- ‘The old world is ending, and the new, hesitantly, is emerging. It’s a painful process, and it’s going to get a lot more painful before it starts getting better. This is not good news for those who believe that the threats to today’s dominant model of progress can still be resolved with a few minor economic and political fixes. But it is good news for all those who know that we could be doing something so much more effective for all those who know that we could be doing something so much more effective in terms of fashioning better lives for the vast majority of people all around the world.’ (xix)
- ‘Anything vaguely resembling ‘business-as-usual’ is no less than a death warrant for the highest levels of contemporary civilization.’ (xix)
- ‘This is America we’re talking about, the nation that has made a bigger difference to the world’s ‘poor and needy’, and offered more hope to the world’s disenfranchised, than any other country on Earth. Tragically, however, the US US
- ‘In terms of what we would need to do to restore the Earth’s basic life-support systems (soils, forests, fresh water, grazing land, biodiversity, fisheries, etc.), this is in fact much more manageable than most people realize, with an asking price that is probably no more than US$100 bullion, according to Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington.’ (xx-xxi)
- ‘For many business people over the last fifteen years, this has positioned sustainable development in the wrong psychological boxes – the ones labeled ‘regulation and red tape’, ‘constraint on business’, increased costs’ or ‘high risks’. Only during the last few years have we seen the other boxes – labeled ‘opportunity’, ‘innovation’, ‘increased market share’ and ‘stronger brands’ – opening up in such a way as to provide wealth creators with an entirely different and far more positive proposition. Given the dominant role of business in the world today, this particular mindset transition is critically important: however necessary in today’s world unless the business community can be persuaded and inspired to get behind it.’ (xxiii)
- ‘The politics of sustainability makes change necessary: we literally don’t have any choice unless we want to see the natural world collapse around us.’ (xxiv)
- ‘Wouldn’t it be great if any book dealing with sustainability could open with a resolutely upbeat account of the state of the planet? But that’s just not possible.’ (3)
- ‘As far back as 1930, John Maynard Keynes pointed out that our absolute wants (those which we feel regardless of our relative position in society) are limited and finite; it is our relative wants (those which we feel in comparison to what others have in society) that are apparently insatiable – and it is these relative wants that keep the wheels of our growth machine spinning merrily away.’ (9)
- ‘In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore (2006) graphically captures the stark disparity between what scientists have concluded and what media commentators make of these conclusions:
'Number of peer-reviewed articles dealing with climate change published in scientific journals during the previous 10 years: 928
Percentage of articles in doubt as to the cause of global warming: 0%
Articles in the US
Percentage of articles in doubt as to the cause of global warming: 53%’ ’ (14)
- ‘The [IPCC] report estimates the cost of action in addressing climate change at around 1 per cent of global GDP every year; ‘business as usual’ will result in economic damage of between 5 per cent and 20 per cent of global GDP every year, and Stern comments that ‘the appropriate estimate is likely to be in the upper part of this range’. In terms of getting one’s head around what this actually means, he contrasts that level of damage with disruption on a scale similar to that associated with the two world wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century.’ (15)
- ‘The simple fact is that Americans remain strikingly less concerned about climate change than their European counterparts: roughly 50 per cent of Americans don’t think it’s a problem, including 75 per cent of Republicans, and only 40 per cent reckon it’s caused by man-made emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases – all of which reinforces the natural caution and conservatism that even the Democrats have shown on climate change until now.’ (17)
- ‘No hair-shirt asceticism, but far less frenetic consumerism, less shopping for the sake of shopping, less conspicuous consumption, less waste, less keeping up with the Joneses – with more time, therefore, to do more of the things that people today always claim to regret not having the time to do.’ (30)
- ‘People who are better off will almost certainly be paying higher taxes than they do today. Two of the cornerstones of a sustainable economy are increased efficiency (in terms of resources, energy, raw materials, value for money, capital allocation and so on) and increased social justice. No serious definition of the word ‘sustainable’ could possibly allow for a continuation of the grotesque disparities in wealth that we see today, both within countries and between countries.’ (30)
- ‘Change will not come by threatening people with yet more ecological doom and gloom. The necessary changes have also to be seen as desirable changes: good for people, their health and their quality of life – and not just good for the prospects of future generations…This means working with the grain of markets and free choice, not against it. It means embracing capitalism as the only overarching system capable of achieving any kind of reconciliation between ecological sustainability, on the one hand, and the pursuit of prosperity and personal wellbeing on the other.’ (31)
- ‘Development requires the removal of major sources of freedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or over-activity of repressive states.’ Sen (35)
- ‘Sustainability should certainly not be confused with some ‘ideal state’ where absolutely no damage is done to humans or nature; it simply means that human society can continue to exist because ecosystems are able to go on providing life-sustaining services (such as clean water, soil fertility, climate regulation and so on) and that society is capable of organizing itself so that people have the opportunity to fulfill their needs.’ (37-38)
- ‘For renewable resources, harvesting rates should not exceed regeneration rates (sustained yield); waste emissions should not exceed the assimilative capacities of the receiving environment. Non-renewable resources should be exploited no faster than the rate of creation of renewable substitutes.’ Daly (38)
