# Quote — Jared Diamond, Collapse

> "The environment has to be balanced against the economy." This quote portrays environmental concerns as a luxury, views measures to solve environmental problems as incurring a net cost, and considers leaving environmental problems unsolved to be a money-saving device. This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards. Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run and in the long run; cleaning up or preventing those messes saves us huge sums in the long run, and often in the short run as well. In caring for the health of our surroundings, just as of our bodies, it is cheaper and preferable to avoid getting sick than to try to cure illnesses after they have developed.

- Author: [Jared Diamond](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond.md)
- Book: [Collapse](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse.md)
- Page: 503
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed_(2005)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/the-environment-has

## 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 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/my-hope-in-writing.md)

> Remember that impact is the product of two factors: population multiplied times impact per person.

p. 524 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/remember-that-impact.md)

> 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?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/what-are-the.md)