Robert B. Meyner Quotes

We won’t be carrying on with government. We’ll be grubbing for worms.

We who grew up with 'drop and cover' drills know all too well what wonders science can bring us, and we like to see the guy in the white lab coat suffer a little. Or a lot.

I live in Mexico in the wintertime, and I live off the grid down there.

Some would call me an environmentalist. I don't know why. I reuse the water that falls in my backyard in the winter. I reuse the trash and clippings I produce for mulch. I reuse the rain that falls on my roof, and I reuse the sun that shines on my house for energy. I guess you could call me a strategic opportunist as much as an environmentalist.

Growing up during the Cold War, I remember the seemingly imminent threat of nuclear war. In primary school we were taught to 'duck-and-cover' for protection. But even as children hiding under wooden desks, we recognized the inadequacies of this strategy.

Duck and Cover

If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things -- praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts -- not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They might break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Why would you need to expand beyond the solar system if you already have access to all the information you need, and you've essentially insulated yourself against a planetary apocalypse? Maybe that's enough.

The economy of the 21st century will come to center on agriculture. Life will be intensely and profoundly local in ways that we can't conceive of today. Economic growth, as we have known it in a cheap energy industrial paradigm, will cease.

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.

Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?

However, if we leave the industrial machinery and their energy-distribution networks and leave them also all the people who have routine jobs operating the industrial machinery and distributing its products, and we take away from all the industrial countries all their ideologies and all the politicians and political machine workers, people would keep right on eating. Possibly getting on a little better than before.

I became a spokeswoman for Future Friendly - a partnership between sustainability experts and household brands trying to inspire people to save water, energy, and packaging.

We need to throw away less, recycle a lot more and turn much of the rest into energy.

I do think that if people are taking the time to think about their environmental footprint when it comes to how many flights they take, whether or not they have a 4X4, whether or not they are going to have a patio heater, then putting the question to themselves about how many kids they are going to have is a reasonable thing to do.

Our vision is for a country that grows what it eats and produces what it consumes. It is for a country that no longer has to import petroleum products and develop a lucrative petrochemical industry.

I foresee the time when industry shall no longer denude the forests which require generations to mature, nor use up the mines which were ages in making, but shall draw its raw material largely from the annual produce of the fields. I am convinced that we shall be able to get out of yearly crops most of the basic materials which we now get from forest and mine.

Thrift is not some obsolete Victorian notion. . . . It will be the difference between those who prosper and achieve respect and those who become a burden to their children and society.

The Long Emergency will be chiefly characterized as a "time out" from technology. It could plunge us into a dark age of superstition. My guess is that we will lose a lot of knowledge and skill. But I also believe the human race desperately needs this "time out."

The best place to have some food set aside is within our homes, together with a little money in savings. The best welfare program is our own welfare program. Five or six cans of wheat in the home are better than a bushel in the welfare granary. ... We can begin with a one week's food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months. I am speaking now of food to cover basic needs.

In a race for limited resources, it is the energy efficient that will win the race

I think architectural appreciation would be a minor occupation after a nuclear war. People would just be happy to have something to eat.

We need to make growth greener, to make our economic and environmental policies more compatible and even mutually-reinforcing. This is not just a matter of new technologies or new sources of renewable, safe energy. It is about how we all behave every day of our lives, what we eat, what we drink, what we recycle, re-use, repair, how we produce and how we consume

The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources, so exhaustion is just an event, not a catastrophe.

Learn on how little man may live, and how small a portion nature requires.