- ‘The vast majority of organizations addressing the social agenda (poverty, justice, human rights, health and so on) once had little if any time for thinking about the environment, consigning it to the category of nice-to-do things for the affluent middle classes, while real progressives got on with the serious business of making a better world for humankind. Over the years, strenuous efforts have been made to bring ‘the environmental’ and ‘the social’ aspects of sustainable development into more effective organizational forms, but often with little real impact. That’s now changing: cross-sectoral ‘coalitions of the willing’ are now much more evident.’ (40)
- ‘If you want to keep your guns, your property, your children and your God, then sustainable development is your enemy!’ American Policy Center
- ‘Adam Smith was the author not only of the Wealth of Nations, but of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he assert time after time that self-interest has to be pursued by ‘people of conscience’, informed by their capacity for moral awareness.’ (43)
- ‘[Smith] supported state intervention to promote fair competition (‘people of the same trade seldom meet together…but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public’), and backed universal, public education.’ (43)
- ‘Opinion polls in the US regularly indicate that at least one quarter of all Americans think they are living ‘in the end times’… According to a Gallup US
- ‘Tens of millions of Americans who are victims of the deprivation of meaning in their lives and of the effects of selfishness and materialism in their families began to respond to a Religious Right that could articulate the pain that they were feeling. While the Left seemed totally tone deaf to the spiritual crisis, and assumed that these Americans were moving to the Right because of sexism, homophobia, racism or just plain stupidity, we had discovered that they were attracted to the Right because it spoke to their well-founded fears about the loss of love and of meaning in daily life.’ Lerner (45)
- ‘In February 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued an unprecedented report signed by 60 world-renowned scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, asserting that the scope and scale of ‘the manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation of science by the Bush Administration is unprecedented.’ ’ (48)
- ‘At the heart of the growth conundrum is a misconception so gross that it makes a complete nonsense of the way in which the vast majority of economists and politicians think about economic growth. For them, the global economy is the system, within which all else (human society, the planet and all other species) can be subsumed as subsystems.’ (56)
- ‘The economy is, in the first instance, a subsystem of human society (the economy may well have appropriated more and more of that broader societal territory, but there is still a lot more to human life than the economic activity we engage in), which is itself, in the second instance, a subsystem of the totality of life on Earth (the biosphere). And no subsystem can expand beyond the capacity of the total system of which it is a part…That may sound so obvious as to insult the reader’s intelligence. Yet, despite the re-uttering of it over the years by scores of ‘maverick’ economists and environmentalists, it remains steadfastly outside the canon of what passes for conventional neo-classical economics, with increasingly disturbing consequences.’ (56)
- ‘A growth rate of 3 per cent per annum means a doubling of the quantity involved in just 23 years.’ (59)
- ‘The truth of the matter is that economic growth, like the process of globalization, has become fixed in people’s minds as a given – indeed, ‘a force beyond human control’. As Clive Hamilton’s (2003) wonderfully provocative Growth Fetish makes clear, governments of all persuasions are now mesmerized by economic growth. Not only has it become synonymous with the notion of progress itself, but ‘citizens’ have gradually been transmuted into ‘consumers’, so that all human desire and aspiration can be rendered in terms of the products and services that they can choose to consume.’ (60)
- ‘Surveys of national wellbeing and satisfaction levels show that when a nation moves from developing to developed status, there is, at first, a significant increase in wellbeing. But once nations reach the level where most or all of their citizens’ basic needs are being met, increases in relative affluence beyond that point do not make much of a difference.’ (61)
- ‘When people already possess all the goods and services they need, growth can be stimulated only by discovering new needs.’ Monbiot (64) - ‘Modern capitalism will flourish as long as what people desire outpaces what they have…Economic growth does not create happiness: unhappiness sustains economic growth. Thus, discontent must be continually fomented if modern consumer capitalism is to survive. This explains the indispensable role of the advertising industry.’ Hamilton
- ‘[James] points out that suicide rates have increased markedly since 1950, as have levels of violence against the person, alcoholism, drug addiction and substance abuse – all part and parcel of a clear increase in mental illness generally. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health problems are fast becoming the number one health issue of the 21st century, with one in ten people suffering at any point in time, and one in four suffering at some point in their lives.’ (65)
- ‘In February 2007, this critique was powerfully reinforced by a report from UNICEF comparing the wellbeing of children and adolescents in 21 developed countries (UNICEF, 2007). The survey was based on data gathered together in six main areas: financial wellbeing, health and safety; educational wellbeing; family and peer relationships; social behavior and risk; and own perception of wellbeing. The Netherlands Sweden Denmark Finland US UK
- ‘From a straight growth-driven, GDP-measured perspective, such astonishing levels of emotional distress may not be a huge problem. The economy, after all, continues to prosper. The more we spend on the National Health Service, the bigger our GNP. The more people spend making themselves ill, fat, unhappy and unhealthy in the first place, the more they can then spend trying to make themselves thin, happy and healthy all over again – all of which keeps the wheels of the economy whirring merrily away.’ (69)
- ‘If we measure our progress in terms of our happiness or evaluation of our own wellbeing, we have not advanced for half a century.’ Reeves (69)
- ‘If we measure our progress in terms of our happiness or evaluation of our own wellbeing, we have not advanced for half a century.’ Reeves (69)
