It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience.
The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion of some sort.
It takes five years for a willing person's mind to change. Have patience with yourself and others when treading in an area protected by a taboo.
People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.
An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.
The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public and the new is always alarming.
In an approximate way the logic of commons has been understood for a long time perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate.
But as population became denser the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded calling for a redefinition of property rights.
Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
Of course a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions because there is no public the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.
But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.
To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it or even to pretend we enjoy it.
Ecological differentiation is the necessary condition for coexistence.
Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.
The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.
There is nothing more dangerous than a shallow thinking compassionate person
In a competitive world of limited resources total freedom of individual action is intolerable
Incommensurables cannot be compared.
You cannot do only one thing.
Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
The only thing we can really count on in this uncertain world is human unreliability itself.
Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.
We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
What features of your daily life do you expect to be improved by a further increase in population?
Never globalize a problem if it can possibly be dealt with locally.
The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore population growth must eventually equal zero.
However I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics; ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.
The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Throughout history human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least we should always seek another opinion.
Indeed our particular concept of private property which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth favors pollution.
Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.
The three filters [against folly] operate through these particular questions: Literacy: What are the words? Numeracy: What are the numbers? Ecolacy: And then what?
Every measured thing is part of a web of variables more richly interconnected than we know.
The optimum population is then less than the maximum.
We see only what we have names for.
(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)