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.
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
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?
Without wilderness, the world's a cage.
To me, a wilderness is where the flow of wildness is essentially uninterrupted by technology; without wilderness the world is a cage.
Similar quotes
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When results are shared freely amongst the biological community, as has been done for the worm and the Human Genome Projects, specialist scientists can move much more rapidly towards their goals.
Data, I think, is one of the most powerful mechanisms for telling stories. I take a huge pile of data and I try to get it to tell stories.
A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.
One day I went up to my mom and I said, 'Mom, can I have permission to build a 2.3-million electron-volt atom smasher - a betatron - in the garage?' And my mom stared at me, and she said, 'Sure. Why not? And don't forget to take out the garbage.'
The solution of the difficulty is that the two mental pictures which experiment lead us to form - the one of the particles, the other of the waves - are both incomplete and have only the validity of analogies which are accurate only in limiting cases.