand new paved surfaces such as driveways, patios, and parking lots, as well as professionally restoring varying levels of damaged areas. We have worked with a broad range of customers and strive to provide the best quality services to each and every one of them. You can rely on us to provide you with stunning, durable, and well-fashioned paved areas- as a reputable paving company serving the Greater Vancouver and Fraser Valley region. We value our clients above all else, so please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns, whether before, during, or after our service. Concrete Driveways A concrete driveway is one of the most cost-effective ways to restore or remodel your driveway. If installed by our concrete contractors, utilizing a range of texture, color, and artificial finish choices, a concrete patio or driveway can add beauty and elegance to your home. Asphalt Driveways Asphalt is the quickest material for paving your driveway since it dries quickly and can often be used the next day with the help of a professional paving contractor. It's also made up of recycled materials, thus, it's an eco - friendly option. Factors to Consider in a Driveway Choosing whether to use concrete or choosing an asphalt driveway is determined by your preferences and circumstances including: energy efficiency, cost savings, or avoiding costly maintenance. Examine these variables before planning a new driveway to decide which one is most suitable for you. Cost and Long-Term Investment Look at the long-term investment along with the installation price to know which one is suited to park your vehicles. Consider each material's long-term investment as well as the installation cost to determine which one can enhance the curb appeal of your property while also providing the additional space you require. You should work with a reputable concrete installer who knows how to professionally build a driveway if you want it to outlast. Aesthetic and Design A new driveway can improve your home's aesthetic appeal while also complementing your design options. The design of your driveway will be influenced by the color and architectural style of your property. Examine your house from the exterior to see which colors, styles, and features would best complement the overall concept of your living area. If you're planning to sell your property in the future, consider what prospective buyers want in a driveway and incorporate that into the design, and let concrete contractors like us handle all the work for you. Eco-Friendliness To feel confident in your investment, consider creating an eco-friendly driveway to encourage a healthier environment. Lower energy consumption, use of renewable resources, dedication to enhancing or sustaining the local water quality, and manufacturing that produces fewer carbon emissions are just some characteristics to look for when determining whether a material is environmentally friendly and sustainable. Our concrete and cement contractors at Maple Ridge Concrete and Paving can help you choose eco-friendly materials for your driveways.
Maple Ridge COncrete and Paving
While climate change threatens our environment on the one hand, and fossil fuel depletion threatens our economic system on the other, solar energy holds out the promise of protecting both of them.
Mahmood H. Shubbak (Forging Ahead: Technology Development & Emerging Economies)
But man’s capacity for development does not end at physical maturity; his capacity is virtually limitless. His power to reason is man’s distinguishing characteristic, his mind is man’s basic means of survival—and his ability to think, to learn, to discover new and better ways of dealing with reality, to expand the range of his efficacy, to grow intellectually, is an open door to a road that has no end. Man survives, not by adjusting himself to his physical environment in the manner of an animal, but by transforming his environment through productive work. “If a drought strikes them, animals perish—man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish—man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish— man writes the Constitution of the United States.” (Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual.) If life is a process of self-sustaining action, then this is the distinctly human mode of action and survival: to think—to produce—to meet the challenges of existence by a never-ending effort and inventiveness.
Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness)
At all events, the traditional assumption that the pharaohs had ruled like European kings and kept closed harems is based on those traditional translations, on nineteenth-century courtly manners and, ultimately, Champollion’s secular vision. Better to drop such Eurocentric notions along with the quaint assumption that the ‘family’ of the king held genius in its generations and was stuffed with princely craftsmen, architects and engineers endowed with the abilities to raise vast pyramids and make some of the world’s great sculptures. Better to conceive the Old Kingdom court as an environment where such talents had been cultivated within a series of courtly households grouped around that of the ruling house. And the single central office in that rare society was that of pharaoh. It sustained the living and the dead. It alone bestrode the households of the gods and those of humankind. No wonder, then, that unlike the households of the courtiers there is no evidence of an established order of direct familial succession for the throne.
