Resource Exploitation Quotes

Important reserves of natural resources, like petroleum and precious metals, are the bulwarks for laying the foundations for the future.

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

In the past, on Earth, it has largely been to exploit foreign resources and to expand the domestic territory.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.

We nor our bailiffs will take another man’s wood for Our castles or any other purpose without the owner’s consent.

I helped make Mexico...safe for American oil interests. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank …. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

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.

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.

Imperialism is too expensive an option for the United States---whether it is beneficent imperialism … or selfish imperialism…. Any small group of insurgents can make our efforts too expensive.

American global economic imperialism is a fact. It's a known fact. It's a simple fact.

Historically, the argument is we stole the country from the Indians. America stole the labor of African Americans for over 200 years under slavery. America took half of Mexico by force in the Mexican War. American foreign policy, the progressives say it's based on theft. Why? Because look, America is very active in the Middle East. Why? The Middle East has oil. Notice that America doesn't get involved in Haiti or Rwanda because they don't have any oil.

You grow great crops in great soil. And the soil is the commons. Increasingly, we have monopolistic companies that try to take as much as they can for themselves. And we have a patent and copyright regime that makes sure that nothing goes back into the commons unless by an extraordinary act of generosity. This is not fertile soil for innovation.

For 200 years we've been conquering nature. Now we're beating it to death.

It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting - corruption and favoritism, mostly- endemic to the system.

A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master of its own destiny. It is this factor which makes neo-colonialism such a serious threat to world peace.

A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor people poor. Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty.

We’re turning everything on the planet into food for humans so we’re cutting down the rainforests, displacing all of the animals, and we’re doing all this to feed humans... ... Imagine if there were only 2 billion people polluting? We’re already overpopulated. I feel we’ve become a parasite on this planet. If this population keeps growing, we’ll just keep devouring the planet, and I don’t think it’s going to stand for that very long.

Instead of finding alternative energy sources, we try to subjugate entire regions of the world. People do not understand that by doing this, the United States are going to absolute ruin.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

Oil has become the principal wealth in the hands of the great Yankee transnationals; through this energy source, they had an instrument that considerably expanded their political power in the world.

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

From the 1920s into the 1940s, Britain's standard of living was supported by oil from Iran. British cars, trucks, and buses ran on cheap Iranian oil. Factories throughout Britain were fueled by oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which projected British power all over the world, powered its ships with Iranian oil.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.