Elinor Ostrom Quotes

Sustainability is a very tough thing in our government because there are so many different competing priorities.

We need to connect the dots between climate, poverty, energy, food and water. These issues cannot be addressed in isolation

I'm convinced the question of development is mainly an issue of governance and leadership.

We need what I have often called an ecological approach to the management of these resources and we do not have that now. We have the inertia of past habits, unsustainable habits.

Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs.

If we put our policies in the right order, we have a sustainable society without lowering but even increasing our levels of wellbeing.

More than ever, it's very apparent that we are strapped for natural resources. We configure and reconfigure to try and find a way to maintain natural assets, when, ultimately, we are overlooking the most abundant, dynamic, and powerful resource we have available to us - our youth.

Pollution is a problem, and there's the whole problem of the spoiling of the commons, but we've addressed the pollution problem on a variety of different levels in a variety of ways, and it's worked pretty well.

When I was in the Senate, I had eight great years working with the community on major issues, trying to deal with problems that people brought to my attention. That's certainly what I intend to do as president. I think that is what President Obama has done.

We could replace people with fossil fuels, have higher and higher levels of industrialization, of agriculture, of production, without thinking of the green-house gases we were admitting, and climate change is really the pollution of the engineering paradigm, when fossil fuels drove industrialism. To now offer that same mindset as a solution is to not take seriously what Einstein said: that you can't solve the problems by using the same mindset that caused them.

Some people seem to believe that for each problem there is a solution readily available - a solution that can be promptly achieved by passing a law and voting some money. I think of this as the vending machine concept of social change. Put a coin in the machine and out comes a piece of candy. If there is a social problem, pass a law and out comes a solution.

You have to work and think about how we can make this world a better place for all. This is what I'd really like to ask our young leaders. We will try as leaders of today to minimise the problems which we will hand over to you. But it is to you. You have to take ownership and leadership of tomorrow. For that to be possible, you have to strengthen your capacity and widen your vision as a global citizen.

Modern economic thinking...is peculiarly unable to consider the long term and to appreciate man's dependence on the natural world.

You don't have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.

I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital "N" and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc.

When it comes to trying to manage how our entire planet-wide market and all the people and businesses in it deal with nature and our natural resources - we first and foremost need to change the incentives.

There is an inherently minimum set of essential concepts and current information, cognizance of which could lead to our operating our planet Earth to the lasting satisfaction and health of all humanity.

I don't think in national categories. For me it [policy] is about concepts and substance.

The destiny of our land, the air we breathe, the water we drink is not in the mystical hands of an uncontrollable agent, it is in our hands. A future which brings the balancing of our resources-preserving quality with quantity - is a future limited only by the boundaries of our will to get the job done.

You could be in the United Nations office all night every night and still feel like you were not making a sufficient dent in the world's problems. I think the key is prioritization. But every job presents the tyranny of the inbox, of allowing the urgent to crowd out the important. So we have to have our lodestars.

Ultimately, I think that the growth and sustainability of the e-book movement depends on authors and end-users (readers).

If you look at government policy generally, what government tries to do in all instances is to make sure that we take care of all elements that might relate to a particular issue.

The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.

Conservation of our resources is the fundamental question before this nation, and that our first and greatest task is to set our house in order and begin to live within our means.

We have been measuring too much in terms of the dollar. What we should do is think in terms of useful materials-things that will be of value to us in our daily life.