Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

I’m a radical environmentalist; I think the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better. The world will do better without us. Maybe some fuzzy animals will go with us, but there’ll be plenty of other animals, and they’ll be back.

As you know, low demand and high supply means a drop in value of anything, including the dollar.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

The environment is everything that isn’t me.

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you’re just going to keep buying and selling things until there’s nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet.

We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilisation – and the entire biosphere – must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be.

The universal utilization of water power and its long-distance transmission will supply every household with cheap power and will dispense with the necessity of burning fuel. The struggle for existence being lessened, there should be development along ideal rather than material lines.

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.

Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense. It’s also the right thing to do for people and the planet. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity, and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

I’m not a macroeconomics person.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, ‚Thus far and no farther.‘

Gardening is not a rational act.

This industry has been really good to me. It’s been a great life. I’m not through yet. I’m ready when you are, Mr. DeMille.

When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.

The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that’s expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren’t used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.

In this industry, there’s a lot of cases of being a competitor in one way, but you’re often a customer and a vendor in another way. It’s not atypical in aerospace. Actually, it’s not that atypical in a lot of industries.

You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we’re so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives, because it’s not going to be around forever.

I have a private plane. But I fly commercial when I go to environmental conferences.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.

The shift to a cleaner energy economy wont happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.

The threat to the planet is us. It’s actually not a threat to the planet – it’s a threat to us.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

In the simplest terms, inflation occurs when there’s too much money in the system. On the flip side, deflation occurs when there are too few dollars in circulation.

A life of stasis would be population control, combined with energy rationing. That is the stasis world that you live in if you stay. And even with improvements in efficiency, you’ll still have to ration energy. That, to me, doesn’t sound like a very exciting civilization for our grandchildren’s grandchildren to live in.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

I do know that throughout history, all paper money has eventually come back to its true value, which is zero.

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

We shouldn’t be saying ‚Save the planet‘; we should be saying: ‚Save viable conditions in which people can live.‘ That’s what we’re dealing with here.

You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries.

Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone’s guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.

Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits.

If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.

Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.

The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.

Winning ‚Motor Trend‘ Car of the year is probably the closest thing to winning the Oscar or Emmy of the car industry.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

I think that once you fully understand the climate and ecological emergencies, then you know what you can do as well. And, of course, there’s a lot of things you can do in your everyday life, but we cannot be focusing on these individual things you can do. We have to see the full picture.

I did this book ‚Harvest for Hope,‘ and I learned so much about food. And one thing I learned is that we have the guts not of a carnivore, but of an herbivore. Herbivore guts are very long because they have to get the last bit of nutrition out of leaves and things.

I’m glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That’s cool.

In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that’s safer, doesn’t require us to go around the world to get all our oil.