Jeremy Grantham Quotes

The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value.

We're starting to realize the limitations of oil income, that you can't live the life of Riley forever.

I can make a brigadier general in five minutes, but it's not so easy to replace 110 horses.

For every person in the world to reach the present U.S. level of consumption with existing technology would require four more planet earths.

Human use of one resource runs squarely against human use of another resource.

With shrinking resources, interest groups are pitted against each other.

Humanity stands ... before a great problem of finding new raw materials and new sources of energy that shall never become exhausted. In the meantime we must not waste what we have, but must leave as much as possible for coming generations.

The problem is that the good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments.

I write this letter because I wish you to believe of us (as we certainly believe of you) that we are doing the very best we can. You do not receive arms from us as fast as you need them; but it is because we have not near enough to meet all the pressing demands; and we are obliged to share around what we have, sending the larger share to the points which appear to need them most. As to Kentucky, you do not estimate that state as more important than I do; but I am compelled to watch all points

That a shortage of crude rubber is likely to be felt by 1928 is indicated by a comparison of the prospective production and consumption for the next few years. It is a picture which cannot be looked upon with complacency…. there are two distinct problems involved: (1) monopoly control of a basic raw material, and (2) a shortage in that raw material developing within a few years. To meet these problems there are two courses open: (1) new planting, and (2) an extension of America's present holdings in the East…. We have to consider, for example, our national defense, especially as concerns the protection of our lines of transport in the remote contingency of war

Since the mid-1970s, people have been consuming more resources than the planet’s natural capital can replenish.

We're at peak oil, peak water, peak resources, and so either we figure it out and let science lead or we head down a very bad, dark trail to where a lot of people aren't going to make it.

We live on a planet of limited resources - an abstract notion for some of the world's population, but for many of the poorest and most vulnerable, those limits are all too real.

The raw materials that Australia has in abundance will always be critical to world growth.

We have extracted from the land from the moment we stood on two feet. We are working to supply the kinds of materials that are necessary for the lives we've built for ourselves.

Lists are based on realism - on the coldly contemplated finitude of resources.

We face a simple choice. Either we go back to the days when everything was disposable and landfill dumps consumed our countryside at an increasing pace, or we recognise that we have limited resources and need to use them wisely and sustainably.

We need to quit arguing about whether the glass is half full or half empty - and instead acknowledge that there's not quite enough water to go around.

You see this in the oil industry time and time again. Fears that we've found the last oil, that we're going to run out, pop up constantly. And soon afterward, because the price goes up, huge new reservoirs are discovered.

Among the most important lessons to be taken from the history of oil is not taking essentials for granted. Conserve oil, but also conserve water. If our Hummers are a red flag in oil, maybe our Jacuzzis are the same for water.

Once electricity and petrol and facilities and food stop, society stops. It's crazy.

When someone needs copper, or wood or an ag product, and they invest capital somewhere to make that happen, and people get jobs from that, and that good gets introduced to the world stage and it gets traded and moved, the whole world benefits.

The danger facing us comes not from lack of resources, but from people who insist that we have run out of resources. If you embrace their idea of a world where there is only so much to go around, then you are endorsing a program of genocide and a war of all against all.

For man to go from less than 1% haves to 40%, living at high standard - despite decreasing resources - cannot be explained by anything other than by doing more than less.

I foresee the time when industry shall no longer denude the forests which require generations to mature, nor use up the mines which were ages in making, but shall draw its raw material largely from the annual produce of the fields. I am convinced that we shall be able to get out of yearly crops most of the basic materials which we now get from forest and mine.