Consumption Quotes - Page 6

• The industrial civilisation is based on the consumption of energy resources that are inherently limited in quantity and that are about to become scarce. When they do, competition for what remains will trigger dramatic economic and geopolitical events; in the end, it may be impossible for even a single nation to sustain industrialism as we have know it in the twentieth century.

  Richard Heinberg

  Competition, Environmental, Energy

  Richard Heinberg (2003). “The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies”, New Society Pub

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• We need to move away from crass, consumption-driven materialism by de-materialising status

  Jonathon Porritt

  Moving, Needs, Materialism

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• Far from being a drag on growth, making our energy sources more sustainable, our energy consumption more efficient, and our economy more resilient to energy price shocks - those things are a vital part of the growth and wealth that we need

  David Cameron

  Growth, Energy, Needs

  Prime Minister’s address at the launch of the Department of Energy and Climate Change's (DECC) new Energy Efficiency Mission, February, 2013.

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• The 20th Century approach to economics, resource depletion and over-consumption means we boom and bust until we bust more than we boom; that is precisely what is happening. In a low growth economy, the true meaning of resource efficiency in business and in everything we do is essential

  Phil Harding

  Mean, Growth, Essentials

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• We are living as if we had three planets' worth of resources to live with rather than just one. We need to cut by about two-thirds our ecological footprint. For that we need one planet farming as well as one planet living - one planet farming which minimises the impact on the environment of food production and consumption, and which maximises its contribution to renewal of the natural environment

  David Miliband

  Cutting, Impact, Two

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• If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is plausible to decrease waste, to make better use of stocks available, and to develop substitutes. But what about the appetite itself? The major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialised countries

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Country, Deterioration, Use

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• Economics and a reliance on science and technology to solve our problems has led to an unsustainable situation where continued growth in consumption is required for governments and business to be considered successful. This is a form of insanity. Economics is at the heart of our destructive ways and our faith in it has blinded us

  David Suzuki

  Heart, Successful, Technology

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• Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste.

  George Perkins Marsh

  Science, Men, Long

  George Perkins Marsh (1864). “Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action”, p.35, New York : C. Scribner

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• There is mounting concern worldwide over the consumption of alcohol. The U.S. government estimates that 10.6 million adults are alcoholics and that one family in four is troubled by alcohol. It is a factor in half of all the nation's traffic deaths.

  Russell M. Nelson

  Government, Alcohol, Adults

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• The myth of unending consumption has taken the place of the belief in life everlasting.

  Ivan Illich

  Taken, Belief, Unending

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• Today, when death and old age are increasingly concealed behind euphemisms and comforting baby talk, and life is threatened with being smothered in the mass consumption of hypnotic mechanized vulgarity, the need to confront man with the reality of his situation is greater than ever. For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions - and to laugh at it.

  Martin Esslin

  Baby, Lying, Reality

  Martin Esslin (2009). “The Theatre of the Absurd”, p.429, Vintage

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• One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Wish, Neighbor

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1998). “The Affluent Society”, p.126, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When the average American consumes 43 times as much as the average African, we've got to think that consumption is an issue. It's not just about population.

  Jason W Clay

  Motivation, Inspiration, Thinking

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• No production without a need. But consumption reproduces the need.

  Karl Marx

  Needs, Productions

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1987). “Karl Marx Frederick Engels: Collected Works 1857-61”, International Pub

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• It seems to me as natural and necessary to keep notes, however brief, of one's reading, as logs of voyages or photographs of one's travels. For memory, in most of us, is a liar with galloping consumption.

  F. L. Lucas

  Memories, Liars, Reading

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• Make Money a CENTRAL priority.  This has nothing to do with greed and consumption and everything to do with life force and power.

  Danielle LaPorte

  Priorities, Greed, Making Money

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• ...our societies appear to be intent on immediate consumption rather than on investment for the future. We are piling up enormous debts and exploiting the natural environment in a manner which suggests that we have no real sense of any worthwhile future. Just as a society which believes in the future saves in the present in order to invest in the future, so a society without belief spends everything now and piles up debts for future generations to settle. "Spend now and someone else will pay later."

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Real, Believe, Future

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• We think of cannabis as a drug, in accordance with international opinions. This means that even consuming small amounts can lead to very severe dependence. With alcohol or cigarettes however, sensibly limited consumption does not bear the risk of immediate addictiveness as this is the case with cannabis according to our opinion. With alcohol there surely is an element of a tradition. However, enjoyed in moderation, as supplement to a meal for example, alcohol is not something that causes immediate dependence. Still, there is a great need for prevention and information in this matter.

  Angela Merkel

  Mean, Marijuana, Thinking

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• The problems to be faced are vast and complex, but come down to this: 6.6 billion people are breeding exponentially. The process of fulfilling their wants and needs is stripping earth of its biotic capacity to produce life; a climactic burst of consumption by a single species is overwhelming the skies, earth, waters, and fauna.

  Paul Hawken

  Sky, People, Water

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• I am now being criticized (by the opposition) for being irresponsible for saying `I will not raise the consumption tax rate while I am in office,' ... But, when my successor does raise the consumption tax rate, it will not be simply a matter of being irresponsible. He will be criticized for raising the tax.

  Junichiro Koizumi

  Office, Doe, Matter

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• Remembrance of our kiss brings not your lips nor mine to mind. The flesh can only envy consumption so divine.

  Vanna Bonta

  Love, Sex, Kissing

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• Recycling is more expensive for communities than it needs to be, partly because traditional recycling tries to force materials into more lifetimes than they are designed for - a complicated and messy conversion, and one that itself expends energy and resources. Very few objects of modern consumption were designed with recycling in mind. If the process is truly to save money and materials, products must be designed from the very beginning to be recycled or even "upcycled" - a term we use to describe the return to industrial systems of materials with improved, rather than degraded, quality.

  William McDonough

  Community, Mind, Trying

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• Living in an orgy of unrestrained consumption and economic growth accompanied by population expansion that ignores the carrying capacity of local environments will lead to disaster

  Phil Harding

  Growth, Expansion, Population

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• It is no contradiction - the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today's economy is to raise consumption by major reduction ofindividualincometaxrates.

  John F. Kennedy

  Important, Today, Investment

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• Tailoring the facts to fit one's theory constitutes neither good science nor good journalism. Rather, it is intellectually dishonest and, when published for consumption by a mass audience, adds up to propaganda.

  Ward Churchill

  Add, Facts, Journalism

  Ward Churchill (1995). “Since predator came: notes from the struggle for American Indian liberation”, Artemis Communications Ltd

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