As more and more people wake up to the fact that further growth does not necessarily bring improvements in quality of life (and often exactly the opposite), sustainability is going to become one of the key characteristics with which places want to be associated.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that growth alone doesn't guarantee a better quality of life, highlighting the importance of sustainability.
Jonathon Porritt points out a critical insight regarding economic growth and its perceived benefits. He suggests that as awareness increases about the harmful effects of unchecked growth on quality of life, communities and places will prioritize sustainability as an essential aspect of their identity. This reflects a growing recognition that true progress should not only be measured by economic metrics but also by the well-being of individuals and the environment.
In practice
In a conference about urban development, to emphasize the importance of sustainable practices in city planning.
The collapse of the world's banking system and the impending disaster of accelerating climate change are not separate phenomena. They are simply the most visible symptoms of a particular model of capitalism that will bring civilisation to its knees. But those symptoms will not get sorted unless and until we commit to a radical transformation of the way we create and distribute wealth in the world today
We're never going to scare people into living more sustainably! We have to be able to demonstrate just how dynamic and aspirational such a world could be
Any regeneration project that fails to put environmental and social benefits at its very heart is unlikely to achieve anything more than a very short-lived spasm of spurious prosperity
...the core values that underpin sustainable development - interdependence, empathy, equity, personal responsibility and intergenerational justice - are the only foundation upon which any viable vision of a better world can possibly be constructed
The future will be green, or not at all
So many times I've photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet. I had one idea to go and photograph the factories that were polluting, and to see all the deposits of garbage. But, in the end, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet - to see the innocence.
I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.
Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them.
The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
Pines a thousand years old. Every year they must go farther for them: they recede, like beavers and Indians, before the white man.
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