Words matter. These are the best Maurice Strong Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’ve developed a huge regard for Toyota for its environmental awareness, for its immense commitment to research and development in this field, and for its leadership in developing hybrids which others are now following.
We need what I have often called an ecological approach to the management of these resources and we do not have that now. We have the inertia of past habits, unsustainable habits.
I believe we are going to move into a situation where the more effective conferences will be smaller, more specialized, more focused, with occasional large gatherings to get the attention of the larger world.
Anyone who is seriously interested in me would usually do a little more homework and realise that the extreme criticisms are almost exclusively ideologically based.
The Prime Minister of India, at a meeting that I co-chaired a few months ago, stated that any development that is not sustainable is not development.
What pleases me most is that sustainable development is on almost everybody’s agenda now.
We in the industrialized world make a greater difference because our ecological footprint, our impact on the condition of the environment, is 40 to 50 times larger than that of people in the developing world.
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.
I have a cow’s valve in my heart.
So, what we do as individuals matters. It adds up.
I am on the board of corporations who contribute both to environmental problems and their solutions. And I am on the NGO side: the Earth Council and other organizations.
We owe at least this much to future generations, from whom we have borrowed a fragile planet called Earth.
We’re either going to save Ihe world or no one will be saved.
We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.
A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmental damaging consumption patterns.
I am convinced the prophets of doom have to be taken seriously.
Also, it is interesting that developing countries, with China and India perhaps in the lead, where the future of the global environment will be decided are now on board with the case for sustainable development.
One of the things that I’ve always thought I would like to do is to develop an environmental index. Then people can measure their own environmental performance on an index as they do in other ways.
The tendency is to keep doing things the way you have done them.
Well they do have a use, but we should never believe that any international conference is going to suddenly solve problems like the condition of the global environment.
I’ve always made it clear that I do not believe that global government is either necessary or feasible.
Not to say that corporations are perfect today, but even grand corporations like Dupont have made immense progress in translating some of their past environmentally damaging practices into new profit opportunities.
Ted Turner is still a leader. And he sets a great example. His ability financially has been reduced, but his influence and his example still is an important asset to the whole environmental movement.
I’ve got used to criticisms and, naturally, I try to make sure I don’t listen to the more extreme ones because most of the people who have taken their right-wing extremist view of my life are people that I’ve never met.
I am President of the UN created University for Peace, which has a strong commitment to the relationship between peace, security and the environment. I meet with young people around the world and I always come away enthused and encouraged.
I learn something from criticism because when it comes from sources you respect you always examine it and learn.
The combination of population growth and the growth in consumption is a danger that we are not prepared for and something we will need global co-operation on.
Nevertheless, the concept of sustainable development is now known – even amongst those who haven’t accepted it – and it’s recognized, debated and followed by an increasing number of businesses.
I was with Ted Turner when he came to see Kofi Annan – the Secretary-General of the UN – to announce his decision to put $1 billion to the service of UN projects and programs.
We must, from here on in, all go down the same path… There may not be another chance.
