#inability

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. ↗

— Maurice Strong

#accounts #after #asset #capital #corporation

Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you? ↗

— Yann Martel

#old-age #rudeness #study-in-character #age

Why does no one speak of the cultural advantages of the country? For example, is a well groomed, ecologically kept, sustainably fertile farm any less cultural, any less artful, than paintings of fat angels on church ceilings? ↗

— Gene Logsdon

#country-life #culture #farming #sustainability #art

What art should do, I think, is advance the generation into the next era. It should be one step ahead of the ordinary, ahead of what is already known. Art is what pulls on the next age. I’m not saying that my art is that, but that it would be good if it could be. ↗

— Andy Couturier

#community #environmentalism #green #japan #sustainability

Can we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the love of God? Perhaps some of us would like to think so, but in fact this destruction is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations. (from 'Compromise, Hell!' published in the November/December 2004 issue of ORION magazine) ↗

— Wendell Berry

#economics #lies #sustainability #beauty

Inaction is no longer acceptable. ↗

— Eric Lowitt

#inaction #sustainability #business

People 'over-produce' pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it. ↗

— Ha-Joon Chang

#green #sustainability #change

That was the awakening, really; it dawned on me that this wasn't really very fair on anyone. On her. On me. On Sienna. But I wasn't willing to change anything, either. I was fiercely protective of my friendship with Sienna. I had fought for it, against my true feelings, for years. I had battled so hard to suppress my feelings, and succeeded. I could never let her go. ↗

— Jessica Thompson

#long-term-friendship #change

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

#ecology #economics #environment #sustainability #dreams

Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps full the dinner pail is valuable. ↗

— George Washington Carver

#sustainability #work #food