Sustainability Quotes - Page 8

• Now comes the threat of climate crisis - a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

  Al Gore

  Real, Fate, Challenges

  Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, delivered 10 December 2007, Oslo, Norway

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• No institutions in modern society are better equipped to catalyze the necessary transition to a sustainable world than colleges and universities. They have access to the leaders of tomorrow and the leaders of today. What they do matters to the wider public.

  David W. Orr

  College, Leaders Of Tomorrow, Environmental

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• No individual life is an end in itself. One can live fully only by participating fully in the succession of the generations, in death as well as in life. Some would say (and I am one of them) that we can live fully only by making ourselves answerable to the claims of eternity as to those of time.

  Wendell Berry

  Environmental, Generations, Life Is

  Wendell Berry (2001). “Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition”, Counterpoint Press

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• Sustainability at Nike means being laser-focused on evolving our business model to deliver profitable growth while leveraging the efficiencies of lean manufacturing, minimizing our environmental impact and using the tools available to us to bring about positive change across our entire supply chain.

  Mark Parker

  Nike, Mean, Impact

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• Love in truth-caritas in veritate-is a great challenge for the Church in a world that is becoming progressively and pervasively globalized. The risk for our time is that the de facto interdependence of people and nations is not matched by ethical interaction of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development. Only in charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Light, People, Giving

  Pope Benedict XVI (2009). “Charity in Truth”, p.18, Ignatius Press

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• There can be no solution to the challenge of climate change that is not global. But if we can come together in partnership, we can transform today's challenge into tomorrow's opportunity - an opportunity for green growth and sustainable prosperity... we also need a strong bottom-up push from academics and opinion-shapers such as you. Universities such as yours are founts of ideas and innovation. They are furnaces of innovation and entrepreneurship. So, send forth this word.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Strong, Opportunity, Ideas

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• It is so important not to let ourselves off the hook or to become apathetic or cynical by telling ourselves that nothing works or makes a difference. Every day, light your small candle.... The inaction and actions of many human beings over a long time contributed to the crises our children face, and it is the action and struggle of many human beings over time that will solve them-with God's help. So every day, light your small candle.

  Marian Wright Edelman

  Children, Struggle, Light

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• It is our duty to preserve huge tracts of land in something resembling its native condition. The biological interactions necessary to insure the continuities of life are astonishingly complex, and cannot take place in islands of semiwilderness like the national parks.

  William Kittredge

  Islands, Continuity Of Life, Environmental

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• It is much easier to make intellectual messes than it is to clarify complicated issues, especially when real solutions would challenge the status quo and require much careful thought across many fields of knowledge. Problems of climatic change, biotic impoverishment, population growth, and the choices to be made by various technologies and the transition to a sustainable and decent society with an economy that works over the long-term are difficult, complex, and intertwined problems with many possible answers.

  David W. Orr

  Real, Technology, Issues

  David W. Orr (2012). “The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment in an Age of Terror”, p.53, Island Press

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• Nuclear man is the man who realizes that his creative powers hold the potential for self-destruction. He sees that in this nuclear age vast new industrial complexes enable man to produce in one hour that which he labored over for years in the past, but he also realizes that these same industries have disturbed the ecological balance and, through air and noise pollution, have contaminated his own milieu.

  Henri Nouwen

  Past, Men, Air

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• To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Fighting, Men, Rivers

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1967). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966”, p.202, Best Books on

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• If the life-supporting ecosystems of the planet are to survive for future generations, the consumer society will have to dramatically curtail its use of resources - partly by shifting to high-quality, low-input durable goods and partly by seeking fulfillment through leisure, human relationships, and other nonmaterial avenues. We in the consumer society will have to live a technologically sophisticated version of the life-style currently practiced lower on the economic ladder.

  Alan Thein Durning

  Ecosystems, Style, Environmental

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• As more and more people wake up to the fact that further growth does not necessarily bring improvements in quality of life (and often exactly the opposite), sustainability is going to become one of the key characteristics with which places want to be associated.

