David R. Brower Quotes

I think developed countries - so-called developed countries - should reflect upon the way of living and the waste of energy.

Energy is probably the most pressing demand on our planet.

I am not excited about Bitcoin. I think it's an outrage that, in an era of global warming, there are racks of servers next to the Columbia River. I wish I could explain to the salmon that we've created a dam generating hydroelectric power so that we can generate a fake currency.

We can choose to address the twin issues of population and consumption to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption.

Economic development is what's going to make mountaintop removal palatable.

The most important question we have to deal with is a combination of population control and the control of our environment - how to utilize the world in as effective a way as we can for the future of mankind.

We waste an awful lot of energy as a Nation through inefficient use of energy.

Americans trash the planet not because we're evil, but because the industrial systems we've devised leave no other choice. Our ranch houses and high-rises, factories and farms, freeways and power plants were conceived before we had a clue how the planet works.

The combination of population growth and the growth in consumption is a danger that we are not prepared for and something we will need global co-operation on.

The problem is not the oil, but what they do with the oil. The United States is the biggest spender of oil and of all the planet resources.

Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.

How we treat the earth basically effects our social welfare and our national security.

We've got to take care of the resources we have on this planet, because there's no resupply possible.

We will run out of air long before we run out of oil.

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

The current challenge facing the environmental authorities is how to properly deal with the environmental problems caused by economic development.

The biggest drag on global growth in the coming decade will be the impact of energy on the environment.

We happen to believe that emissions going into the atmosphere are not good for us as humans or Mother Earth.

It doesn't make sense to have a bitumen export economy.

I had a very clear vision. If Indians start consuming power like the Americans, the world will run out of resources. Either you stop India from developing, or you find some alternate solution.

Coal, oil and natural gas have lit homes and powered machinery for centuries, driving civilization forward. But as human development accelerated, the unsustainability of such energy became apparent.

Offshore drilling is not the answer, it is not going to get us anything.

The problems that ail the U.S. economy and American society are one and the same: Both consume too much and refuse to make badly needed changes. This is true above all in the realm of energy.

The 50th Earth Day was always going to be special, but the coronavirus pandemic has made it even more so. The unprecedented steps the world has taken to slow the spread of the virus have dramatically reduced the number of cars on the road, planes in the air, and oil being pulled from the ground.

Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over - unless we find new ways of producing energy.