George

“The faster the present generation draws down the fossil energy legacy upon which persistently exuberant lifestyles now depend, the less opportunity posterity will have to live in anything like the same way or the same numbers. Yet most contemporary political proposals for solving problems of economic stagnation or inequity amount to plans for speeding up the rate of drawdown of non-renewable resources.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“As numerous and as technologically advanced as mankind on the average had already become after four centuries of exuberance, we had besieged ourselves. Each of us was now doing damage, just by living, to the life support systems of our finite planet.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“Doctrines may be a frightful burden, Sumner said, for, with the prestige of antiquity and tradition, they deprive the living generation of an open-minded capacity to face facts.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“The “Ostriches” in this analysis represent the truest adherents of the old cornucopian paradigm. The “Realists” are the truest adherents of the new ecological paradigm. The world looks very different to people who think in terms of such different perspectives. Communication between them can be as difficult as between people who share no common language. Paradigm differences were thus bound to make painful the process of adjusting to post-exuberant realities.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change