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Environment Quotes
"Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment."
40
"The Endangered Species Act is the strongest and most effective tool we have to repair the environmental harm that is causing a species to decline."
40
"So to hope to be able to have peace, to be able to have justice and environmental balance, are consequences of our behavior, not just our intentions."
40
"We had some major successes and we did so because the country embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced this concept that we have to have forward-looking, visionary environmental policy and energy policy in this country."
40
"I grew up in an environment of jokes and sarcasm and puns. I talk that way, so I write that way."
40
"When I was on that boat, I realized the only way I would feel creatively challenged was if I totally changed everything about my environment and put myself in a storm, in a sense."
40
"Nature always waits in the wings and the winds, ready to pounce with all of its power just at that sloppily contented hour when you foolishly assume it to be plainly tired out. Narcissistic humans do their quite pathetic best to kill nature off, oblivious to their self - reliance on its upkeep, yet nature will only take so much bureaucratic bullying before it snaps a deadly snap - for it does not need your approval, your organised banditry, your prepubescent social laws, your trades of cheapening commerce, your militant preachment, your apologies or blind belief of superiority... as if a presidential seat gives you an intolerable presumption of dominance over this earth's terrain!"
40
"Machines built by human beings they will function correctly if we provide them with a very specific environment. But if that environment is changed, they won't function at all."
40
"I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand."
40
"I'm always amazed at the human capacity to not make fundamental changes, but instead merely adapt. I see these pictures of people in Beijing and New Delhi, walking around with masks on, because you can't walk outside your house and breathe? If you can't breathe? If that's not the cue to make a fundamental change, I don't know what is!"
40
"They cannot see that growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness, that Phoenix and Albuquerque will not be better cities to live in when their populations are doubled again and again. They would never understand that an economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human."
40
"Agriculture changes the landscape more than anything else we do. It alters the composition of species. We don't realize it when we sit down to eat, but that is our most profound engagement with the rest of nature."
40
"The environmental crisis arises from a fundamental fault: our systems of production - in industry, agriculture, energy and transportation - essential as they are, make people sick and die."
40
"But even in the much-publicized rebellion of the young against the materialism of the affluent society, the consumer mentality is too often still intact: the standards of behavior are still those of kind and quantity, the security sought is still the security of numbers, and the chief motive is still the consumer's anxiety that he is missing out on what is "in." In this state of total consumerism - which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves - all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand."
40
"A single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. and, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. this forest eats itself and lives forever."
40
"I am aware that for decades there has been exploration of options and concrete plans and investments being made to look at life on another planet. We must not stop exploring. At the same time let's preserve and enhance the life we already have on earth. Join the green revolution, plant trees, stop soil erosion, reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere and promote recycling of waste. Become aware, create awareness, act responsibly and lead by example."
40
"A sullied green 'S stood out on a graying backdrop that made for a road marker up there. We called it the wasteland."
40
"We conceived of the planet as female, an all-giving Mother Nature, just as we conceived of the female body, infinitely alterable by and for man; we serve both ourselves and our hopes for the planet by insisting on a new female reality on which to base a new metaphor for the earth: the female body with its own organic integrity that must be respected."
40
"Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term."
39
"Americans have long recognized the need to protect our public lands and their vast resources."
39
"It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a scam. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming."
39
"Loads of chemicals and hazardous wastes have been introduced into the atmosphere that didn't even exist in 1948. The environmental condition of the planet is far worse than it was 42 years ago."
39
"One of the responsibilities faced by the Environmental Genome Project is to provide the science base upon which society can make better informed risk management decisions."
39
"Of the 55 refineries closed in America in the last 10 years, they were all closed for economic reasons, mostly oil company mergers. Not a single one was closed for environmental purposes or objections."
39
"Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation."
39
"There's a hell of a lot of freedom in this rock and roll circus... it's where all the freaks go - it's the environment for me."
39
"However now we can create a sound that can truly startle someone and in terms of sound effects I think the environment that we are in now has improved dramatically."
39
"The position I took at the time was that we hadn't really examined any of the potential environmental consequences of introducing genetically modified organisms."
39
"A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic."
39
"One of the things that I've always thought I would like to do is to develop an environmental index. Then people can measure their own environmental performance on an index as they do in other ways."
39
"The bicycle is a former child's toy that has now been elevated to icon status because, presumably, it can move the human form from pillar to post without damage to the environment."
39
"We created the Cabinet Committee on the Environment to review the environmental implications of all government initiatives. I think what made us successful was the fact that it was a sustained approach. We did something new every year."
39
"My efforts in Congress are guided by the belief that environmental preservation and restoration are a critical part of the legacy we leave to future generations."
39
"The outdoors, the beautiful environment, both in fresh and salt water. And the thing that concerns me is the amount of kids that stand on street corners, or go into pinball parlours, and call it recreation."
39
"We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice. Now we must add a new fight - the fight for electoral justice."
38
"Well, there's no doubt about the fact that, that higher energy prices lead to greater conservation, greater energy efficiency, and they also, of course, play a useful role on the supply side."
38
"You know, the environment is fragmenting, and the environment is, in many places, absolutely hideous!"
38
"Living in an entirely different physical as well as biotic environment, such a population would have unique opportunities to enter new niches and to select novel adaptive pathways."
38
"We wanted to create an environment where if a game player enjoyed the "writing style" of a particular game designer, he or she could look for the next game by that same author and not be disappointed."
38
"A program to make municipal composting of food and yard waste mandatory and then distributing the compost free to area farmers would shrink America's garbage heap, cut the need for irrigation and fossil-fuel fertilizers in agriculture, and improve the nutritional quality of the American diet."
38
"We learned that economic growth and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand."
38
"When you live in a networked environment, it's possible to separate data from applications."
38
"In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards."
38
"Pushing production out of America to nations without our environmental standards increases global environmental risks."
37
"In the environmental movement, every time you lose a battle it's for good, but our victories always seem to be temporary and we keep fighting them over and over again."
37
"Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies."
37
"If Unix could present the same face, the same capabilities, on machines of many different types, it could serve as a common software environment for all of them."
37
"As you heat the planet up, it's just like boiling a pot."
37
"Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block."
37
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