Tom Butler > Quotes

“It is through the sheer mass of society, not simply from malevolence, that the rising human tide has become deadly to the rest of life. The collective weight of a bloated humanity has dire ecological and social consequences. Every pressing problem, from poverty and malnutrition to biodiversity loss and climate change, is linked to human numbers and behaviour. In aggregate, the prosaic actions of people—eating, manufacturing, polluting, shopping, warring—have made our species the functional equivalent of a geological force, able to affect even the global life support systems and climate in which our species evolved.”
― Tom Butler, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot

“In ecology, the term overshoot describes the phenomenon of a species becoming so numerous that it outstrips its habitat.”
― Tom Butler, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot

“Not until man sees the light and submits gracefully, moderating his homoecentricity; not until man accepts the primacy of beauty, diversity, and integrity of nature, and limits his dominion and numbers, placing equal value on the preservation of natural environments as on his own life, is there hope that he will survive.”
― Tom Butler, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot

“We have geared the machines and locked all together into interdependence; we have built the great cities; now there is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable of free survival, insulated from the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all dependent. The circle is closed, and the net is being hauled in, They hardly feel the cords drawing.”
― Tom Butler, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot

“In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model feeling the overconsumption of the West.”
― Tom Butler, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot