"Through our history, the deal was we left the world in a better place. Then we found it that was progress, the wheel, rule of law, penicillin. It was our covenant to our children, grandchildren; my children went angry with me for breaking the covenant, they were too busy trying to stay alive to waste energy on blame, trying to negotiate their way through food riots, refugee camps, and the collapse of society. But I think my grandchildren would have been angry, had they survived into adulthood."
"Our generation caused these problems. Always progress, progress, progress. Always asking more and more from the planet. My parents witnessed the arrival of cars and planes. Now children have their own car to go to school. Well, soon. They’re much more advanced than us because they’ve got many more things. They see more from TV, but that’s not to say they are happier. When we were young, we didn’t have running water in the house. We had to fetch all our water which taught us to use it carefully. The same with electricity. Today there’s daylight, it’s sunny so we don’t need electric lights. Our parents taught us that but we didn’t think to teach out children."
"Skiing in desserts, heating the air, lighting empty offices, energy is so ridiculously cheap, it makes perfect economic sense to just pick it away. China is new bad guy because they’re building a new power station every 4 days. But the quarter of that energy makes stuffs for us. Western company pay Chinese workers crap wages to make crap plastic toys, then ship them to Europe, and wrap them in more plastic. Punters drive to the out-of-town megastore in their gas-guzzlers. Plastic toy and plastic box goes into plastic bag. 2 days later, toy broken, and back it goes to a Chinese landfill where it stays for about, hmm, 50 thousand years?"
"Lots of ideas have tried to take over the world, but there’s only one winner. 3000 adverts bombard us every day. Telling us we’ll be happier, more attractive with better skin, if only we buy their product. To get there, they create incentives and insatiable desire to buy more and more stuff. Americans have been advertised that longest, and they now each consumed twice as much energy as an European, 9 times more than a Chinese person, 15 times more than an Indian, and 50 times more than someone from Kenya. If all the 65 million here on earth consumed like European or Japanese, we need two more planets worth of resources. If everyone consumed like American or Australian and Canadian, we need another four. And in 2040 or so when there are about 90 billion of us, we need two more again. Capitalism’s only goal is ever expending growth, but ever expending growth on just a one not expending planet…it’s impossible. The con economic system is disastrous, not just for the planet, but for most people, too. 400 years of capitalism has allowed the richest one 1% to take 40% for themselves, leaving just 1% for the poorest to have. But anyone wants to live differently is fool ticket every time. With profit, the only measuring step, destroying the planet is written into the system, and run away climate change is not very surprising result."
"Our generation caused these problems. Always progress, progress, progress. Always asking more and more from the planet. My parents witnessed the arrival of cars and planes. Now children have their own car to go to school. Well, soon. They’re much more advanced than us because they’ve got many more things. They see more from TV, but that’s not to say they are happier. When we were young, we didn’t have running water in the house. We had to fetch all our water which taught us to use it carefully. The same with electricity. Today there’s daylight, it’s sunny so we don’t need electric lights. Our parents taught us that but we didn’t think to teach out children."
"Skiing in desserts, heating the air, lighting empty offices, energy is so ridiculously cheap, it makes perfect economic sense to just pick it away. China is new bad guy because they’re building a new power station every 4 days. But the quarter of that energy makes stuffs for us. Western company pay Chinese workers crap wages to make crap plastic toys, then ship them to Europe, and wrap them in more plastic. Punters drive to the out-of-town megastore in their gas-guzzlers. Plastic toy and plastic box goes into plastic bag. 2 days later, toy broken, and back it goes to a Chinese landfill where it stays for about, hmm, 50 thousand years?"
"Lots of ideas have tried to take over the world, but there’s only one winner. 3000 adverts bombard us every day. Telling us we’ll be happier, more attractive with better skin, if only we buy their product. To get there, they create incentives and insatiable desire to buy more and more stuff. Americans have been advertised that longest, and they now each consumed twice as much energy as an European, 9 times more than a Chinese person, 15 times more than an Indian, and 50 times more than someone from Kenya. If all the 65 million here on earth consumed like European or Japanese, we need two more planets worth of resources. If everyone consumed like American or Australian and Canadian, we need another four. And in 2040 or so when there are about 90 billion of us, we need two more again. Capitalism’s only goal is ever expending growth, but ever expending growth on just a one not expending planet…it’s impossible. The con economic system is disastrous, not just for the planet, but for most people, too. 400 years of capitalism has allowed the richest one 1% to take 40% for themselves, leaving just 1% for the poorest to have. But anyone wants to live differently is fool ticket every time. With profit, the only measuring step, destroying the planet is written into the system, and run away climate change is not very surprising result."