Alfred W. Crosby quotes:

Modern civilization is a product of an energy binge. Binges often end in hangovers.

Nature's standard operating procedure, pairing a population explosion with a population crash.

I don't know how not to get the flu.

What could be more general than 2, which can represent two galaxies or two pickles, or one galaxy plus one pickle (the mind doth boggle), or just 2 gently bobbing - where? It, like God, is an "I am" and many have thought that it must be a precipitate of ultimate reality.

We of the richer societies, who have had access to more energy than we have the experience to wield intelligently are making decisions we are not qualified to make almost every time we enter the voting booth, go to the grocery store or step into a car show room. We do not know what is "normal." Because our whole life and in some respects a generation or two before us have only known this era of fossil fuel exploitation and resource grabbing; we call this normal.