Resource Depletion Quotes

As a community we have been living beyond our means…. We have been living at a rate which is simply not justified by the amounts of goods and services we are producing.

The country itself is the best I have ever seen for producing all the products of Spain... But what I am sure of is that there is not any gold nor any other metal in all that country

Pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources depend and will depend in the future on the absolute level of total economic activity. This means that is necessary to restrain both the rate of growth of population and, at least in the developed countries, the rate of growth of consumption per head.

The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources.... By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated

The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC.

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

The fruits [game and natural resources] may be easier tasted than believed.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values, there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally, and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing

No nation has ever aggressively and intensely exploited national resources over such a great area as has the United States.

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

But we are not going to be able to survive on this limited planet if the population keeps on growing: there isn't going to be anything left.

Prodigality of Time produces Poverty of Mind as well as of Estate.

This country has been economically successful because of cheap energy and cheap labor and we are never going to have these again.

Many of the wars this century were about oil, but those of the next century will be over water

If all fooles had babies, wee should want fuell.

There are too many people, that's why we have global warming. We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff.

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable.

Russia has nothing: no successful politics or economy.

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

I don't think anybody has the right to a huge family. There's already more people on the planet than our natural resources can even support, and if everybody were to have a high standard of living, we need three or four or five new planets to provide the resources. And this cannot be, so something has to change.

There's no longer any surprise in noting that China has grave environmental problems.

We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.

The earth is warming at an alarming rate, we are running out of fossil fuels, and it is long past time for us to take action to correct these problems.