Depletion & Abundance Quotes

“What we all have to avoid is the notion that we can buy our way out of our problems. Instead, the goal is to reduce our costs by extreme frugality. This is psychologically difficult because if there is one great certain confidence in American society it is this: you can buy your way out of almost anything. Other than a few things that will land you in jail even if you are rich, we tend to look for solutions that involve buying things. Having trouble with your marriage? Take a vacation. Pay a counsellor. Don't want to eat pesticides? Buy organic food! Indebted? Buy a book about how to get out. Worried about Peak Oil? Look at all the things there are to buy. Got a crosscut saw and a year's supply of dry milk yet? Don't want to give up driving and flying? We'll sell you some nice carbon offsets.”
― Sharon Astyk, Depletion & Abundance: Life on the New Home Front

“Climate Change is caused by human emissions; it moves faster or slower partly in response to our rate of emissions, but also because of natural "tipping points" that make the planet take things in its own hands. So, for example, during one of the last great climactic shifts, the planet may have gone from being fairly warm to an ice age in less than ten years; and then the ice age may have ended in a single season! These things are very hard to model, but projections for the future that imagine Climate Change will occur in a gradual and orderly fashion are probably wrong.”
― Sharon Astyk, Depletion & Abundance: Life on the New Home Front

“We've managed to convince ourselves that it is economically more productive and of greater benefit to the nation as a whole to give a person a tank and body armor, training and a ticket to some foreign country than to invest the same amount in a decent education, some job training, a piece of land and help learning how to build a house on it and grow some food. The fact that we think the former is perfectly normal but would be outraged at the latter -- and see it as "welfare"-- is , of course, insane.”
― Sharon Astyk, Depletion & Abundance: Life on the New Home Front