Lester R. Brown Quotes
They have also been adopting fuel efficiency standards for automobiles in China.
Brown, Lester R. Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.
The notion of a hydrogen transportation economy appeals to most scientists, environmentalists, engineers, and many ordinary citizens. But the vested interests of the oil industry and the American automobile industry were lined up against it and when this statement was made 6 years into the administration of George W. Bush there had been very little done by the Government to facilitate any of the elements Bodman stated were so important. See {585492} for a similar quotation by Bodman, also with no government action.
Bush, as President Jimmy Carter had done before him, called for reduced dependency on foreign oil and increased research in other forms of energy production.
From working in a sweatshop, she became the richest woman in China.
This was an amazingly prescient view of the future.
He made this quotation in a discussion about nuclear weapons, but the principle is valid for many areas from the Internet to pharmaceuticals. In the nuclear weapons case there have been a number of accidents β including fatal ones β over the years and on several occasions a nuclear weapon came close to detonating near populated areas. In one case, radiation damage from a crash of a nuclear weapons equipped bomber have made an area in Spain unusable for years into the future.
This belief held by Ford and most other American auto executives, left the small car market open for the Japanese and the Europeans. This was one of the poor decision that caused the American auto companies to almost go under in 2008 and the Government bailed them out and forced them all to make smaller cars which use less gasoline or use electricity. Then then thrived and paid back bailout funds early. Ford and the others made decisions that almost destroyed the American automobile industry.
His assertion that wind energy is less expensive than the fossil fuel alternative is not accurate if one accounts for the costs on the basis of conventional accounting methods. It was at that time more expensive which is why itβs use was limited. However, the existing methods of accounting did not charge the fossil fuels for the environmental degregation that they cause and the cost to society to overcome these or live with them. More important there is no charge to the cost of fossil fuels for the deleterious health effects that their extraction and use cause. Global warming / climate change is not considered at all in the economic analysis.
Lester Russel Brown is a United States environmental analyst, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and former president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. BBC Radio commentator Peter Day referred to him as "one of the great pioneer environmentalists."
