Thursday, February 23, 2012

#187 Reverse the Degradation


Willful waste brings woeful want. ~Thomas Fuller

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage. ~ Mason Cooley

With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly clear that the strategy of environmental exploitation that characterized the 20th century is reaching the end of its natural life. We are in the early stages of a transition from an attitude that, in Herman Daly's felicitous phrase, 'treats the Earth like a business in liquidation' to one that is committed to preserving the planet's 'natural capital.' The principle underlying this shift is really quite simple: if we want a high quality of life for ourselves and future generations - a high quality of life in all its senses - we cannot continue to degrade the quality of the natural systems of which we are a part. ~ Carl Frankel