Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What if we could make energy do our work without working our undoing?
The markets make a good servant but a bad master, and a worse religion.
Facts are more mundane than fantasies, but a better basis for conclusions.
Many analysts now regard modest, zero, or negative growth in our rate of energy use as a realistic long-term goal.
We've got 21st century technology and speed colliding head-on with 20th and 19th century institutions, rules and cultures.
Fire made us human, fossil fuels made us modern, but now we need a new fire that makes us safe, secure, healthy and durable.
Energy-saving technologies keep improving faster than they're applied, so efficiency is an ever larger and cheaper resource.
I am a man without a furnace. My windows are insulated by 19 sheets of glass which cost less than installing a heating system.
We'd find more energy in the attics of American homes (through energy conservation measures) than in all the oil buried in Alaska.
I'm a practitioner of elegant frugality. I don't feel comfortable telling other people what to do, so I just try and lead by example.
If you ask me, it'd be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.
A package of 35 improvements to typical industrial motor systems can save around 50% of their metered energy…with a simple payback under 16 months.
The reason the U.S. lags so badly is that we have obsolete rules that favor big over small, supply over efficiency, and incumbents over new market entrants.
The barriers that renewables and efficiency face come less from our living in a capitalist market economy and more from not taking market economics seriously.
Economies are supposed to serve human ends.. not the other way round. We forget at our peril that markets make a good servant, a bad master and a worse religion.
Rely on renewable energy flows that are always there whether we use them or not, such as, sun, wind and vegetation: on energy income, not depletable energy capital.
I'm not an environmentalist. I'm a cultural repairman. It's all about efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, prosperous and life-sustaining.
Nuclear power has died of an incurable attack of market forces and is way beyond any hope of revival, because the competitors are several-fold cheaper and are getting rapidly more so.
Many business leaders are asking fundamental questions about what business they're in, why they are doing it and how it can be used as a means of healing human and natural communities.
I once met an economist who believed that everything was fungible for money, so I suggested he enclose himself in a large bell-jar with as much money as he wanted and see how long he lasted.
Nature does not compromise; a pelican is not a compromise between a crow and otter, it is just a pelican. Nature makes no compromises; any inefficient products are recalled to the manufacturer!
By skimping on design, the owner gets costlier equipment, higher energy costs, and a less competitive and comfortable building; the tenants get lower productivity and higher rent and operating costs.
If you ask the wrong question, of course, you get the wrong answer. We find in design it's much more important and difficult to ask the right question. Once you do that, the right answer becomes obvious.
I think along the way, as we treat nature as model and mentor, and not as a nuisance to be evaded or manipulated, we will certainly acquire much more reverence for life than we seem to be showing right now.
Public discourse about climate change has resulted in the erroneous idea that it's all about cost, burden and sacrifice. If the math was correct, everyone would see it's about profit, jobs and competitive advantage.
Prominent exploration experts have recently predicted that total world production of liquid oil will peak by about the end of this decade-or a few years later if production does not rise much-and will decline thereafter.
Today we have a temporary aberration called "industrial capitalism" which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital, the natural world and properly functioning societies. No sensible capitalist would do that.
Our energy future is choice, not fate. Oil dependence is a problem we need no longer have-and it's cheaper not to. U.S. oil dependence can be eliminated by proven and attractive technologies that create wealth, enhance choice, and strengthen common security.
If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.
Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007 - and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants' intermittence.
In the model that we grew up with, governments rule physical territory in which national economies function, and strong economies support hegemonic military power. In the new model, already emerging under our noses, economic decisions don't pay much attention to national sovereignty in a world where more than half of the one hundred or two hundred largest economic entities are not countries but companies.
Any demanding high technology tends to develop influential and dedicated constituencies of those who link its commercial success with both the public welfare and their own. Such sincerely held beliefs, peer pressures, and the harsh demands that the work itself places on time and energy all tend to discourage such people from acquiring a similarly thorough knowledge of alternative policies and the need to discuss them.