- ‘With the sole exception of sugarcane in tropical countries, the business of converting different crops into ethanol has thrown up an ever more daunting array of sustainability problems. Put at its simplest, we’re back to the same old business of calculating carbon balances: when you look at the CO2 intensity of the production cycle for these crops (in terms of fertilizers, pesticides, drilling, harvesting, transporting, processing and so on), there’s often not that much difference between a conventional barrel of oil equivalent and a bio-barrel.’ (78)
- ‘It’s clear that [biofuel] targets cannot possibly be met without massive imports of palm oil from Indonesia Malaysia Indonesia Indonesia
- ‘In the US Mexico US US
- ‘It’s only in China that food security is still seen as a huge political priority, with memories of the terrible famines that struck China in the 20th century still very live. Indeed, one of the reasons why Chinese politicians are so focused on climate change is because of its potential impact on agricultural productivity.’ (82)
- ‘The fact that one of the hijacked planes in the 11 September 2001 terrorist outrage was, by all accounts, headed for a nuclear reactor before it crashed has heightened concerns about the vulnerability of nuclear facilities in such an insecure world.’ (82)
- ‘It is critical that politicians the world over stop flirting with renewables as ‘an interesting little niche’ and start investing in them as if our very future depended upon them.’ (83)
- ‘if, as politically active environmentalist or campaigner for social justice, one’s answer to the question is that they are, indeed, mutually exclusive (that capitalism, in whichever manifestation, is in its very essence inherently unsustainable), then one’s only morally consistent response is to devote one’s political activities to the overthrow of capitalism.’ (87)
- ‘The situation in the US is even more extreme: a child born into a poor family has a 1 per cent chance of growing up to become one of the richest 5 per cent, while a child born into a wealthy family has a 22 per cent change. American citizens, however, don’t see it like this, with surveys regularly showing more than 75 per cent of Americans believing that all it takes to become rich is hard work.’ (89)
- ‘With prices set in such a way as to reflect the true cost of the use of energy and resources, competition between producers on a so-called level playing field is not just compatible with the pursuit of sustainability, but a necessary aspect of it.’ (90-91)
- ‘The corporation can neither recognize nor act upon moral reasons to refrain from harming others. Nothing in its legal makeup limits what it can do to others in pursuit of its selfish ends, and it is compelled to cause harm where the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs. Only pragmatic concern for its own interests in the laws of the land constrain the corporation’s predatory instincts, and often that is not enough to stop it from destroying lives, damaging communities and endangering the planet as a whole. These tend to be viewed as inevitable and acceptable consequences of corporate activity – ‘externalities’ in the coolly technical jargon of economics.’ Bakan (92)
- ‘Total throughput in the global economy doubles every 25 to 30 years. So even though the combination of huge population growth and exploding economies has turned an all but empty world into an all but full world in little more than a couple of centuries, unfettered expansionism is still the name of the game.’ (98)
- ‘Although globalization as a phenomenon is now widely discussed, with literally hundreds of books exploring its every aspect, one hears very little by comparison of the phenomenon of localization. Most mainstream economists, business people and even political parties (despite all their cringe-worthy lip-service to decentralization) are contemptuous of the idea of ‘local solutions to global problems’.’ (99)
- ‘Rather than trickling down, many of the benefits of the global economy as it is structured today continue to gush upwards.’ (100)
- ‘This, in essence, is the triumph of modern capitalism: seducing at least two generations of politicians and power-brokers that increased GDP and increased per capita consumption are the only routes to meeting people’s needs.’ (101)
- ‘When happiness of life satisfaction is rated, Denmark
- ‘The incorrect valuation of resources and inadequate levels of regulation to create a level playing field conducive to sustainability.’ (103)
- ‘As shown in the report from the Real World Coalition, From Here to Sustainability…neither the US nor the UK have yet come close with the meeting of basic human needs or social justice.’ (105)
- ‘For most people, these shocking phenomena are still seen as ‘unfortunate side effects’, the dark side of a process of development and investment in some of the world’s poorest countries that they imagine to be largely benign. A growing number of commentators are keen to dispel that illusion, and some have gone so far as to argue that today’s inequality is a direct consequence of the way in which the global economy has gradually become a tool of US foreign policy with its hegemonistic intentions.’ (105)
- ‘The modern slave trader assures himself (or herself) that the desperate people are better off earning $1 a day than no dollars at all, and that they are receiving the opportunity to become integrated into the larger world community.’ Perkins (105)
- ‘The US
- ‘The Japanese have high incomes, more savings, longer lives and better health than Americans. And they work less hard to achieve it. The Japanese also pay lower taxes – less than 12 per cent of their incomes compared to more than 16 per cent. And they get more services. Healthcare is virtually free. More Japanese take overseas holidays than Americans. And they still manage to save money. While American workers spent more than they earned in 2000, the average Japanese family put away 13 per cent of its pay check in savings. […] Every Japanese household has a color television, nine in ten have a microwave oven, 85 per cent have a car, 40 per cent a computer and 39 per cent a set of golf clubs. The rate of heart attacks is one third of that in the US
- ‘Each of the different fundamental characteristics of capitalism covered above requires a great deal more analysis from a sustainability-driven perspective before any definitive judgment can be made about the compatibility of capitalism and sustainability.’ (107)
- ‘No capitalist system is likely to value nature properly unless it is framed by a set of deeper, wiser precepts and spiritual values, where the value of something is not exclusively determined by its price.’ (108)
