Quotes & Sayings About Energy Usage

People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist really is.
An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that's out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.
An idealist focuses only on the best aspects of all things (sometimes in detriment to reality); an optimist strives to find an effective solution. A pessimist sees limited or no choices in dark times; an optimist makes choices.
When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie.
Annoying? Yes. But, oh-so tasty! — Vera Nazarian

In vulgar usage, progress has come to mean limitless movement in space and time, accompanied, necessarily, by an equally limitless command of energy: culminating in limitless destruction. — Lewis Mumford

In this age of globalization, instant real time media and television, everyone all over the world realizes that high energy usage equates with a high standard of living and wealth. — John Olver

Doom yourself to horrific climate change by burning all that carbon and releasing all that CO2. Or power down society, reducing total energy usage around the planet. One leads to ecological collapse. The other is a reversion, in many ways, to poverty. — Ramez Naam

When I was a child, I enjoyed thinking about the future, and especially
loved to imagine flying around in one of those cool bubble cars I'd seen
on The Jetsons cartoons. Here we are, fifty years later, and we have the same
gas- and oil-guzzling motor vehicles, the same basic planes, the same trains,
the same utility companies to monitor and charge for our electricity, gas, and
water usage. Jimmy Carter talked a lot about new sources of energy back in
the 1970s. So did some of the hippies. And yet, decades later, there has been
little progression on this front. — Donald Jeffries

But this discourse, expressed in our paternal language, keeps clear the meaning of its words. The very quality of speech and of the Egyptian words have in themselves the energy of the object they speak of.

Therefore, my king, in so far as you have the power (who are all powerful), keep the discourse uninterpreted, lest mysteries of such greatness come to the Greeks, lest the extravagant, flaccid and (as it were) dandified Greek idiom extinguish something stately and concise, the energetic idiom of usage. For the Greeks have empty speeches, O king, that are energetic only in what they demonstrate, and this is the philosophy of the Greeks, an inane foolosophy of speeches. We, by contrast, use not speeches but sounds that are full of action. (Chapter XVI) — Hermes Trismegistus

We are about to enter a new era in which, each year, less net energy will be available to humankind, regardless of our efforts or choices. The only significant choice we will have will be how we adjust to this new regime. That choice - not whether, but how to reduce energy usage and make a transition to renewable alternatives - will have profound ethical and political ramifications. — Richard Heinberg

While our energy efficiency is improving, there is a very high correlation, almost near perfect correlation, between GDP growth, and energy usage. — Malcolm Turnbull

If you set yourself a goal for energy usage in your house, if you have to look at a graph on your phone, you probably won't change your behavior. But if you have a clock on the wall that changes color from green to red if you're using more energy than you've planned, then that actually can change your behavior. There are a lot of things to be done in that world that actually have an impact on our daily lives. — Werner Vogels