  Jonathon Porritt

  Business, Opposites, Keys

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• If humanity today succeeds in combining the new scientific capacities with a strong ethical dimension, it will certainly be able to promote the environment as a home and a resource for...all...and will be able to eliminate the causes of pollution and to guarantee adequate conditions of hygiene and health for small groups as well as for vast human settlements.

  Pope John Paul II

  Strong, Home, Hygiene

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• I want to think I deserve what I get. I don't want to consider how vastly I am overly rewarded. I don't want to consider the injustices around me. I don't want any encounters with the disenfranchised. I want to say it's not my fault. But it is, it's yours and mine, and ours. We'd better figure out ways to spread some equity around if we want to go on living in a society that is at least semi-functional. It's a fundamental responsibility, to ourselves.

  William Kittredge

  Responsibility, Thinking, Environmental

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• I often quote an African proverb that says: "The world is not ours, the earth is not ours, It's a treasure we hold in trust for future generations." And I often hope we will be worthy of that trust.

  Kofi Annan

  Environmental, Generations, World

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• I used to think that my job didn't have anything to do with the environment. Then I realized that my job, as well as everyone else's job, impacts the environment in some way. And now advocating for sustainability has become my No. 1 responsibility.

  Ray Anderson

  Jobs, Business, Work

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• I always make the business case for sustainability. It's so compelling. Our costs are down, not up. Our products are the best they have ever been. Our people are motivated by a shared higher purpose - esprit de corps to die for. And the goodwill in the marketplace - it's just been astonishing.

  Ray Anderson

  Business, People, Esprit De Corps

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• We are taught to reinvent ourselves all the time. And nature is teaching us. What is necessary for us to do to create sustainability? There's a shift that has to take hold in our thinking, and it's hard to know when it's going to click for the larger percentage of us.

  Horst Rechelbacher

  Teaching, Thinking, Taught

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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• A single, one-dimensional way of thinking has created a monoculture of the mind. And the monoculture of the mind has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the root of why we have pitted equity against ecology and sustainability against justice.

  Vandana Shiva

  Thinking, Self, Roots

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• When a child is starving, a family may not be able to think about long-term sustainability or damage to ecosystems that support endangered species.

  Helene D. Gayle

  Children, Thinking, Ecosystems

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Everyone is talking about sustainability and resilience, yet all that knowledge is thrown in the bin. [Lagos is] a unique case, but also a test case. It's unbelievably unique, but also it's now considered with a number of really generic opinions, generic solution, generic expectations.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Unique, Talking, Numbers

  "'Lagos shows how a city can recover from a deep, deep pit': Rem Koolhaas talks to Kunlé Adeyemi". Interview with Chris Michael, www.theguardian.com. February 26, 2016.

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• The kind of capitalism we are seeing today under this expansion of property into living resources is a whole, new, different phase of capitalism. It is totally inconsistent with democracy as well as with sustainability. What we have is capital working on a global scale, totally uprooted, with accountability nowhere, with responsibility nowhere, and with rights everywhere. This new capital, with absolute freedom and no accountability, is structurally anti-life, anti-freedom.

  Vandana Shiva

  Responsibility, Rights, Accountability

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

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• Many years ago, I started a foundation [Wayuu Taya Foundation] to help improve the life of Latin American indigenous people, providing them with food, medical attention, education, and also focusing on sustainability.

  Patricia Velasquez

  Latin, Years, People

  "Patricia Velasquez - Supermodel, Actor and Author". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, nicheandnook.com. October 3, 2015.

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• I'm afraid what we are building today will not have the same impact and sustainability of the architecture of a 100, 500 or 1,000 years ago. The buildings of those days were miracles. We don't perform such miracles today. So we should be a little more modest. For my part, I'll be glad to show one of my buildings one day to my grandchildren and say: I'm proud of that.

  Zhang Xin

  Grandchildren, Impact, Years

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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