Jacques Barzun Quotes

If we have any hope of finding ways for seven billion people to live well on planet with finite resources, we have to learn to use our resources efficiently. Plastic bags are neither efficient nor environmentally friendly.

If we want a world that is truly sustainable, we have to realize that something old can also be perfect. Otherwise, we'll just throw away our yesterday.

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

It angers me when sustainability gets used as a buzz word. For 90 percent of the world, sustainability is a matter of survival.

If there is a future, it will be Green.

With increasing fervor since the 1980s, sustainability has been the watchword of scientists, environmental activists, and indeed all those concerned about the complex, fragile systems on the sphere we inhabit. It has shaped debates about business, design, and our lifestyles.

We learned that economic growth and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand.

Technology is vital. We have to have development in new technology if we're going to solve these environmental problems without throwing humanity back in poverty.

We face a simple choice. Either we go back to the days when everything was disposable and landfill dumps consumed our countryside at an increasing pace, or we recognise that we have limited resources and need to use them wisely and sustainably.

All too often in tough economic times, it is the environment that gets left on the cutting room floors of Congress as everyone scraps for limited federal dollars.

We want to use the environment to shift the way our society works.

China should cut heavy industries' share in gross domestic output by 9 percentage points between 2013 and 2030 to meet its pollution cuts target.

In tough times, some of us see protecting the climate as a luxury, but that's an outdated 20th-century worldview from a time when we thought industrialization was the end goal, waste was growth, and wealth meant a thick haze of air pollution.

I've tried to approach environmentalism the same way I do my climbing: by setting small, concrete goals that build on each other.

There's no law of physics that says we have to be an unsustainable society - in fact, quite the opposite. The planet's ready to work with us if we're ready to think differently, but we do have to make that jump and start to do things in new ways.

Economic growth and environmental protection are not at odds. They're opposite sides of the same coin if you're looking at longer-term prosperity.

Being green and clean is not just an aspiration but an action.

Civilization has given us enormous successes: going to the moon, technology. But then this is the civilisation that took us to debt, environmental crisis, every single crisis. We need a civilization where we say goodbye to these things.

Indeed, the economy and the environment need not be seen in opposition.

Recycling is an area where jobs could be created at low cost. Green collar workers. That's not very sexy.

So I'm going to go on and work on preserving the ozone layer, encouraging everyone to recycle.

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

There's this very vulnerable planet of ours with finite resources. Architects and designers have, I think, a fair responsibility for conserving energy and materials, and making things durable.

Producing clean energy from non-recyclable waste is an important part of my future vision for family company Visy Australia.

Good environmental policy is good economic policy.