Herman Daly Quotes

As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed.

Rapid population growth and technological innovation, combined with our lack of understanding about how the natural systems of which we are a part work, have created a mess.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

We live in a disposable society. We throw so much away. But it doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from the planet and it comes from future generations' lives.

We are living, we have long been told, in the Information Age. Yet now we are faced with the sickening suspicion that technology has run ahead of us.

We were promised a simpler life, and technology has only complicated our lives.

The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.

Information technology has been one of the leading drivers of globalization, and it may also become one of its major victims.

Television is the triumph of machine over people.

I do not believe you can have infinite population or economic growth in a finite world. We are living on the shoulders of some awesome geometric curves.

I am not a Luddite. I am suspicious of technology. I am perfectly aware of its benefits, but I also try to pay attention to some of the negative effects.

Our technological powers increase, but the side effects and potential hazards also escalate.

I have very complex and complicated ideas about technology. It's such a prominent way that we communicate with each other. In ways, I think it's really positive, and in ways, I think it's really negative.

Many people recognize that technology often comes with unintended and undesirable side effects.

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

It's not just the effect of technology on the environment, on religion, on the economic structure, on society, on politics, etc. It's that everything now exists in technology to the point where technology is the new and comprehensive host of nature of life.

There is no single theory that is used in economics that considers the finite nature of resources. It's shocking.

I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.

The way I see it, the earth is going to be here after we're dead and gone. Even if it's a polluted planet, and they messed it up. Where do they go from here - to another planet so they can mess that up too?

Technology causes problems as well as solves problems. Nobody has figured out a way to ensure that, as of tomorrow, technology won't create problems. Technology simply means increased power, which is why we have the global problems we face today.

We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy Earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it.

The United States has long thought of itself as the land of infinite plenty, and historically we did have abundant resources. But now we are gradually exhausting our fisheries, our topsoil, our water. On top of that, we're coming to the end of world resources.

Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that any way of living that's based on the use of non-renewable resources won't last.

Technology is an interesting subject, people thinking: how much good, and how much bad, does it inherently carry?