quotations about environment
That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
ALDO LEOPOLD
A Sand County Almanac
I don't mean to imply that we are in imminent danger of being wiped off the face of the earth - at least, not on account of global warming. But climate change does confront us with profound new realities. We face these new realities as a nation, as members of the world community, as consumers, as producers, and as investors. And unless we do a better job of adjusting to these new realities, we will pay a heavy price. We may not suffer the fate of the dinosaurs. But there will be a toll on our environment and on our economy, and the toll will rise higher with each new generation.
EILEEN CLAUSSEN
speech, July 17, 2002
All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, Apr. 3, 2006
The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers -- and thermonuclear weapons.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
foreword, Collected Stories
A strong, successful man is not the victim of his environment. He creates favorable conditions. His own inherent force and energy compel things to turn out as he desires. But a weak man is the victim of outside influences.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Progressive Business Man
There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the Earth as if it were a business in liquidation.
HERMAN E. DALY
Steady-State Economics
The magnificence of mountains, the serenity of nature--nothing is safe from the idiot marks of man's passing.
LOUDON WAINWRIGHT
attributed, The Greatest Quotations of All Time
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.
PAUL BROOKS
The Pursuit of Wilderness
Coming from New York, I know that if you go by a delicatessen, and you put a sweet cucumber in the vinegar barrel, the cucumber might say, "No, I want to retain my sweetness." But it's hopeless. The barrel will turn the sweet cucumber into a pickle. You can't be a sweet cucumber in a vinegar barrel.
PHILIP ZIMBARDO
"You Can't be a Sweet Cucumber in a Vinegar Barrel: A Talk with Philip Zimbardo", Jan. 19, 2005
You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.
WANGARI MAATHAI
attributed, Managing the Environmental Crisis in Ghana
I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.
DR. SEUSS
The Lorax
We line up and make a lot of noise about big environmental problems like incinerators, waste dumps, acid rain, global warming and pollution. But we don't understand that when we add up all the tiny environmental problems each of us creates, we end up with those big environmental dilemmas. Humans are content to blame someone else, like government or corporations, for the messes we create, and yet we each continue doing the same things, day in and day out, that have created the problems. Sure, corporations create pollution. If they do, don't buy their products. If you have to buy their products (gasoline for example), keep it to a minimum. Sure, municipal waste incinerators pollute the air. Stop throwing trash away. Minimize your production of waste. Recycle. Buy food in bulk and avoid packaging waste. Simplify. Turn off your TV. Grow your own food. Make compost. Plant a garden. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. If you don't, who will?
JOSEPH JENKINS
The Humanure Handbook
Humanity is on the march, earth itself is left behind.
DAVID EHRENFELD
The Arrogance of Humanism
Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.
STEWART UDALL
1976: Agenda for Tomorrow
When the well's dry, we know the worth of water.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Hot
All our efforts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated.
KOFI ANNAN
2005 report for the United Nations 60th anniversary summit
I look at my environment
And wonder where the fire went
What happened to everything we used to be?
LAURYN HILL
"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"