B. F. Skinner Quotes

We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.

I think as resources become more dear, we really need to consider population.

Believe me, a grain is a terrible thing to waste.

Consuming less means throwing away less, while reusing things actually helps to save the planet as well as the pennies.

Once humans traded their hunter-gatherer existences for more settled communities, we began a quest to make our lives better and more comfortable, but we've also been sucking precious finite resources from our environment ever since.

The planet's resources are rare; we must consume more ethically and equitably.

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

If we don't preserve the natural resources, you aren't going to have a sustainable society. This is not something for Chez Panisse and the elite of San Francisco. It's for everyone.

Pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources depend and will depend in the future on the absolute level of total economic activity. This means that is necessary to restrain both the rate of growth of population and, at least in the developed countries, the rate of growth of consumption per head.

How much longer, for instance, can we continue to crowd more and more people into this world? …. How long can we permit the uncontrolled use of the earth's resources when there is no possibility of replacing them? Indeed, how long will it be before we have completely used up everything our lives depend on? These issues are the politics of the future. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have begun to spell out in substantive fashion the means by which we can control population growth, environmental problems, and the conservation of our natural resources.

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.

We survived on natural resources, so we should take care of the earth. When I leave home, I do things like switching off the heat and lights.

What humans aren't good at is trying to consume less, to consume less plastic, to not be lazy.

Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

I don't think anybody has the right to a huge family. There's already more people on the planet than our natural resources can even support, and if everybody were to have a high standard of living, we need three or four or five new planets to provide the resources. And this cannot be, so something has to change.

What is more important for the world right now than preserving ways of living in balance with the earth?

Acknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world - water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution - if we tackle them with courage and foresight.

The interests of Oregon for today and in the future must be protected from the grasping wastrels of the land. We must respect another truism - that unlimited and unregulated growth, leads inexorably to a lowered quality of life.

Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class…involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, ownership of motor vehicles, golf courses, small electric appliances, home and work place air-conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable...

We are grossly wasting our energy resources and other precious raw materials as though their supply were infinite. We must even face the prospect of changing our basic ways of living. This change will either be made on our own initiative in a planned and rational way, or forced on us with chaos and suffering by the inexorable laws of nature.

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

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

Sustainability is living on nature's income rather than living on its capital.

The message from all quarters is the same: our undisciplined consumption must end. If we continue to gobble up our resources without any regard to stewardship and to spew out our deadly wastes over land, sea, and air, we may well be drawing down the final curtain upon ourselves.

Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment