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" Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes. "

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" The kind of support the down-and-out need is the kind we have always refused them, the kind that would mean engaging with them not as objects of contempt, but as fellow human beings. "

Donella Meadows

Mean

Need

Kind

" The human world is a long way from meeting the needs of the present, and it is borrowing massively from the future - not only by piling up money debt, but also by degrading the resources from which all real wealth ultimately comes. "

" We know it is impossible to go on finding, moving and wasting oil, leveling forests, paving land, dumping poisons, and multiplying our numbers. A new way of life, a new set of thoughts must be found. "

" World fertility surveys indicate that anywhere from one third to one half of the babies born in the Third World would not be if their mothers had access to cheap, reliable family planning, had enough personal empowerment to stand up to their husbands and relatives, and could choose their own family size. "

" You should issue demerits for tree cutting or the destruction of humus. "

" The grand jury's job is not to weigh the evidence from both sides; it is only to decide whether there is enough evidence on one side to bring a person to trial. "

" What Clinton did with Lewinsky was despicable but was no threat to the nation. That he lied about it repeatedly and to the public is a reason for us to cease to trust him and for him to resign. "

" Ending poverty calls for humility, honesty, freedom from ideology and refusal to accept cruel simplicities about anyone's human potential. It requires listening to the wisdom and cutting the nonsense from both the Right and the Left. "

" Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm. "

" Smart development builds on a region's own skills, resources and local businesses. Dumb growth invites a big corporation in, surrenders control and profits to a distant headquarters, undercuts local manufacturers, and risks layoffs without warning. "

" A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world's nations toward saving the climate. "

" We don't need bigger cars or fancier clothes. We need self-respect, identity, community, love, variety, beauty, challenge and a purpose in living that is greater than material accumulation. "

" No expectations, no tension between goals and performance, no outrage, resolve or intention, no action, no results. There's only one way to get a government - and a nation - to stop drifting to low performance. That's to wake up and insist on higher standards. "

" The latest scientific assessment has almost doubled the predicted rate of warming if no changes are made. "

" Like the other great revolutions, an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains. It, too, will change the face of the land and human institutions, hierarchies, self-definitions, cultures. It will take centuries. If it happens. There is no guarantee, of course. "

" We wouldn't have to speak so critically if businesses would stop feeding dead animals to live ones, putting non-food substances into food, tinkering with genetic codes, and spraying the countryside with poisons. "

" You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere. "

" Biodiversity can't be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, park rangers, foresters or gene banks. All it needs is to be left alone. "

" There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading. "

" Relative to most of the energy and material flows on Earth, the machinations of humankind are puny. The planet's powers are much, much bigger than our own. But in a few sensitive places, we're making an impact on a planetary scale, and that impact is not a good one. "

" Scientists worldwide agree that the reduction needed to stabilize the climate is actually more like 80 percent. "

Donella Meadows

Agree

Percent

" Social services, not wealth per se, seem to be the key to lower birth rates. The Chinese, although among the poorest peoples of the world, have brought their fertility rate down to 2.4, partly by social coercion, but mostly by broadly available education, health care and family planning. "

" Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany have detailed plans to cut their greenhouse emissions by 20 to 50 percent. "

" Some call-in moderators are neutral and courteous. Then there's Rush Limbaugh, who is funny and pompous and a scapegoater and hatemonger. His popularity could cause you to draw some terrible conclusions about the state of mind of the American people. It helps to remember that Bill Cosby is popular, too. "

" If we emit massive quantities of untested chemicals into the environment, some of them are bound to end up in places that surprise us, doing things that endanger us. "

" We don't need new laws that can be used by organizations with deep pockets and the ability to deduct legal expenses as a cost of doing business to intimidate individuals or organizations that voice legitimate concerns. "

" A grand jury hears only one side - that of the prosecutor. "

" The climate continues to deteriorate. "

Donella Meadows

Deteriorate

Climate

" Every policy is shaped by two forces: background analysis and foreground politics. The political forces are loud, self-serving and, in the case of energy policy, well known. "

" I'm a talk-show junkie. I'd rather listen to real folks stumbling to express their own thoughts than to polished puppets reading what others have written. "