John Romer (A History of Ancient Egypt Volume 2: From the Great Pyramid to the Fall of the Middle Kingdom)
It is precisely because these images were not designed to symbolize abstract ideas and were made in absolute conformity to the craftsmen’s rules of image making, that any intellectual processes that may have been involved in their creation have been effectively disguised. What is left, however, is something of the environment in which they were created; their time and place, that dramatic point in time when work on Sneferu’s pyramids was coming to its conclusion, an age that had seen an unprecedented mass of humanity linked in a single purpose, building for the king who was the centre of the state, the sustainer of its order and the prosperity of the court. Here, then, the relief artists drew out the vital qualities of the state machine in human form and, in so doing, they created some of the oldest known images of the pharaonic gods.
John Romer (A History of Ancient Egypt: From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid)
We need to change the ways in which we talk about humanity and the environment and in order to do so, we need to change the way in which we think about them, not an easy task given that we use language to think and our languages make us conceive the environment as detached. A possible way out to help us approach problems, without being drawn back by the mental models that fail us, is Systems Dynamics (Meadows 2008; Sterman 2012). Unfortunately, Sterman explains, most efforts made by individuals and institutions to enhance sustainability are directed at the symptoms and not at the causes and systems (any system) will respond to any change introduced with what is known as ‘policy resistance’, that is the existing system will tend to react to change in ways that we had not intended when we first designed the intervention (a few examples are road-building programs designed to reduce congestion that ends up increasing traffic or antibiotics that stimulate the evolution of drug-resistant pathogens—for a longer list and further explanation see Sterman 2012, 24). Systems Dynamics allows us to calculate scientifically the way in which a complex system will react to change and to account beforehand for what we usually describe as ‘side-effects’. Side effects, Sterman argues, ‘are not a feature of reality but a sign that the boundaries of our mental models are too narrow, our time horizons too short’ (24). As Gonella et al. (2019) explain: ”As long as we consider the geobiosphere as a sub-system (a resources provider) of the human-made economic system, any attempt to fix environmental and social problems by keeping the business as usual, i.e., the mantra of economic growth, will fail. The reality tells us the reverse: geobiosphere is not a sub-system of the economy, economy is a sub-system of geobiosphere. As systems thinkers know, trying to keep alive at any cost the operation of a sub-system will give rise to a re-arrangement of the super-system – the geobiosphere – that will self-reorganize to absorb and make ineffective our attempt, then continuing its own way.” (Gonella et al. 2019)
M. Cristina Caimotto (Discourses of Cycling, Road Users and Sustainability: An Ecolinguistic Investigation)
Mark DeVries observed that the church had become the place where teenagers “are most segregated from the world of adults.”2 Churches had unwittingly cultivated an environment where teenagers were being cut off from the very adult relationships that would sustain them through the turbulence of the adolescent years and by which they could learn about mature Christian faith. We were, in effect, nurturing in teenagers an appetite for a youth group from which they would soon graduate, while weaning them from involvement in the broader church life that would sustain their spiritual growth as adults.
Duffy Robbins (Youth Ministry Nuts and Bolts, Revised and Updated: Organizing, Leading, and Managing Your Youth Ministry (Youth Specialties))
Civilization is complex. It involves the existence of human communities characterized by political and social organization; dominating and utilizing natural forces; adapting themselves to this new man-made environment; possessing true knowledge (empirical science), a natural sense of refinement, of the arts, and sciences; and most importantly, composed of individuals capable of sustaining this elaborate complex and of handing it on to a capable and similarly complex posterity. Moreover, this last consideration is, in fact, the heart of the whole matter.
