If we are to save humanity and the planet from the worst mass extinction of all time, worse even than that at the end of the Permian, we must stop at two degrees.
Mark LynasRead
Conventional economic theory... counts the depletion of resources as the accumulation of wealth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques traditional economic views that mistake resource depletion for wealth accumulation.
Mark Lynas highlights a fundamental flaw in conventional economic theory, which equates the reduction of natural resources with the generation of wealth. This perspective can lead to harmful practices that prioritize short-term gains over long-term sustainability, ultimately disregarding the consequences of depleting the planet's resources.
Themes
EconomicsResourcesWealthSustainabilityDepletionTheory
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about sustainable development at a conference.
More from Mark Lynas
All quotes βSimilar quotes
I'm just saying that if you understand how the economic machine works, it just works like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships.
Ray DalioRead
I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity.
Milton FriedmanRead
I agree that income disparity is the great issue of our time. It is even broader and more difficult than the civil rights issues of the 1960s. The '99 percent' is not just a slogan. The disparity in income has left the middle class with lowered, not rising, income, and the poor unable to reach the middle class.
Eleanor Holmes NortonRead
When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident.
Ronald ReaganRead
Just as we should never balance the budget on the backs of the poor, so it is an economic delusion to think you can balance it only on the wallets of the rich.
George OsborneRead
All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human wants directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth.
Alfred MarshallRead