- ‘If this new movement is ‘anti’ anything, it is anti-corporate, opposing the logic that what is good for business – less regulation, more mobility, more access – will trickle down into good news for everybody else. By focusing on global corporations and their impact around the world, this activist network is fast becoming the most internationally minded, globally linked movement ever seen. When protesters shout about the evils of globalization, most are not calling for a return to narrow nationalism, but for the borders of globalization to be expanded, for trade to be linked to labor rights, environmental protection and democracy. This network is as global as capitalism itself.’ Klein (112)
- ‘It is actually the defense of democracy and freedom that lies at the heart of the ‘anti-globalization’ movement, just as the evangelists of increased liberalization claim that it is the defense of democracy and freedom that drives their own passion for free markets and global trade.’ (112)
- ‘The idea that the only route to democratization is via the imposition of corporate-led, US-driven globalization is perverse – and extraordinarily dangerous from the perspective of future peace. Roger Scruton…provides some deeply disturbing insights into the potential consequences of this geopolitical stand-off. He argues that Islam and the West have completely diverging views on citizenship, community, law and the role of religion in the lives of both citizens and states. From that perspective, the forward momentum of Western, corporate-led globalization is highly threatening to Islamic values, culture and morality, and the insensitivity of the West to this perceived threat is much resented.’ (113)
- ‘The IMF’s reviled SAPs [Structural Adjustment Programs] have now been replaced with poverty reduction strategies; but many campaigners have yet to be persuaded that much has changed in practice. The World Bank likes to make out that it is now the much friendlier face of those bodies promoting the Washington Consensus. Under the leadership of James Wolfensohn, it tried to recast itself as a global poverty elimination campaign, but with very mixed results. It is reckoned to have paid out $3 to Western companies (to help delivery in the developing world) for every $1 received in aid in developing countries.’ (115)
- ‘Economists have estimated that reducing the worst remaining trade barriers could lead to huge income gains for developing countries – in excess of $100 billion a year. That could be as much as three times the total amount of official development assistance on offer.’ (116)
- ‘In 1960, the income gap between the fifth of the world’s people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest countries were 30:1. In 1990, the gap had widened to 60:1. By 1998, it had grown to 78:1. By 2004, it was close to 108:1. Looking at current trends, it is difficult to imagine the point at which this trend will eventually bottom out.’ (117-118)
- ‘If CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] can help, even on the margins, to mitigate those character traits, then we should do nothing to discourage that kind of engagement. But it is an illusion to think that responsibility for putting all this to rights lies predominantly with the companies themselves. If society wants companies to rebalance the respective interests of shareholders and other interested stakeholders (employees, local communities, environmental interests and so on), then it is society – through its governments – that must reframe their respective obligations. Governments, not companies, have the democratic mandate to intervene in order to shape market forces.’ (124)
- ‘No one government can act on its own, however – hence the call from NGOs…for a Global Convention on Corporate Accountability.’ (124)
- ‘In 2005, the US Border Patrol arrested more than a million people who had gained illegal entry into the US across the Rio Grande in Mexico. The huge defensive wall along that border is now being extended over another few hundred miles, but few people believe it will have any serious effects on deterring those whose desperation will make them take any risk to escape a lifetime of crushing poverty.’ (128)
- ‘What is at stake here is how fast that transition can be driven.’ (132)
- ‘At this point, environmentalists usually proffer the sackcloth and ashes, inviting people to contemplate a life of sober reflection, constant sacrifice and greatly reduced material wellbeing – and are a little taken aback when people rapidly decline the invitation. But what if that ‘offer’ was reworked – promising entry into the One Ton World [of large carbon emissions] on the basis of better value for money, lower electricity and gas bills, better food, less hassle in terms of getting to and from work, improved health, more jobs in the cutting-edge industries of the future, cleaner air, more convivial communities, more time at home or reconnecting with the natural world?’ (133)
- ‘[Sustainable capitalism] entails five separate ‘stocks’: natural, human, social, manufactured and financial.’ (138)
- ‘If there is any genuinely sustainable variant of capitalism out there, then it will need to work within the conceptual and linguistic conventions that people are now so familiar with. The concept of capital serves not only to explain that productive power of capitalism; it also provides the clearest means of explaining the conditions for its sustainability.’ (139)
- ‘In reality, there are only two sources of wealth in the world today: the wealth that flows from our use of the world’s resources and ecosystems (our natural capital), all powered by incoming solar radiation, and the wealth that flows from the use of our hands, brains and spirits (our human capital). All else – money, machines, institutions and so on – is derivative of these two primary sources of wealth.’ (141)
- ‘By 2002, China surpassed the US in annual consumption of grain, meat, coal, steel, fertilizer, cellular phones, TV sets, refrigerators, cement and aqua-cultured food…Average life expectancy in China in 1950 was just 35 years; by 2002, this had increased to 71 years. Again, no country in the world has ever been able to match that kind of net improvement in human wellbeing.’ (143)
- ‘Life expectancy [in China] has gone down over the last three years, predominantly because of air and water pollution, and the World Bank has calculated that pollution is costing China an annual 8 to 12 per cent of its $1.4 trillion GDP in terms of health bills, disaster relief, lost agricultural productivity and environmental cleanup.’ (144)
