"The tragedy of the commons, explained by Garrett Hardin... shows how nonfunctional communities can rapidly destroy their own resource base. ...how good, rational people can form destructive communities. ...Instead of protecting their long-term future by conserving resources, they protect their short-term gains by competing, deplete their resources to the point of collapse, and bring about the failure of the community. ...again and again ..."

“Fixed energy limits have not limited the progress of nature.”

“I encourage people to look into the Transition Network.”

“To combat the problems we face, we need to swim against the tide, and not only the main tide of environmentally blind industrialists, but also the secondary current of efficiency-blind environmentalists.”

“Cellular systems, ecosystems, and civilizations are, at base, thermodynamic systems. ...The system uses energy, eventually releasing it as useless heat. ...there is one vital difference between natural systems and human systems: natural systems receive a fixed energy input that never varies. If we could set a strict limit on energy use, we could build a human system that is just as stable as an ecosystem.”

“It is too late to slow this runaway train down before it tumbles into the chasm.”

“We should stop subsidizing the fossil-fuel industries and instead provide subsidies for local and community energy projects.”