Top 15 Steve Hallett Quotes

To find our steady state and solve the sustainability puzzle, we need to abandon the relentless quest for dominance. We need to abandon our visions of progress as growth... Only progress in diversity, equality, and beauty can stand the test of time. We need to live within our limits.

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

Fixed energy limits have not limited the progress of nature.

Cellular systems, ecosystems, and civilizations are, at base, thermodynamic systems. ...The system uses energy, eventually releasing it as useless heat. ...there is one vital difference between natural systems and human systems: natural systems receive a fixed energy input that never varies. If we could set a strict limit on energy use, we could build a human system that is just as stable as an ecosystem.

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

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.

What I'm proposing... is for governments to peel back support for large businesses, especially extractive industries. Instead, governments should support small businesses. ...inhibit oversized energy and agricultural systems and promote smaller, localized ones.

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

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

Decentralization will prevent shocks from spreading throughout the system, like firebreaks in the forest.

Nothing can sustain a system that is in overshoot... Resiliance... is not the strength to hold back the tide, but the strength to bend without breading as the tide inevitably rushes in.

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

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

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.

Our government has been hijacked by big business.