Sentences with phrase «live on a finite planet»

Another keystone to better meshing humanity's infinite aspirations with life on a finite planet will be slowly shifting value systems from the foundation up, not through some Beltway debate.

But we live on a finite planet: limited resources, limited sinks, limited rates of recovery, limited carrying capacity.

Here's a little pause, after days focused on numbers (gigawatts of electrical generation, gigatons of emissions, square miles of sea ice), to reflect on the value judgments underlying efforts to mesh boundless human aspirations with life on a finite planet.

Updated below Through three - plus decades of reporting, I've been seeking ways to better mesh humanity's infinite aspirations with life on a finite planet.

With the 704th post on this exploration of ways to mesh infinite human aspirations with life on a finite planet, I'm taking a break to pick some backyard blackberries (video above; watch in HD mode), go camping on a beach in eastern Long Island and «review the bidding,» as my colleague and friend Cornelia Dean likes to say.

I encourage you to slow down, too, and to celebrate this remarkable moment in our history as a species, as we slowly come to grips with the predicament of trying to mesh infinite aspirations with life on a finite planet.

Through most of this month and the next few days, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is hosting an enormous gathering of environmentalists, diplomats, scientists, indigenous leaders and others trying to break new ground in international efforts to fit human activities and aspirations within the constraints that come with life on a finite planet.

We live on a finite planet, so growing indefinitely into the future is not possible.

As long as we live on a finite planet, however, that ain't gonna happen.

Not exact matches

At least seven immense, interdependent threats to the quality of life on spaceship earth continue to escalate: the population explosion; the widening gulf between rich and poor nations; massive malnutrition (caused mainly by economic injustice, which produces maldistribution of available food); environmental pollution and degradation; the depletion of the irreplaceable resources of our finite planet; the growing threat of nuclear terrorism and eventual holocaust (with the equivalent of one and a half million Hiroshima - sized bombs in the arsenals of the world); and the worldwide tendency for the fruits of science and technology to be used without ethical responsibility.

Let us consider that it could become dangerous to life as know it on Earth for the human community much longer to pursue the prized «business as usual» course of the predominant culture: unbridled overproduction, unrestrained overconsumption and unchecked overpopulation because, when these distinctly human activities are taken together, an overpowering force of nature exists that could become unsustainable on the relatively small, evident finite, noticeably frangible planet God blesses us to inhabit and steward, and surely not to overwhelm.

Kenneth Boulding, economist and President Kennedy's Environmental Advisor 1966 (lived 1910 — 1993) «Anyone who believes in indefinite growth of anything physical on a physically finite planet is either a madman or an economist.»

Remember, we live on a «finite planet», which means there is no such thing as «sustainable long term growth».

A finite planet with the size, composition and environs of the Earth and a community with the boundaries, limited resources and wondrous climate of villages, towns and cities where we live may not be able to sustain much longer the economic and population growth that is occurring on our watch.