- ‘[The] miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace. Five of the ten most polluted cities worldwide are in China; acid rain is falling on one third of our territory; half of the water in China’s seven largest rivers is completely useless; a quarter of our citizens lack access to clean drinking water; a third of the urban population is breathing polluted air; less than a fifth of the rubbish in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner.’ Pan Yue, Chinese Deputy Environment Minister (144)
- ‘The prevalence of excess weight and obesity increased 28-fold between 1985 and 2000 in children aged 7 to 18.’ (144)
- ‘The fact that a substantial share of China US
- ‘Approximately half of all humans now live in cities; by 2040, it will be 80 per cent.’ (148)
- ‘An improved understanding of the importance of natural capital has to cascade all the way through to decisions made by national regulators and local planning authorities. The Five Capitals Framework [of social capitalism] is one in which a balance can be achieved between potential economic, environmental and social benefits, between the wealthy and the poor (both here in the UK
- ‘With about 90 per cent of production materials never becoming part of the final product, and 80 per cent of products discarded after single use, the opportunities are clear.’ Tony Blair (152)
- ‘Andy Balmford, of the Department of Zoology at Cambridge University, has been working away for many years to demonstrate just how good an economic bargain the protection of biodiversity really is. He reckons we already spend around $6 billion a year on conservation, but that we would need to increase that to around $27.5 billion to do the job properly (with up to 10 per cent of land area strictly protected, with half of that in special reserves) and provide proper compensation for those people ‘losing out’ in other ways through their land being used essentially for conservation.’ (157)
- ‘Environmentalists are regularly assaulted with the accusation that ‘you have to be rich to the green’, and that all ‘this environment stuff’ means noting to the billions of poor people struggling to improve their material standard of living all around the world, with no time to worry about ‘the luxury of a clean environment’. Given the vast majority of these people still depend directly upon natural resources – clean water, fertile soils and healthy forests – for their livelihoods, this is too absurd a charge to spend much time on.’ (159)
- ‘One study by the US Government found that a 10 per cent average increase in the educational level of employees led to an 8.6 per cent gain in total productivity. By contrast, a 10 per cent increase in investment in equipment increased productivity by only 3.4 per cent.’ (167)
- ‘The prevailing view suggests that a society can be said to have high stocks of social capital if it has:
- High levels of trust between people;
- High membership of civic organizations;
- High levels of volunteering and charitable giving;
- High levels of participation in politics, including membership of political parties;
- High levels of participation in religious groups; and
- High levels of informal socializing.’ (176)
- ‘States in America whose residents have high levels of informal socializing, volunteering, community groups and trust of others tend to have lower crime and relatively good schools, health facilities and government.’ (176)
- ‘Social capital is important because it may facilitate higher levels of GDP.’ (178)
- ‘For many people living in the cities of both rich and poor countries, crime (or fear of crime) is one of the most significant factors in a reduced quality of life. Higher levels of social capital acting both as a deterrent (before any crime is committed) and a support network (after a crime is committed) can make an enormous difference to people’s levels of wellbeing.’ (179)
- ‘Social capital is important because it may lead to better health.’ (180)
- ‘People who are socially connected tend to be healthier – often significantly so. More than a dozen long-term studies in Japan, Scandinavia and the US show that the chances of dying in a given year, no matter the cause, is two to five times greater for people who are isolated than for socially connected people. For example, one study found that in 1234 heart attack patients, the rate of a recurring attack within six months was nearly double for those living alone. And a Harvard study of health and mistrust in the US concluded that moving to a state with a high level of social connections from a state where the level is low would improve a person’s health almost as much as quitting smoking.’ Worldwatch Institute (180)
- ‘Three large spoonfuls of crude oil contain about the same amount of energy as eight hours of human manual labor, and when we fill our cars with gas…we’re pouring into the tank the energy equivalent of about two years of human labor!’ (186)
- ‘We’ll always be able to use a certain amount of fossil fuels every year (especially if we can learn to store away the carbon dioxide which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere), but we’ve already overloaded the system so badly that we need to bring down that ‘permissible quotient of fossil fuel usage’ as rapidly as we possibly can.’ (187)
- ‘[Stern] wasn’t just talking about the insane subsidies that OECD governments still hand out to their fossil fuel industries (to the tune of around $75 billion dollars ever year!), but about the systematic market failure caused by us not paying a realistic price for every ton of CO2 we emit into the atmosphere. It is this global, wholly illegitimate subsidy for all fossil fuels that totally distort today’s energy markets.’ (188)
- ‘People are beginning to talk about Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), a technology which has been operating successfully in the Mojave Desert in California for nearly 20 years. Large parabolic mirrors concentrate the solar radiation on an ‘absorber’ – a large tower or vessel which contains either water, gas or oil, and acts as a heat exchange generating steam to power a conventional steam turbine…Costs are already ‘manageable’ – the cost of producing the solar thermal equivalent of 1 barrel of oil is today about $50 (less than the current price of oil), and will fall dramatically as economies of scale kick back in in terms of the manufacture of all the different component parts.’ (189)
- ‘Claims that we simply can’t grow renewable energy businesses any faster than we’re already doing are simply lies – and it really doesn’t take long to work out who the principal [sic] beneficiaries of that institutionalized dishonesty are likely to be.’ (190)
- ‘A huge opportunity is being missed by the concentration on eco-efficiency, cost savings and ‘green premiums’ by most valuation efforts to date. The real business value of sustainability must come from the added value it generates for the particular company, from the ways in which it protects and develops that company’s strategic assets, and from the competitive advantage that flows from the responsible use of all five stocks of capital.’ (205)
