Paul Hawken Quotes

I do not believe you can have infinite population or economic growth in a finite world. We are living on the shoulders of some awesome geometric curves.

It is undeniable that the looming environmental crisis is partly the consequence of population growth.

Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today

Rapid population growth and technological innovation, combined with our lack of understanding about how the natural systems of which we are a part work, have created a mess.

This is suicidal... our home is the biosphere. That's a very thin layer of air, water and land where all life exists. It's fixed, it can't grow, and yet we cling to this idea that the economy can grow forever. And it must. Well, it can't.

The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.

If you look at the carrying capacity of agricultural areas throughout the world, their ecological habitats are changing. So I think we're looking at - in our lifetime - great collapses of food services.

The causal chain of the deterioration (of the environment) is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide---all can be traced easily to too many people.

If the rest of the world aspires to our way of life ... we'll bury ourselves in waste.

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

Can you name an environmental problem that would NOT be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder (and ultimately impossible) with more? Nobody can.

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

Regardless of what we consume, the sheer volume of consumption is overwhelming the Earth's living systems.

Humanity, in the desperate attempt to fit 8 billion or more people on the planet and give them a higher standard of living, is at risk of pushing the rest of life off the globe.

We're not on a sustainable path in civilization. We're on an exponential growth curve, on which we perhaps always have been, but it has turned up sharply at the beginning of the 20th century.

Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticides, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide - all can be traced easily to too many people.

Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage.

The strong evidence is that we're running out of space. We're collectively affecting the world's climate. This is due to the still-growing human population and our increase in consumption.

Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.

Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can't.

Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.

Human activity is having a major impact on the planet. We consume or have diverted a large proportion of the productivity of the land and oceans. Our hunger for land crowds out fellow species. Our waste products pollute the waters, warm the atmosphere and acidify the oceans.

A billion could live off the earth; 6 billion living as we do is far too many, and you run out of planet in no time.

Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.

I was always aware that this whole Earth is on overload.