Robert S. McIntyre Quotes

Most human beings are defined in terms of their capacity to consume.

The essence of government is making necessary choices between competing uses of public resources.

Politics is economics in action.

A budget is a moral document of a nation’s priorities.

I don’t think everybody fully appreciates the consequences of slower growth, which are very serious. You need growth to have the resources to build the infrastructure, housing, to uphold the standard of living.

What we are beginning to witness is a whole new set of rules for economics, based on rationing resources.

I do not believe there is a natural resource economics. I believe there is good economics and bad economics.

Some take advantage of natural resources to put the capital in the hands of the few, while some use these natural resources to benefit the majority, as we do in Bolivia.

Government can only spend a dollar to help someone when it forcibly takes a dollar from someone else.

I've made a promise that taxes would be my last resort on issues.

Natural resources must be so distributed, by way of auction or otherwise, that they serve a larger public purpose.

What humans aren't good at is trying to consume less, to consume less plastic, to not be lazy.

The optimal use of natural resources can be made only if there is a well-thought-out policy framework for their exploitation towards a particular end use.

Nothing could be more regressive than carbon taxes.

Everybody has to remember that economics is very tied to politics.

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.

Sustainable production and consumption matter immensely to the people I meet every day as head of the International Trade Centre, which works with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help them boost growth and job creation by improving their competitiveness and connecting to international markets.

Government has no money of its own. All it does is take resources from one group and given them to another.

I am against resources being controlled by corporations, but that doesn't mean I want them controlled by the state.

We are living and consuming more than we need, and this impacts our survival.

Squeezing the lives of people is now being proposed as the saviour of the planet. Through the green economy an attempt is being made to technologise, financialise, privatise and commodify all of the earth’s resources and living processes.

It turns out the population issue is an easier thing to deal with than the consumption issue. Some obvious extremes in consumption we can deal with. The standard cure for a stuttering economy is to go out and buy an SUV and three more refrigerators. That's obviously not the way to go.

Living through the 1929 Great Depression helped shape my social conscience. During this time, I realized the earth was still the same place, manufacturing plants were still intact, and resources were still there, but people didn’t have money to buy the products. I felt the rules of the game we play by were outmoded and damaging. This began a life-long quest resulting in the conclusions and designs presented in The Venus Project.

What we don't need is more spending, and what we don't need are taxes, and what we do need is a lot less of both.

If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.