We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.
Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.
Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.
Also, it is interesting that developing countries, with China and India perhaps in the lead, where the future of the global environment will be decided are now on board with the case for sustainable development.
We need what I have often called an ecological approach to the management of these resources and we do not have that now. We have the inertia of past habits, unsustainable habits.
I am a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.
The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments.
Ted Turner is still a leader. And he sets a great example. His ability financially has been reduced, but his influence and his example still is an important asset to the whole environmental movement.
Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?
After all, sustainability means running the global environment – Earth Inc. – like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.
Occupy World Street is a masterpiece which deserves to get wide circulation and commitment by world leaders.
I am President of the UN created University for Peace, which has a strong commitment to the relationship between peace, security and the environment. I meet with young people around the world and I always come away enthused and encouraged.
A citizen of an advanced industrialized nation consumes in six months the energy and raw materials that have to last the citizen of a developing country his entire lifetime.
Toyota was the first to put a commercial fuel cell powered car on the road, and I have no doubt that Toyota will continue to be in the front lines in the development of competitive fuel cell vehicles.
What pleases me most is that sustainable development is on almost everybody’s agenda now.
Don’t accept that you can’t make a difference. Because if you can’t make a difference, you won’t make a difference, and if you put a multiplier on that we will continue on an unsustainable pathway.
It is the responsibility of each human being today to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light. We must therefore transform our attitudes, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature.
If you want to maintain a sustainable supply of fish you have to farm the fish, rather than mine them. So putting your money into fishing fleets that are going to exacerbate the problem by over-fishing is not the way to preserve the underlying asset.
So, what we do as individuals matters. It adds up.
In addition to this, they already have a fuel cell car on the road in Japan. It is subsidized from within the corporation because they are still at a high cost.