- ‘The citizens’ income is based on the principle that every man, woman and child should receive a weekly sum sufficient to cover the basic needs of food, fuel, clothing and accommodation. It will be tax-free, paid to individuals and unconditional. So everyone will keep it whether they are working or not, or even whether they need it or not. The citizens’ income will replace all existing social security benefits and income tax allowances for the able bodied. In short, the citizens; income is the unconditional provision of basic necessities for all from a common fund, provided by members of the community as a whole according to their ability to pay.’ Lord (208)
- ‘Investment in home improvements increased nine-fold when squatters in townships around Lima
- ‘…United Airlines, which is 55 per cent employee owned.’ (209)
- ‘The billions of dollars we currently spend on arms and military security (not least on the increasingly costly ‘war on terror’) are systematically undermining the ecological and social conditions upon which our long-term security actually depends.’ (213)
- ‘First we might try existential denial: in this case, we’ll say the environmental problem in question – for instance, climate change – simply doesn’t exist. But if the weight of evidence becomes impossible to ignore, we can turn to consequential denial. Here, we’ll admit the problem exists, but say it really doesn’t matter. Finally, if we can’t credibly deny both the problem’s existence and its consequences, we might say we can’t do anything about it. This is fatalistic denial. For the die-hard environmental skeptic, fatalistic denial is a last and all-but-impenetrable line of psychological defense.’ Homer-Dixon (214)
- ‘Now that there is almost universal consensus about the seriousness of today’s ecological crisis, the dissenters inevitably become much more interesting even as they become more extreme and more detached from the data.’ (216)
- ‘For such people, the concept of intergenerational justice (what one generation owes future generations) is philosophically flawed and a dangerous irrelevance; if people today are that concerned about the future, then they should reflect this in their own behavior as an individual consumer and not expect governments to ‘distort’ markets today.’ (220)
- ‘When it comes to the reckoning, when we finally have to pay the bills for this systematic abuse of our natural wealth over the last few decades, it is one of the cruelest ironies that the poor will end up paying a far higher price than the risk.’ (220)
- ‘Here’s the dominant rationale: such poverty is certainly unfortunate and disturbing, but probably inevitable; after all, the poor have always been with us; a lot of it is ‘their own fault’ anyway – because of endemic corruption, political incompetence and a continuing failure to get on top of the problem of rising populations – so does it really make much difference what we do when we can do so little?’ (221)
- ‘Stiglitz is modest in his recommendations for reforming the institutions themselves, even though a growing number of NGOs in both Europe and the US are persuaded that they are basically ‘beyond reform’, and should in fact be decommissioned to make way for new international financial institutions.’ (225)
- ‘A minor diplomatic contretemps between Iran UK
- ‘Estimates suggest that programs to provide clean water and sewage systems would cost roughly $37 billion annually; to cut world hunger in half, $24 billion; to prevent soil erosion, another $24 billion; to provide reproductive healthcare for all women, $12 billion; to eradicate illiteracy, $5 billion; and to provide immunizations for every child in the developing world, $3 billion.’ Worldwatch Institute (232)
- ‘The idea that a rich world and a poor world can coexist without dramatic implications collapsed along with the Twin Towers on 11 September.’ Wolfensohn (234)
- ‘The emphasis in the future should be on a more integrated agenda of positive security and shared resilience. This recognizes the links between areas such as resource conflicts, energy policy and climate change, on the one hand, and our approaches to issues like failed states, terrorism, global governance and poverty relief, on the other. And, crucially, it identifies ways in which these can be tackled simultaneously. It shows how a community wind farm on a Welsh hillside is, in its way, as much a part of a counter-terrorist strategy as an ID card; how a shift to sourcing hospital food in the UK from local farms can help bring about a more secure future for African villages; how a scheme to tackle obesity among school children can cut our dependence on oil from the Gulf.’ Wright (237)
- ‘In 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists in the US brought out a report…that exposes nearly 20 years’ worth of planned, systematic and utterly unscrupulous efforts by ExxonMobil to derail the emerging scientific consensus around climate change. It makes riveting but deeply depressing reading, as it lays bare how the company spends between $2 and $3 million a year to fund a network of ‘front’ organizations and phony think-tanks to peddle any variety of junk science just to long as it serves to undermine the consensus on climate change.’ (238)
- ‘In Pakistan Turkey
- ‘Is is really possible that a new 21st-century Pope will perpetuate the incomprehensibly cruel dogma of his predecessor in decreeing that the use of condoms cannot even be condoned within a conjugal relationship where one partner has contracted HIV/AIDS and the other has not?’ (241)
- ‘Environmentalists like to reassure themselves by seeing things in terms of gently rising cures of environmental awareness and action, incrementally moving nation states towards a greener, safer way of living. That’s simply not the case. In many places things are moving rapidly backwards – in the US Germany
- ‘Although public support for environmental issues is very broad, it is also very shallow. Politicians have learned that they can get away with doing as little as is necessary, while deferring, downgrading and diluting the range of interventions open to them, in the sure knowledge that consistent underperformance in this area will not bring people out on the streets or even affect their electoral chances.’ (243)
- ‘By allowing the environment to be seen as just another special interest, to be ranked alongside every other special interest vying for public attention, environmentalists have boxed themselves into a very narrow corner from which it is proving extremely difficult to escape.’ (244)
