Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?
Maurice StrongRead
After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.
Interpretation
Sustainability involves managing the Earth's resources responsibly, similar to how a corporation manages its assets.
Maurice Strong's quote emphasizes the importance of treating the Earth as a valuable asset that must be maintained and preserved. Just as a corporation tracks and manages its resources through financial practices, we must apply similar principles to our natural environment to ensure its health and longevity for future generations.
In practice
This quote can be used in environmental policy discussions to highlight the economic perspective of sustainability.
Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?
The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.
A citizen of an advanced industrialized nation consumes in six months the energy and raw materials that have to last the citizen of a developing country his entire lifetime.
It's essential that we understand that taking care of the planet will be done as we take care of ourselves. You know that you can't really make much of a difference in things until you change yourself.
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. The disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.
Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme.
Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.
Take a trip to the forest and experience the greatness of getting on your knees and picking your own food and going home... and eating it.
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