Susan George Quotes
What I worry about is climate change, because that would have untold effects that we can't even measure yet.
There is no degree of human suffering which in and of itself is going to bring about change. Only organisation can change things.
As the rich consume more and more, they are clearly not going to want to downgrade their own status.
This erosion of the middle class is happening all over the place. The opening of a wider gap between rich and poor is always accompanied by such a process.
We have the most crude accounting tools. It's tragic because our accounts and our national arithmetic doesn't tell us the things that we need to know.
The Sierra Club in the United States has now really come out for population control and reduction.
We're trying to run a 21st century society and economy with 19th century Darwinian, competitive, crude ideas.
I used to work a lot on food issues and every time somebody predicted that production would be inadequate they got egg on their face a year or two later.
If you cut down a forest, it doesn't matter how many sawmills you have if there are no more trees.
Much of what is called investment is actually nothing more than mergers and acquisitions, and of course mergers and acquisitions are generally accompanied by downsizing.
The World Development Movement, to take just one example, is doing good work. Some political parties are, too.
Debt is such a powerful tool, it is such a useful tool, it's much better than colonialism ever was because you can keep control without having an army, without having a whole administration.
The real fight is about what should be in the marketplace and what should not. Should education be a marketable commodity? Should healthcare?
Now we are flying off into outer space, there is no clear curb on what can be done in the name of the economy.
What you need if you want jobs are small and medium sized enterprises, local initiatives, labour intensive work, community development, service providers and the like.
Cost recovery is the polite way of saying, make families pay to educate their children.
Redistribution of wealth would require enormous amounts of investment. The only time an elite has accepted this has been during crises, such as in America in the 1930s under Roosevelt.
Markets cant think about anything beyond about three months. This is very long-term for markets, which is why the important things in life have got to be taken outside of the marketplace.
If we wait for the U.S. to do something, we will be waiting for a very long time. It's Europe, it's Australia, it's the other developed and middle developing countries that have got to do the job.
Everything has to be done to build some sort of international democracy. We've seen only the tiniest beginnings of that.
I'm a radical reformist, because between where we are and where I want to go there's a great deal of work, and I won't see the end of this.