- ‘The alternative that is now being pushed much more actively in the US entails the building of a much broader coalition of interests, including trade unionists, industrialists and economists, to crack climate change by creating new jobs in renewables and energy efficiency (rather than appearing to threaten old jobs), and reducing energy costs in the long run by securing much greater security.’ (245)
- ‘The current approach to corporate responsibility simply isn’t up to the task in hand. Indeed, in certain crucial aspects, it reinforces patterns of denial among those who really should know better by providing some superficial reassurance that today’s massive environmental and social problems really are being taken seriously by the business community. But they aren’t.’ (246)
- ‘Prices are the key to this transformation. Prices are fundamental both with regard to the present allocation of resources and in influencing the direction of economic development in the future. But as we have seen, prices today rarely reflect full environmental costs. For markets to operate efficiently, we need environmental taxes to help internalize those costs.’ (255)
- ‘Charging for use of the environment stimulates structural change away from environmentally intensive sectors towards those that are less damaging. Environmental taxes raise revenue which, even when they are successful in dampening demand for the object of the taxation, can remain substantial. This allows other taxes, in particular taxes on labor, to be reduced. This stimulated employment.’ (256)
- ‘In political terms, however, it’s not quite that simple! Seeking increased environmental efficiency simply by raising the price of key resources will, where these resources provide for basic needs, be likely to be regressive – that is, the poor will pay a higher proportion of their income in meeting that tax than the rich. That is politically unacceptable. However, regressive effects can always be removed by complementary measures if there is the political will.’ (256)
- ‘Regressivity may be removed by exempting from the tax an initial tranche of use of the resource – a minimum entitlement, as it were, to ensure that basic needs are properly met in all households. This is done with water in some parts of Portugal
- ‘Guarantee fiscal neutrality (so that eco-taxes are not seen as cynical revenue raisers for governments that care little about the state of the environment), map the scale of the changes required, give business plenty of time to gear their investment decisions to the new fiscal environment.’ (257)
- ‘By contrast, the other well-known idea for a new global tax (the so-called Tobin Tax) on the value of all foreign exchange transactions continues to command substantial support, with the Canadian Government formally committed to such a measure and many European countries actively investigating the feasibility of it. Professor Tobin (a Nobel laureate for economics) first came up with the idea during the late 1970s.’ (257)
- ‘Despite the enormous scale and potential of this proposal (estimates made by the Stamp Out Poverty campaign suggest that a 0.005 per cent charge on transactions of the world’s most heavily traded currencies could generate between $35 billion and $40 billion a year without making any serious dent in banking sector profits), there is still a very long way to go before this proposal makes further progress, with countries such as the UK and the US predictably hostile.’ (258)
- ‘If perverse subsidies were to be reduced, there would be a double dividend. First, there would be an end to the formidable obstacles imposed by such subsidies on sustainable development. Second, there would be a huge stock of funds available to give an entirely new push to sustainable development – funds on a scale unlikely to become available through any other source. In the case of the US
- ‘What makes this fall from grace so riveting is the very direct part that sustainability (or, rather, the lack of it) has played in this process, with Ford entirely misreading the market all the way through the 1990s as it continued to rely on gas-guzzling SUVs and light trucks for the lion’s share of its profitability.’ (266)
- ‘There is certainly no denying the fact that countless good deeds are done in the name of CSR, by an ever growing army of companies, and that the world is a marginally better place for it – but only if it paces the way for a much more serious analysis on the part of business leaders of the challenge the for-profit sector now faces in today’s increasingly unsustainable world.’ (270)
- ‘Greenpeace calculated the net contribution on the part of ExxonMobil to climate change over its lifetime (‘from 1882 to 2002, ExxonMobil’s emissions of CO2 totaled an estimated 20.3 billion tons of carbon – or between 4.7 per cent and 5.3 per cent of global CO2 emissions.’)’ (271)
- ‘Emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels constitute the biggest single threat to the future of humankind, managing existing oil and gas assets (or developing new assets) as responsibly as possible just won’t cut it.’ (272)
- ‘Attempts to adapt the top of the pyramid model for use at the base, however, appears destined to fail. Only through a concerted focus on the base of the pyramid will it be possible for large corporations to combine a humanitarian, even activist, orientation with the conventional motivations of growth and profitability.’ Hart (282)
- ‘The rural poor spend a significant portion of their income – as much as $10 per month – on candles, kerosene and batteries to have access to lighting at night and periodic electrical service. Furthermore, generating electricity using kerosene and batteries is expensive, costing $5 to $10 or more per kilowatt hour. If offered a viable substitute, these people might abandon these dangerous, polluting and expensive technologies in favor of clean, efficient and renewable electric power. Yet few producers of distributed generation have targeted the rural poor at the base of the pyramid as their early market for these technologies, despite the fact that the market is potentially huge and is populated by people who would be delighted with technologies that cannot compete along the metrics used in developing markets.’ Hart (284)
- ‘Four overarching success criteria emerge for base-of-the-pyramid interventions: first, the companies need to develop unique products, services and technologies for the base of the pyramid, completely re-imagining their new business model, rather than taking an existing product and tweaking it for a base-of-the-pyramid segment.’ (285)
- ‘Somewhere between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of household energy is wasted through appliances left on standby!’ (295)
