We have to encourage the future we want rather than trying to prevent the future we fear.

Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems

… good enough for our transatlantic friends… but unworthy of practical or scientific men.

Report of a committee of the British Parliament on the idea of an incandescent lamp, 1878

With tongue in cheek and apologies to the Wal-Mart version we have all heard, please consider these thoughts that are sure to help us NOT achieve sustainability in 2008.

1. Refuse to consider thoughts and opinions other than your own. If you are right and everyone else is wrong, why bother?

2. Remain glued to the status quo. After all if what you have been doing works, why take a chance on changing anything?

3. Reject any idea that even remotely sounds like compromise even though sometimes, that is the best way to accomplish progress.

4. Resist any new technology unless it is absolutely perfect and supports your position. “See I told you it wouldn’t work” can be all so satisfying.

5. Ridicule anyone who appears to be profiting from their work in sustainability, especially if their margin appears to exceed your own.

6. Repel anyone seeking knowledge or help. Everyone knowing as much as you do cannot be a good thing.

Last but not least

7. Resign yourself to the fact that the environmental problem is too large to be fixed. Seek new goals that are easier to achieve!

Dennis Salazar

There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.

Albert Einstein, 1932

The technical and implementation options — the everyday work of energy efficiency practitioners — are mostly unknown, however, to those econometricians who lie awake nights worrying about whether what works in practice can possibly work in theory.

Amery Lovins

… I do not think there is the slightest chance of its [electricity] competing, in a general way, with gas. There are defects about the electric light which, unless some essential changes take place, must entirely prevent its application to ordinary lighting purposes.

Select Committee on Lighting by Electricity, British House of Commons, 1879

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain of success than to take a lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because innovation has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

Machiavelli, The Prince (c. 1515)

I have always consistently opposed high-tension and alternating systems of electric lighting … not only on account of danger, but because of their general unreliability and unsuitability for any general system of distribution.

Thomas Edison, 1889

Nimby: Not In My Back Yard
Nimto: Not In My Term of Office
Banana: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything
CAVE people: Citizens Against Virtually Everything
NOPE: Not On Planet Earth

Ronnie Belmans