James Howard Kunstler Quotes

No amount or combination of alternative fuels is going to allow us to continue running what we're running, the way we're running it.

Doom yourself to horrific climate change by burning all that carbon and releasing all that CO2. Or power down society, reducing total energy usage around the planet. One leads to ecological collapse. The other is a reversion, in many ways, to poverty.

The question of energy is an important one. The big issue is how to get it, how not to destroy the environment, and how to survive as a species. It's a big deal.

If India moves towards 100 percent LED lighting, we will reduce almost 79 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This will also reduce the electricity bills of people.

Its operation in a world beset by fuel and energy crises makes no sense at all.

Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over - unless we find new ways of producing energy.

The frontiers of the future will be the ruins of the unsustainable.

I was writing a book about sustainable energy, and a friend asked me, 'Well, how much energy do you use at home?' And I was embarrassed. I didn't actually know.

Smart development invests in insulation, efficient cars, and ever-renewed sources of energy. Dumb growth crashes around looking for more oil.

You see, nature will do exactly what it must, and if we are a hindrance to its development, to even its destructive powers to reform itself and we are in a way, we will go.

There is hardly an activity that a person can think about that does not intrinsically involve energy, most of which is currently provided by fossil fuels.

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.

Al Gore, the former vice-president of the United States, lives in a mansion that uses more electricity than the average family's bungalow! David Suzuki rides on a bus that uses more fuel than a Smart car to get across Canada! Oh my God! And this is just the tip of the vanishing iceberg!

Americans trash the planet not because we're evil, but because the industrial systems we've devised leave no other choice. Our ranch houses and high-rises, factories and farms, freeways and power plants were conceived before we had a clue how the planet works.

Feeding our energy appetite is top of mind for many people these days.

Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.

As we look to the future, we cannot improve our living standards while simultaneously degrading the natural environment around us.

Energy use is merely a means to many rewarding ends: economic security, education, health.

If we got more efficient with electric grid capacity, we would substantially reduce our carbon footprint, and people would be likely to copy us.

All insulation takes energy to make it, but that is not a reason not to invest in it. The savings, for both the planet and the bank account, can be impressive.

Climate change and energy use are global problems - News Corp is a global company. Our operations affect the environment all over the world.

A useful analogy is to see traditional societies as relying on instantaneous (or minimally delayed) and constantly replenished solar income, while modern civilization is withdrawing accumulated solar capital at rates that will exhaust it in a tiny fraction of the time that was needed to create it.

If you were running a solar company you may be okay - you may be able to keep growing. The question for physics is: Can you grow fast enough to begin to catch up with the damage?

I think for the next 50 years I'm not going to be able to stop because of the light that you shine for me and so many millions of Americans.

Not using fossil fuels is tantamount to not using energy. It is economic suicide and eco-manslaughter.