Frank L. DeSilva (Foundations Of The Twenty First Century: The Philosophy of White Nationalism)
The media have indeed informed the public about threats to our air, water and food. Ever since 1962, when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, more and more information has been made available. And the public has responded. About fifteen years ago, public interest in the environment reached its height. In 1988, George Bush Senior promised that, if elected, he would be an environmental president. In the same year, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was re-elected, and to indicate his ecological concern he moved the minister of the environment into the inner Cabinet. Newly created environment departments around the world were poised to cut back on fossil-fuel use, monitor the effects of acid rain and other pollutants, clean up toxic wastes, and protect plant and animal species. Information about our troubled environment had reached a large number of people, and that information, as expected, led to civic and political action. In 1992, it all reached its apex as the largest-ever gathering of heads of state in human history met at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. “Sustainable development” was the rallying cry, and politicians and business leaders promised to take a new path. Henceforth, they said, the environment would be weighed in every political, social and economic decision. Yet only two weeks after all the fine statements of purpose and government commitments were signed in Rio, the Group of Seven industrialized nations met in Munich and not a word was mentioned about the environment. The main topic was the global economy. The environment, it was said, had fallen off the list of public concerns, and environmentalism had been relegated to the status of a transitory fad.
David Suzuki (From Naked Ape to Superspecies: Humanity and the Global Eco-Crisis)
Where did we get the idea that older folks need to be given a “kid-free” environment with other “golden oldies,” and that men’s groups and women’s groups are more meaningful than the communion of saints?
Michael S. Horton (Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World)
The idea that we are buffeted by our environment, faith in artificial human edifices or indeed, the people around us, is a self-imposed and self-sustaining illusion. We are always free to do exactly as we please - as long as we're prepared to endure the consequences of our decisions - which most of us simply aren't.
Rob Parnell (The Writer & The Hero's Journey (The Easy Way to Write Book 2))
We are as busy as the next family, and we made it work. You can, too. As a friend of mine used to say, 'Life is about choices.' With every meal you consume, you make a choice, and that choice has consequences. If you choose to deal directly with a farmer, the food you put on your table could be sustaining the environment, fostering better health for you and your family, or working to preserve a way of life—the small family farm—that is endangered by the industrial food system. The resources are there for you, but you need to take the initiative and the responsibility.
J. Natalie Winch (Ditching the Drive-Thru)
When a reporter asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization, he replied, “I think it would be a wonderful idea.” I would say the same about human intelligence. If we are not intelligent, then what is? Here’s my crack at a definition: A truly intelligent species must have the ability to behave, collectively, in ways that ensure long-term survival. It must have learned to avoid self-destruction, anticipate and avoid natural disasters, intentionally and thoughtfully alter its environment and live sustainably within it.
David Grinspoon (Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life)
I believe the diet we currently feed our children is the reason we are seeing so many frequent infections and such high levels of allergies, autoimmune disease, and cancer in this country. Unfortunately, what we eat early in life has a more powerful effect on our eventual health (or ill health) than what we eat later in life. I have four children and understand the difficulties of trying to raise healthy children in today’s insane world. It seems we are in an environment in which parents are enthusiastically and purposely breeding a nation of sickly and diseased adults.
Joel Fuhrman (Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss)
The Framework of Life Deuteronomy 6:2 “Thus for the sake of Christ and his coming, natural life must be lived within the framework of certain definite rights and certain definite duties.” —ETHICS The Christian’s concern should never only be for the church and for God’s future kingdom, but also for natural life and the world. Our concerns should include good government, equal opportunity, justice, values that ennoble the human person, as well as concerns for our environment and the world’s resources. These concerns are not secular. Rather they are deeply spiritual, for without a sustainable world and cultural values based on freedom and justice, the message of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ would fall into a vacuum. Thought The God of the Bible is Creator as well as Redeemer. He is concerned about this life as much as He is concerned about eternal life.
Charles R. Ringma (Seize the Day -- with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A 365 Day Devotional (Designed for Influence))
This is why militarism is a feminist issue, why rape is an environmental issue, why environmental destruction is a peace issue.
