Best 991 quotes in «environmental quotes» category

Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.

Those who love and free nature are never alone.

Though environmental orthodoxy holds that Third World deforestation is caused by rapacious clear-cutters and ruthless cattle barons, penniless peasants seeking fuel wood may be the greatest threat to our forests.

Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.

To a large degree, we are still bound to the modern scientific spirit, that characterizes reality merely by its material and mechanic aspects, without including life, consciousness and the intimate communion with that which poets, musicians and artists bring us in their magnificent works.

To be clear, climate change is a true 800 pound gorilla in the room. The effects of global warming threaten global environmental upheaval over the coming century. But for South Florida and the Everglades, it could be our death knell if urgent action is not taken.

Today, more than ever, we need political leaders who can see the big picture, who understand the relationship between the economy and its environmental support systems.

Today, the UK must be the pioneer of a new model of economic change, that integrates social and environmental consideration. This is not just a question of values and moral duty. It is about our economy's capacity to sustain itself

Today, we live in a world of incredible wealth and technology, alongside the most horrendous conditions of poverty, war and environmental crisis. This is result of capitalism, a system based on prioritizing profits not human need where the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a capitalist elite.

To live by a large river is to be kept in the heart of things.

To put it bluntly, we now need to reverse course. We need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America - not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a matter of national security. For nations that lose the ability to substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food.

Toxins love to get you while you're young. Lead, mercury, secondhand smoke and sundry other environmental nasties do a lot more damage when tissue is immature, vulnerable and growing than when it's mature and comparatively fixed.

True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model.

Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been especially aggressive in pursuing regulations that specifically target coal power plants. These regulations have already put hundreds of Pennsylvanians out of work and will continue to cause economic distress while yielding negligible benefits for our environment.

Trump's ignorance in environmental science is a threat to the entire planet.

Try to leave the Earth a better place than when you arrived.

Unfortunately, The End of Nature turns out to be correct, although I wish it were not so. The only places that I was incorrect was, as with environmental science at the time, the estimation of the speed at which we see the effects of global warming.

Unless we keep this planet healthy, everything else is for naught.

Turning every business into an environmental industry will involve applying new principles...first, we need to make more with less...second, we need to design out waste...third, we must begin to decarbonise our energy supply

Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

Usually the way I think someone is radicalized is through a personal experience. The thing about environmental activism is that we are all having a personal experience with our environment, whether we open our eyes or not.

Water is the best of all things.

Water is the blood in our veins.

Waste not the smallest thing created, for grains of sand make mountains, and atomies infinity.

We are deep at the bottom of this river of time, caught up in the current of the moment where all the rivers rendezvous.

Wealth and vegetation go together, and that exacerbates environmental injustice. The poor bear the burden of degraded environments.

We are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one.

We are facing a tipping point of environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and our very survival is dependent on protecting nature.

We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition. As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes.

We are a part of everything that is beneath us, above us, and around us. Our past is our present, our present is our future, and our future is seven generations past and present.

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.

We are seeing the birth of a new perspective of the world, where ecology and economics are two sides of the same coin.

We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good what would he say now

We are unconscious of most of our body's processes, thank goodness, because we'd screw it up if we weren't. The human body is so complex, with so many parts...a system which is far more complex than we can fully imagine. The idea that we are consciously care-taking such a large and mysterious system is ludicrous.

We are upsetting the atmosphere upon which all life depends. In the late 80s when I began to take climate change seriously, we referred to global warming as a "slowmotion catastrophe" one we expected to kick in perhaps generations later. Instead, the signs of change have accelerated alarmingly.

We assume that everything's becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that's true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

We can and should seize upon the energy crisis as a good excuse and great opportunity for making some very fundamental changes that we should be making anyhow for other reasons.

We can at least see that the question is asked, and asked on the basis of a clear recognition that there is no way of manipulating our environment that is without cost or consequence - and thus also of a recognition that we are inextricably bound up with the destiny of our world. There is no guarantee that the world we live in will "tolerate" us indefinitely if we prove ourselves unable to live within its constraints.

We can be confident that action which is in accord with a few basic beliefs cannot be wrong and can at least testify to the values we will need to cultivate. These are the beliefs that the human race is a family that has inherited a place on the earth in common, that its members have an obligation to work toward sharing it so that none is deprived of the elementary needs for life, and that all have a responsibility to leave it undegraded for those who follow.

We can never have enough of Nature.

We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our neighbor's yard.

We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health

We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.

We certainly would resolve the problems of the charities that are working in areas where they can do the most good. So if you consider that the U.S. foreign aid budget is 30 billion, yes, we could make a major contribution to reducing global poverty, start to deal much better with some of the other big environmental problems that the world faces. So I think we could solve a lot of problems.

We console ourselves with the comfortable fallacy that a single museum piece will do, ignoring the clear dictum of history that a species must be saved in many places if it is to be saved at all.

We don't have to sacrifice a strong economy for a healthy environment.

We do need a 'new economy,' but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy.

We don't control everything. There are genetic influences. There are environmental exposures we don't control. I cannot guarantee anyone I counsel that by following what I hope is the good advice I offer them, they will live long and prosper. That's what I'm hoping for but I can't guarantee that. What I can tell them is this: "Look, I can help you firmly grip the wheel, and you can steer the ship. You're never going to control the winds and you're never going to control the seas. But if you sail well you can get through just about anything.