Lester R. Brown Quotes

The challenge is either to build an economy that is sustainable or to stay with our unsustainable economy until it declines. It is not a goal that can be compromised. One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.

The need to incorporate longer term time scales into our societal choices is very real—and right in the lap of our generation.

The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years.

We cannot shirk responsibility from concerns for the welfare of the next generation.

Make the wrong choices now and future generations will live with a changed climate, depleted resources and without the green space and biodiversity that contribute both to our standard of living and our quality of life

What our Seventh Generation will have is a consequence of our actions today.

I plant a lot of trees. I am a great believer in planting things for future generations. I loathe the now culture where you just live for today.

If we don't make tough decisions today our children are going to have to make much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.

Too often, our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future.

Generations will soon come into their power feeling differently about themselves than we do now, and in their re-enchanted world, they will wonder about us and what we did to their world, and what we thought we were doing.

There's no really rosy scenario ahead, where climate change just doesn't happen, but I believe we don't have the ethical right to throw our hands up in the air and say, 'Game over.' Whatever pathway we choose, our descendants will be dealing with that reality for centuries to come.

What we are doing to the future of our children, and the other species on the planet, is a clear moral issue.

The only thing that can save us as a species is seeing how we're not thinking about future generations in the way we live.

We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.

We - the current generation - have a moral responsibility to make the world better for future generations.

My main argument is that environmental destruction comes when people externalise their costs and pass them on to future generations. That is obviously something that large enterprises do and they become large by doing it.

When you run a company, you want to hand it off in better shape than you found it. In the same way, just as we shouldn't leave our children or grandchildren with mountains of national debt and unsustainable entitlement programs, we shouldn't leave them with the economic and environmental costs of climate change.

Sometimes I wake at 2 A.M. worrying that my great-granddaughter will have to march through her distant, broiling future gathering all the plastic I ever disposed of.

We can't continue to take from our planet the way we do and not give anything back, and the idea of, 'Oh, but it's fine, I won't have to deal with it in my lifetime,' well, you need to think about the future generations who will have to deal with it.

When we look as a society, we've really lost the connection between our actions and the future.

We, the present generation, have the responsibility to act as a trustee of the rich natural wealth for the future generations. The issue is not merely about climate change; it is about climate justice.

If we don't start acknowledging our correct position as nothing more than a part of the planet as opposed to this perception that we're superior, then we won't have it much longer. We're facing a very turbulent, war-torn, drought-ridden existence for future generations unless we act now.

Every action or inaction has an impact-good or bad-upon our surroundings, and anything we do today will have an impact on the lives of our grandchildren.

The greatest danger hanging over our children and grandchildren is initiation of changes that will be irreversible on any time scale that humans can imagine.

In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, we must in turn plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will benefit the generations to come.