Best 1479 quotes in «environment quotes» category

We claim to be self-made, yet we all have accents

We find it repugnant when people exploit or abuse others for personal gain - we call them cheats, tyrants, scoundrels, or villains; we describe them as despicable, evil, vile, wicked, or manipulative. (Aldo) Leopold said we should feel the same way about people who exploit or abuse land.

We gave away our land and our water-ka wai ola, our life source. But we forgot to tell the haole they should love then like we do. That the streams are our brothers. That the earth is our mother.

We have a duty to care for the environment.

We have, as a nation, made choices that by all reasonable expectations should have put us in harm's way. There is little doubt that we continue to make choices that are likely to make the danger even greater. And yet, by dint of an accident of geography and economics, we have so far been spared the worst consequences of our actions. And even as those consequences begin to take hold in other places, here, in the parts of America where most of us live, at least for the moment, we can hear the winds roaring over our heads like that coal train, but somehow the worst of the danger still seems removed. What is our responsibility? (164)

We do not need to attend classroom training programmes for everything. Observation opens the windows of knowledge around us

We forget that we humans are animals, inextricably connected to the world and everything in it. In the rush to bring GMO food to the world because it was good for us, nobody had asked the question whether it would be good for the world.

We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles - but nobody knows where we’re going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own concord and amusement, yet never-ending satisfaction. Is there anymore more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?

We have the responsibility to care for the ocean as it cares for us

We must realize that growth is but an adolescent phase of life which stops when physical maturity is reached. If growth continues in the period of maturity it is called obesity or cancer. Prescribing growth as the cure for the energy crisis has all the logic of prescribing increasing quantities of food as a remedy for obesity.

We must have clean air and water, and beautiful natural foods for everyone, everywhere.

We must stop seeing the natural world as a commodity and start seeing it as we would see a family member, something to love, protect, care for, and cherish.

Well, it's been obvious for centuries that capitalism is going to self-destruct: that's just inherent in the logic of system―because to the extent that a system is capitalist, that means maximizing short-term profit and not being concerned with long-term effects. In fact, the motto of capitalism was, "private vices, public benefits"―somehow it's gonna work out. Well, it doesn't work out, and it's never going to work out: if you're maximizing short-term profits without concern for the long-term effects, you are going to destroy the environment, for one thing. I mean, you can pretend up to a certain point that the world has infinite resources and that it's an infinite wastebasket―but at some point you're going to run into the reality, which is that that isn't true. Well, we're running into that reality now―and it's very profound. Take something like combustion: anything you burn, no matter what it is, is increasing the greenhouse effect―and this was known to scientists decades ago, they knew exactly what was happening. But in a capitalist system, you don't care about long-term effects like that, what you have to care about is tomorrow's profits. So the greenhouse effect has been building for years, and there's no known technological fix on the horizon―there may not be any answer to this, it could be so serious that there's no remedy. That's possible, and then human beings will turn out to have been a lethal mutation, which maybe destroys a lot of life with us. Or it could be that there's some way of fixing it, or some ameliorating way―nobody knows.

Well we're waiting here in Allentown, For the Pennsylvania we never found, For the promises our teachers gave, If we worked hard, If we behaved... So the graduations hang on the wall, But they never really helped us at all, No they never taught us what was real, Iron and coke, And chromium steel, And we're waiting here in Allentown... But they've taken all the coal from the ground, And the union people crawled away...

We need to stop using fossil fuels as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the two leading replacements of wind and solar have emerging health and environmental problems.

We ought to live heaven on earth, clean environment, the beauty of blissful realms.

We need to protect the defenders of nature, environmentalists, Animal Rights and Human Rights activists. It's a call for all humans to show courage and solidarity.

We ourselves (one single species) have taken over vast tracts of the inhabitable surface of the planet. Surely, we should allow those other creatures we share the planet with to retain some part of their ancient heritage.

We need more environmental awareness and sustainability, sustainable living and sustainable working, in all fields or areas. We need to create a world of understanding, acceptance, respect, tolerance, compassion and consciousness.

We're at a crucial point in history. We cannot have fast cars, computers the size of credit cards, and modern conveniences, whilst simultaneously having clean air, abundant rainforests, fresh drinking water and a stable climate. This generation can have one or the other but not both. Humanity must make a choice. Both have an opportunity cost. Gadgetry or nature? Pick the wrong one and the next generations may have neither.

We should stop worrying so much about the price of gasoline and start considering its cost. You really want to be patriotic? Don't change your car by putting a flag on it, change the car.

We should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.

We think about how our food will impact our bodies, but what about how it impacts our planet?

