Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class…involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, ownership of motor vehicles, golf courses, small electric appliances, home and work place air-conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable...

Maurice Strong

What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?... In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?

Maurice Strong

change responsibility country

A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmental damaging consumption patterns.

Maurice Strong

environmental lifestyle patterns

Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?

Maurice Strong

eugenics responsibility civilization

The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.

Maurice Strong

yield community powerful

Developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class-involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing-are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.

Maurice Strong

air home food

We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.

Maurice Strong

saving civilization world

Either we reduce the world's population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally

Maurice Strong

world-population population world

After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.

Maurice Strong

romance running mean

Strengthening the role the United Nations can play...will require serious examination of the need to extend into the international arena the rule of law and the principle of taxation to finance agreed actions which provide the basis for governance at the national level. But this will not come about easily. Resistance to such changes is deeply entrenched. They will come about not through the embrace of full blown world government, but as a careful and pragmatic response to compelling imperatives and the inadequacies of alternatives.

Maurice Strong

world-government law play

Nevertheless, the concept of sustainable development is now known - even amongst those who haven't accepted it - and it's recognized, debated and followed by an increasing number of businesses.

Maurice Strong

accepted development numbers

The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments.

Maurice Strong

real goal facts

I am a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.

Maurice Strong

socialist methodology ideology

We need what I have often called an ecological approach to the management of these resources and we do not have that now. We have the inertia of past habits, unsustainable habits.

Maurice Strong

management past needs

Also, it is interesting that developing countries, with China and India perhaps in the lead, where the future of the global environment will be decided are now on board with the case for sustainable development.

Maurice Strong

india country interesting

Licences to have babies incidentally is something that I got in trouble for some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.

Maurice Strong

baby children years

Inertia is a powerful force in human and political affairs.

Maurice Strong

affair political powerful

Ted Turner is still a leader. And he sets a great example. His ability financially has been reduced, but his influence and his example still is an important asset to the whole environmental movement.

Maurice Strong

environmental important leader

What pleases me most is that sustainable development is on almost everybody's agenda now.

Maurice Strong

please-me agendas development

We must, from here on in, all go down the same path... There may not be another chance.

Maurice Strong

another-chance path may

We owe at least this much to future generations, from whom we have borrowed a fragile planet called Earth.

Maurice Strong

stewardship generations earth