Quotes and Insights
Here I’ll post inspiring or classic quotes, insights, images – and their sources. Feel free to use them as you wish.
Use your magic wand:
Nate Hagens wraps up 2024 of The Great Simplification with a montage of answers to his question:
“If you could wave a magic wand – and there was no personal recourse to your decision – what is one thing you would do to improve human and planetary futures?”
Some of these answers would truly take magic to achieve Others involve actions that we have the power to enact on the individual level and within the communities around us right now.
On extinction:
I like Environmental journalist Hart Hagan‘s wry observation:
“A species causing the extinction of 150 species per day doesn’t need more energy to do more of what it does.”
On degrowth:
“Associating degrowth with a recession just because the two involve a reduction of GDP is absurd; it would be like arguing that amputation and a diet are the very same thing just because they both lead to weight loss.“
On extinction rate:
The rate of species extinctions significantly increased compared to the background rate since 1950. The background rate is the natural rate of extinction observed in the fossil record and estimates suggest it to be about 0.1 to 1 extinction per million species per year [1]. Recent extinction rates were estimated to be 50 to 500 times higher than this background rate [1]. When including possibly extinct species, the rate could be up to 1,000 times higher [1].
This dramatic increase is largely attributed to human activities such as habitat destruction, climate change, pollution, and overexploitation of species [2]. The acceleration of extinction rates poses a significant threat to global biodiversity and ecosystem stability.