Lierre Keith (The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability)
Part of the whole capitalist ethic is that the only thing that matters is how much money you make tomorrow: that's the crucial value of the system, profit for tomorrow. Not just profit, but the bottom line has to look good tomorrow. And the result is that planning for the future, and any kind of regulatory apparatus that would sustain the environment for the long-term, become impossible―and that means the planet is going to go down the tubes very fast.
Noam Chomsky (Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky)
Destroying the joint means building a new system in which it is not OK to allow people to be marginalised, exploited and discriminated against, it's not OK to ignore the needs of future generations, it's not OK to wreck this extraordinary, beautiful, fragile planetary environment that sustains us - our Mother Earth.
Christine Milne (Destroying the Joint: Why Women Have to Change the World)
When I talk about kindness in business, a few people scoff. They say, “Steve Jobs and the leaders at Apple created a pressure-cooker environment but it produced category-defining products that people love and obsess over.” That is the point — the results are not worth the cost, because there is an alternative. The goal of TRM is to create a kind, sustainable, and fulfilling experience for everyone. Caring and a sense of purpose evoke better performance than pressure and fear. The idea that only obsessive egomaniacs can produce breakthroughs is nonsense. People are the most important resource for any business, and people — whether they are employees, vendors, or customers — respond best to kindness, respect, humility, and empathy. You never know what other people are going through in their lives. Many of us are under great stress, especially when business cycles shift and economic pressures build. Others are struggling in relationships. When everyone feels valued and heard, they are more likely to show up fully and bring their best each day. Kindness is the alternative to the unnecessary “business is war” analogies that are not only tiresome but borderline offensive. It is the opposite of the “outcome justified the means” mentality that drives many entrepreneurs to consider sacrificing everything (including their morals) to build $100 million businesses in seven years. It’s success without the collateral damage. This aspect of TRM creates a healthy framework for daily interactions and long-term goals and helps people avoid burnout even when they put in heavy hours over long periods of time. We are all naturally optimistic, motivated to be better tomorrow than we are today. A kind organization understands that and leverages it. Your goal is to build a product that lasts, but to do that, you must also build an organization, a work environment, and a fabric of relationships that last too. People will remain engaged and focused on achievements when they are doing something meaningful that they care about in an organization that lets them live the way they want to live. “Caring and a sense of purpose evoke better performance than pressure and fear. The idea that only egomaniacs can produce breakthroughs is nonsense.
Brian de Haaff (Lovability: How to Build a Business That People Love and Be Happy Doing It)
Indeed, in many agricultural regions — including northern China, southern India (as well as the Punjab), Mexico, the western United States, parts of the Middle East, and elsewhere — water may be much more of a constraint to future food production than land, crop yield potential, or most other factors. Developing and distributing technologies and practices that improve water management is critical to sustaining the food production capability we now have, much less increasing it for the future. Water-short Israel is a front-runner in making its agricultural economy more water-efficient. Its current agricultural output could probably not have been achieved without steady advances in water management — including highly efficient drip irrigation, automated systems that apply water only when crops need it, and the setting of water allocations based on predetermined optimum water applications for each crop. The nation’s success is notable: between 1951 and 1990, Israeli farmers reduced the amount of water applied to each hectare of cropland by 36 percent. This allowed the irrigated area to more than triple with only a doubling of irrigation water use.37 Whether
Laurie Ann Mazur (Beyond the Numbers: A Reader on Population, Consumption and the Environment)
We do not have to look for diseases to explain why some people are not able to experience the full flowering of their potential. We have only to inquire what conditions sustain unfettered human development and what conditions hinder it. The answer to underdevelopment is development, and for development the appropriate conditions must exist. No matter how efficiently they are able to arouse the higher brain centers, medications offer only a partial solution to the problems posed by ADD. We may not be able to prescribe development directly, but we can promote an environment that makes development possible.
