Julian Lincoln Simon Quotes

Energy is the ultimate convertable currency.

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

The term 'natural resources' confuses people. 'Natural resources' are not like a finite number of gifts under the Christmas tree. Nature is given, but resources are created.

At an ever accelerating rate we are now squandering the capital of metallic ores and fossil fuels accumulated in the earth’s crust during hundreds of millions of years. How long can this spending spree go on?

In the United States you use more oil than water. Water takes a few days to recycle. Oil takes 4 million years.

The United States has consumed in the last 50 years more natural resources than the rest of the entire human race for all of history.

Just as the stone age did not end for lack of stones, the oil age will not end because of a scarcity of oil.

We have grown up in a culture thinking that our energy resources were inexhaustible and without impact.

Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

I think that, on the whole, risk-taking entrepreneurial characters regard nature as a sort of background that we can use for our own advantage.

Temporality and the transformation of energy are two very important aspects in my work.

Our diversity as a people united is also our potential to transform our large deposits of mineral resources and use same for national development.

It is time for us now as a nation to exercise the same reasonable foresight in dealing with our great natural resources that would be shown by any prudent man in conserving and widely using the property which contains the assurance of well-being for himself and his children.

Energy and time are finite resources; conserving them is very important.

We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources ... But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted.

Our supplies of natural resources are not finite in any economic sense. Nor does past experience give reason to expect natural resources to become more scarce. Rather, if history is any guide, natural resources will progressively become less costly, hence less scarce, and will constitute a smaller proportion of our expenses in future years.

Nature has given us this for free, it was meant to sustain us, we will not allow it to become a monopoly to finance the Imperial Army.

The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.

There is no energy in matter other than that received from the environment

You should know what is taken out of the ecosystem in order to give you a moment's sustenance.

I believe in a sound, strong environmental policy that protects the health of our people and a wise stewardship of our nation's natural resources.

Even though the body appears to be material, it is not. In the deeper reality, your body is a field of energy, transformation and intelligence.

In contrast [to trees and fish], oil, metals, and coal are not renewable; they don't reproduce, sprout, or have sex to produce baby oil droplets or coal nuggets.

National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.

We Americans think we are pretty good! We want to build a house, we cut down some trees. We want to build a fire, we dig a little coal. But when we run out of all these things, then we will find out just how good we really are.