We still talk in terms of conquest,” she observed. “We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.” Without hesitating, she delivered her final blow: “I think we’re challenged as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.

We study the past ecological history, with the conscience of the present ecological conditions. The key to predict future aquatic ecosystem changes.

We study the past ecological history, with the conscience of the present ecological conditions, the only window to predict the future environmental and climate changes.

We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave—to the ancient enemies of man—half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

We trust ourselves, far more than our ancestors did… The root of our predicament lies in the simple fact that, though we remain a flawed and unstable species, plagued now as in the past by a thousand weaknesses, we have insisted on both unlimited freedom and unlimited power. It would now seem clear that, if we want to stop the devastation of the earth, the growing threats to our food, water, air, and fellow creatures, we must find some way to limit both.

We urgently need to do - and I mean actually do - something radical to avert a global catastrophe. But I don't think we will. I think we're fucked.

What do you always think about? What do you think you can do easily? What do you find peace in your heart to do? Watch those things carefully because among them is something on which you can turn the entire environment surrounding you for your success.

We will spend billions making inhospitable distant planets habitable. And yet we spend trillions destroying the abundant ingredients for life on our home planet.

Whatever you abuse will return to hunt you. Cultivate the self discipline to use everything within the environment God created them for.

What is in the pencil is greater than what is around it. The talents in you are greater than the environment surrounding you. Your potentials will change your environment.

What I mean when I talk about sovereignty is that "we have a different way of being". Those of us who are organising around the idea of sovereignty are not asking for inclusion within the capitalist system. We're not asking for the so-called benefits of a capitalist system, which is always based on exclusions because it is based on privatising what was once communal and shared. We're saying no to being incorporated. We're saying yes to a completely different way of being, to a society based on commonality and plurality, not the fundamentalism of markets, religion, and the gender binary. We're not pushing to get in. Why should we want to enmesh ourselves in an economy and a political system that is driving the planet and our species toward destruction?

what most people see in their garbage cans is just the tip of the material iceberg; the product itself contains on average only 5% of the raw materials involved in the process of making and delivering it.

What need does the earth have of us?

What we have here is a very basic problem. The only way to make use of underground resources is to mine them, and if you mine them, they're going to damage the local flora and fauna. That's as true under the water as it is on land, but it hasn't stopped us - that is, mankind - from doing it over and over again. That's a fact. You just need to make a choice.

When all the trees have been cut down and all the animals have been hunted to extinction, when all the waters are polluted and the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.

When a child is immersed in a certain environment, his thinking is formed by roles models of behavior demonstrated by parents in the family who have had a great influence on the formation of thinking of the child

When discharging industrial gas into the indoor environment in high altitude astronomy, we never wore breathing respirators that fed us oxygenated air at above the legally required 19.5% oxygen levels.

When discharging industrial gas into the indoor environment in high altitude astronomy, we never wore protective breathing respirators that fed us oxygenated air at above the legally required 19.5% oxygen levels.

Were we to confront our creaturehood squarely, how would we propose to educate? The answer, I think is implied in the root of the word education, educe, which means "to draw out." What needs to be drawn out is our affinity for life. That affinity needs opportunities to grow and flourish, it needs to be validated, it needs to be instructed and disciplined, and it needs to be harnessed to the goal of building humane and sustainable societies. Education that builds on our affinity for life would lead to a kind of awakening of possibilities and potentials that lie dormant and unused in the industrial-utilitarian mind. Therefore the task of education, as Dave Forman stated, is to help us 'open our souls to love this glorious, luxuriant, animated, planet.' The good news is that our own nature will help us in the process if we let it.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.

When it comes to conserving wildlife and the environment, It's more important to be outspoken, than unspoken

When I was in third grade, we had a mandatory environmental science class. The only thing I remember from that class, was when our teacher told us, 8 year olds, that in the state of Haryana in India - where I grew up - the water table was falling by almost 2 feet every year. For me, this fact suddenly converted this abstract idea of sustainable development into a very real problem that affected communities and people I knew.

When it comes to established environmental science, President Trump is like a bull in a china shop.

When it comes to climate change and global warming, the changing environment will move outside of what humans can survive in and new species will replace them in a new era of evolution.

When I worked in astronomy, I routinely observed young college and university students working with liquid nitrogen and breathing nitrogen gas as they discharged it into the indoor environment at high altitude.

When I worked at the W. M. Keck Observatory on the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, we would routinely be engulfed in cold clouds of helium and nitrogen gas as we discharged it into the video camera systems daily. The management team never warned us that we were in a hazardous oxygen deprived environment during this activity that was known for its ability to adversely affect physical and mental health, and possibly bring on death by asphyxiation.

When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.