Gabor Maté (Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It)
It’s time to recognize that a broad, multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, multinational initiative, guided by a broader, more integrated and unified perspective, should be playing a central role in guiding our scientific agenda in addressing this issue and informing policy. We need a broad and more integrated scientific framework that encompasses a quantitative, predictive, mechanistic theory for understanding the relationship between human-engineered systems, both social and physical, and the “natural” environment—a framework I call a grand unified theory of sustainability. It’s time to initiate a massive international Manhattan-style project or Apollo-style program dedicated to addressing global sustainability in an integrated, systemic sense.1
Geoffrey West (Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies)
So small changes in the ambient temperature over relatively short periods of time that are not sufficiently long for adaptive processes to develop can lead to huge ecological and climatological effects. Some of these may be positive, but many will be catastrophic. Regardless, however, of the sign of the effect, significant changes are upon us, and we desperately need to understand their origins and consequences and forge strategies for adaptation and mitigation. The crucial question is not whether these effects are anthropogenic in origin because they almost certainly are, but rather to what extent they can be minimized without leading to rapid discontinuous changes in our physical and economic environment and ultimately to the potential collapse of the global socioeconomic fabric. Hence my bewilderment at those in the general public including political and corporate leaders who reject the cautionary exhortations of scientists, environmentalists, and others, and why I am continually baffled by their lack of action. Yes, we should all delight in and promote the huge successes and fruits of the free market system and of the role of human ingenuity and innovation, but we should also recognize the critical roles of energy and entropy and together act strategically to find
Geoffrey West (Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies)
Project managers operate in a global environment and work on projects characterized by cultural diversity. Team members often have diverse industry experience, know multiple languages, and sometimes operate in the “team language” that may be a different language or norm than their native one. The project management team should capitalize on cultural differences, focus on developing and sustaining the project team throughout the project life cycle, and promote working together interdependently in a climate of mutual trust. Developing the project team improves the people skills, technical competencies, and overall team environment and project performance.
Project Management Institute (A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (Pmbok Guide))
God can sustain us in a hostile environment, shielding us from abuse. God can also lead us through the valley of the shadow of death. It is His choice. God can exalt us before humanity. He can also invite us into His humility and shame. He gets to write the story. When we accept His divine denials as well as His divine approvals, we embrace His authorship of our lives.
Dick Brogden (Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus)
Did the Pilgrims on the Mayflower sit around Plymouth Rock waiting for a return ship to England? Absolutely not! They traveled to the New World to settle. And that’s what I hope we will be doing on Mars. When you go to Mars, you need to have made the decision that you’re there permanently. The more people we have there, the more it can become a sustainable environment. Except for very rare exceptions, the people who go to Mars shouldn’t be coming back. Once you get on the surface, you’re there, helping to build a colony.
Buzz Aldrin (No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon)
I became obsessed with looking for alternative ways to live on this planet in a sustainable way. I felt like I had to take control of my life so that I could simply live by my values. So many things that I saw in the world disgusted me. The way in which we who live in affluent countries travel, eat and make money all made me sick. It was like everything I saw myself do in my day-to-day life was detrimental to the environment in some way, and this caused me to fall into a depression unlike any I had ever experienced.
Curtis Allen Stone (The Urban Farmer: Growing Food for Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land)
A second important difference between the international environment that shaped Western states and the one that is now shaping post-colonial Middle Eastern states is that many in the latter category can trade petrodollars (or strategic rents) for Western arms, which artificially increases the ability of the rulers to coerce the ruled.[8] At the turn of the century, the Middle East already spent more of its GDP per capita on defence than any other region. Between 1999 and 2008, that spending increased by another 34%.[9] With this difference in mind, it is unrealistic to insist, as Western diplomats and leaders have done following the removal of Mubarak, that transitions from dictatorships to fledgling democracies must be orderly. This is particularly unrealistic given that the international weapons trade, the international reliance on oil and the Western tendency to view the region through a lens of counter-terrorism objectives have all helped to sustain these regimes, but cannot realistically be altered by those who take to the street in protest.
Sarah Phillips (Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis (Adelphi))