- ‘Even though compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use no more than 20 per cent of the energy that incandescent light bulbs do, and last on average ten times as long, the higher price of the point of purchase remains a huge barrier. Given that lighting accounts for around one fifth of the electricity OECD countries consume, this ‘consumer confusion’ over the last decade has resulted in tens of millions of tons of CO2 being released into the atmosphere that could so easily have been avoided.’ (296)
- ‘The potential sinfulness of any action is proportionate to the knowledge we may have about the consequences on others of that action.’ (298)
- ‘These are not motivated by abstract aestheticism or self-denial, but arise from a perception that sufficiency in consumption permits a greater emphasis to be placed on other aspects of human experience, which are actually more personally rewarding and fulfilling than consumption. Far from entailing self-denial, sufficiency in this reading is a means of liberation.’ Ekins (299)
- ‘Lower levels of economic growth (the inevitable consequence of large numbers of people opting for lower levels of economic activity) would mean lower tax revenues, which, in turn, would necessitate lower levels of public expenditure on key public services such as health and education, as well as lower levels of capital expenditure on things such as transport.’ (300)
- ‘One obvious way out of this dilemma is for governments to lead by example in those areas over which they do have complete control – particularly with public expenditure. If governments deployed their tax revenues in such a way to promote sustainable consumption across the whole economy, the knock-on impacts could be enormous.’ (302)
- ‘We have no alternative but to re-conceptualize (and eventually re-engineer) our cities so that they cease to be today’s resource-intensive and highly polluting environmental disaster areas, and play instead a central role in delivering a sustainable world.’ (315)
- ‘The same kind of analysis in the US shows something like 25 per cent of people who can be classified as ‘cultural creatives’, to use Paul Ray’s terminology, interested in health and spirituality, and search for integrity and quality in everything they buy.’ (321)
- ‘Looking beyond the world of Mammon, many other commentators believe that religious and spiritual perspectives will play a key role in the pursuit of a more authentic and more sustainable way of life.’ (322)
- ‘Until now, religious leaders in these countries have either had little influence on the debate (as in India South America , Europe and so on), or a damaging influence, as in the interventions of certain evangelical churches in the US
- ‘Too much is made of the highly visible manifestations of self-interest and apparent indifference; the less visible (and often completely invisible) outpouring of acts of altruism and selflessness are rarely factored into the rather crude generalizations that those steely-eyed fatalists tend to make about human nature.’ (324)
- ‘My optimism comes from the answers I find to a few simple questions. Has a movement this big ever existed before? Has such a diversity of forces, uncontrolled, decentralized, egalitarian, ever existed on a global scale?’ Kingsnorth (325)
- ‘There is something profoundly anti-Darwinian about the very idea of sustainability. Sustainability is all about long-term benefits of the world at the expense of short-term benefits.’ Dawkins (328)
- ‘In all sorts of ways, consumerism has more or less established itself as the new religion in the rich world. In rallying US citizens after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush was quick to exhort them to get out there and go shopping, as proof positive that the America way of life was untouched by such a trauma.’ (328)
- ‘The idea that we now live in an age of evidence-based policy-making is preposterous.’ (329)
- ‘I am not talking about some revolutionary taking to the barricades. The notion of ‘capitalism as if the world matters’ demands a reform agenda, however radical it may appear to some, not a revolutionary agenda. But it does require a different level of engagement, both as citizens and as consumers, and a much greater readiness to confront denial at every point, to challenge the slow, soul-destroying descent into displacement consumerism, and to take on today’s all too dominant ‘I consume therefore I am’ mindsets and lifestyles.’ (331)
- ‘Remove the elementary staples of organized, civilized life – food, shelter, drinkable water, minimal security – and we go back within hours to a Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all. Some people, for a time, behave with heroic solidarity; most people, most of the time, engage in a ruthless fight for individual and genetic survival.’ Ash (335)
- ‘Ideas have to be sold; our citizenry (or ‘consumertariat’, as I think more accurately defines the body politic today) has to be seduced into seeing the world in a different way’ and increased choice, increased private benefits, and increased material wellbeing would all appear to be part of that kind of offer. Is it any wonder that politicians are struggling to find either the language of the incentives bringing people into a shared sense of the need for radical change?’ (337)
- ‘Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.’ Bentham (341)
- ‘We should ban all advertising to children!’ (342)
- ‘The idea of an environmental organization devoting as much time and effort to prevent the erosion of the human spirit as it does to prevent the erosion of our physical life-support systems is all but unthinkable. For sustainable development activists, on the other hand, not to be as concerned about the impacts of unsustainable capitalism upon the individual, the community and society at large as about those upon the natural world would represent a betrayal of what sustainable development really stands for.’ (342-343)
- ‘How are we going to feed 9 bullion people, in the middle of this century, when the agricultural systems on which most nations depend are no longer underpinned by cheap and easily available fossil fuels?’ (344)
- ‘For 30 years, American liberals have defined themselves according to a set of problem-categories that divide us, whether they be racial, gender, economic or environmental. We have spent far less time defining ourselves according to the values that unite us, such as shared prosperity, progress, interdependence, fairness, ecological restoration and equality. We can no longer afford the laundry list of ‘isms’ to define and divide our world and ourselves.’ Werbach (345)
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