What we are finding out now is that there are not only limits to growth but also to technology and that we cannot allow technology to go on without public consent.
David R. BrowerRead
Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the idea of leaving radioactive waste for future generations, highlighting the absurdity of such a solution.
David R. Brower expresses skepticism regarding the suggestion to store radioactive waste for future generations to manage. He emphasizes the impracticality and irresponsibility of such a notion, suggesting that it would require a consultation with future generations—many of them—who may not have the tools or context to deal with the implications of this hazardous material. The quote serves as a warning against complacency in environmental responsibilities.
Themes
Radioactive WasteEnvironmentFuture GenerationsResponsibilityHazardous Material
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about environmental policy, one might say this quote to illustrate the long-term consequences of our actions on future generations.
More from David R. Brower
All quotes →Is the minor convenience of allowing the present generation the luxury of doubling its energy consumption every 10 years worth the major hazard of exposing the next 20,000 generations to this lethal waste?
David R. BrowerRead
Without wilderness, the world's a cage.
David R. BrowerRead
To me, a wilderness is where the flow of wildness is essentially uninterrupted by technology; without wilderness the world is a cage.
David R. BrowerRead
Similar quotes
The stars are laboratories in which the evolution of matter proceeds in the direction of large molecules.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
A hybrid human-robot mission to investigate an asteroid affords a realistic opportunity to demonstrate new technological capabilities for future deep-space travel and to test spacecraft for long-duration spaceflight.
Buzz AldrinRead
Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.
Hermann Von HelmholtzRead
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.
Claude Levi-StraussRead
I have to keep going, as there are always people on my track. I have to publish my present work as rapidly as possible in order to keep in the race. The best sprinters in this road of investigation are Becquerel and the Curies.
Ernest RutherfordRead
In fact, nothing in science as a whole has been more firmly established by interwoven factual information, or more illuminating than the universal occurrence of biological evolution. Further, few natural processes have been more convincingly explained than evolution by the theory of natural selection, or as it has been popularly called, Darwinism.
E. O. WilsonRead