Steve Hallett Quotes

It is too late to slow this runaway train down before it tumbles into the chasm.

What farmers should aim for is... higher margins using fewer inputs on less land, and a system that is sustainable.

Our government has been hijacked by big business.

You can feed a family on a quarter-acre lot if it comes down to it.

America does not have to rely on vast volumes of oil and natural gas to make food. ...It has to get smarter. Dedicated, hard-working, ethical, and ingenious farmers ...show us it can be done. ...Another very promising trend in many countries is the reemergence of urban agriculture, community gardens, and backyard gardens.

I find it hard to listen to fervent Republicans. Put the combined wisdom and honesty of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and a dozen others on the back of a postcard with a thick marker pen and you'll still have plenty of room for the address and stamp.

We seem to have quite a few problems: global climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, collapsing fisheries, desertification, wealth inequality, species extinctions, freshwater shortages, hapless governments, deforestation, disease epidemics, and agricultural failures top the list. ...our civilizations have been in similar situations before ...a long list of civilizations from the Maya to the Romans all collapsed. The precedent is set...

New technologies will not liberate us. Even if they do materialize they will not reduce our consumption of resources. They will not reduce our demand for energy. They will not diminish our impacts on the climate. And they will not bring about a better world.

...the environment is master. Societies and economies are utterly dependent upon it.

Fixed energy limits have not limited the progress of nature.

Human systems always bring about their own demise... Natural systems... do not destroy themselves.

To combat the problems we face, we need to swim against the tide, and not only the main tide of environmentally blind industrialists, but also the secondary current of efficiency-blind environmentalists.

We don't know exactly when out fossil fuels will run out... but by the end of the century, our oil and natural gas supplies will be virtually non-existent, and limited coal supplies will be restricted to only a handful of countries. ...We are at the peak of a remarkable two-hundred-year glitch in the history of civilization and are about to embark on the descent. The coming changes will be earth-shattering.

A society that supports a wealthy few at the expense of the larger population is unlikely to persist.

We should stop subsidizing the fossil-fuel industries and instead provide subsidies for local and community energy projects.