We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.
Paul HawkenRead
How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them both? Is it rational to have an pricing system which discounts the future and sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confused capital liquidation with income?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the rationality of an economic system that prioritizes immediate profit over long-term sustainability for the planet and its inhabitants.
In this thought-provoking quote, Paul Hawken critiques the existing economic paradigm that values short-term gains over the health of the environment and the well-being of people. He challenges the logic behind a system that allows for the degradation of natural resources and human lives while posing a pressing question about the ethical implications of our economic decisions. By highlighting the disconnect between current practices and future consequences, Hawken encourages a reevaluation of how we measure value and progress in society.
Themes
EconomyEnvironmentSustainabilityFutureValue
In practice
Example use cases
In a sustainability conference to emphasize the need for better economic practices.
More from Paul Hawken
All quotes →Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider.
Paul HawkenRead
We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.
Paul HawkenRead
At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.
Paul HawkenRead
How much harm does a company have to do before we question its right to exist?
Paul HawkenRead
We have the capacity to create a remarkably different economy: one that can restore ecosystems and protect the environment while bringing forth innovation, prosperity, meaningful work, and true security.
Paul HawkenRead
Similar quotes
I'm a free person; I feel terribly free. They could put me in chains and I still would be free because my thoughts would be mine - and that's all I want to have.
Arthur RubinsteinRead
Humanity needs justice, peace and love and we can have this only by returning with our hearts towards God who is the source of all this.
Pope FrancisRead
In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.
Thomas HobbesRead
Almost anything carried to a logical extreme becomes depressing.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.
Khaled HosseiniRead
Repentance can become a very, very deep phenomenon in you if you understand the responsibility. Then even a small thing, if it becomes a repentance-- not just verbal, not just on the surface; if it goes deep to the roots, if you repent from the roots; if your whole being shakes and trembles and cries, and tears come out; not only out of your eyes but out of every cell of your body, then repentance can become a transfiguration.
RajneeshRead