People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental/population problem facing the world… — Jared Diamond
People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental/population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!"
p. 498Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
My hope in writing this book has been that enough people will choose to profit from that opportunity to make a difference.
p. 525
Remember that impact is the product of two factors: population multiplied times impact per person.
p. 524
What are the choices that we must make if we are now to succeed, and not to fail? [...] Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial to tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives. One of those choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they have reached crisis proportions. [...] The other crucial choice illuminated by the past involves the courage to make painful decisions about values. Which of the values that formerly served a society well can continue to be maintained under new changed circumstances? Which of these treasured values must instead be jettisoned and replaced with different approaches?
