By skimping on design, the owner gets costlier equipment, higher energy costs, and a less competitive and comfortable building; the tenants get lower productivity and higher rent and operating costs.

Fire made us human, fossil fuels made us modern, but now we need a new fire that makes us safe, secure, healthy and durable.

Economies are supposed to serve human ends.. not the other way round. We forget at our peril that markets make a good servant, a bad master and a worse religion.

Prominent exploration experts have recently predicted that total world production of liquid oil will peak by about the end of this decade-or a few years later if production does not rise much-and will decline thereafter.

I once met an economist who believed that everything was fungible for money, so I suggested he enclose himself in a large bell-jar with as much money as he wanted and see how long he lasted.

We've got 21st century technology and speed colliding head-on with 20th and 19th century institutions, rules and cultures.

In the model that we grew up with, governments rule physical territory in which national economies function, and strong economies support hegemonic military power. In the new model, already emerging under our noses, economic decisions don't pay much attention to national sovereignty in a world where more than half of the one hundred or two hundred largest economic entities are not countries but companies.