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Quotes by Environmentalist
"People are naming it the Third Wave, the Information Age, etc. but I would say those are basically technological descriptions, and this next shift is not about technology - although obviously it will be influenced and in some cases expressed by technologies."
18
"If, as is natural, you focus on the corruption and on those threatened institutions that are trying to prevent change - even though they don't really know what they're trying to prevent - then you can get pessimistic."
18
"The grand jury's job is not to weigh the evidence from both sides; it is only to decide whether there is enough evidence on one side to bring a person to trial."
18
"The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only."
18
"Any euphemism ceases to be euphemistic after a time and the true meaning begins to show through. It's a losing game, but we keep on trying."
18
"Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul."
18
"Apollo 13, as you may remember, gave us a reactor that is bubbling away right now somewhere in the Pacific. It's supposed to be bubbling away on the moon, but it's in the Pacific Ocean instead."
18
"It's like turning the space program over to the Long Island Railroad."
17
"I think an old style of addressing environmental problems is ebbing, but the rise of the so-called conservative, political movement in this country is not a trend towards the future but a reaction to this very broad shift that we are undergoing."
17
"The risk presented by these lethal wastes is like no other risk, and we should not be expected to accept it or to project it into the future in order for manufacturers and utilities to make a dollar killing now."
17
"When people say, 'You're not being realistic,' they're just trying to tag some thoughts that they can't otherwise handle."
17
"In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them."
17
"George W. cares as much about climate change as you would expect from a Texas oilman."
17
"Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude."
17
"What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants."
17
"What happens when the guy who runs the reactor gets out of bed wrong or decides, for some reason, that he wants to override his instruction sheet some afternoon?"
17
"The financial capital is being concentrated by corporations, institutional investors, and even our pension funds, and being reinvested in companies that repeat this process because it provides the highest return on that financial capital."
17
"Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons."
17
"It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience."
17
"I began working with the John Muir Institute and then started helping found Friends of the Earth organizations here and there in other countries. That pretty well brings us up to the present."
17
"What we are missing, utterly and completely, in this government is accountability."
17
"The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place."
17
"Turkeys, quails, and small birds, are here to be seen; but birds are not numerous in desart forests; they draw near to the habitations of men, as I have constantly observed in all my travels."
17
"If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers."
17
"The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love."
17
"An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion."
16
"A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease."
16
"The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them."
Man,
16
"We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive."
16
"Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do."
16
"Yet another proposal would have us rocket the waste into the sun, but, as you're probably aware, about one in ten of our space shots doesn't quite make it out of the earth's gravitational field."
16
"A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future."
16
"For how many people do you think might yet stand on this planet before the sun grows cold? That's the responsibility we hold in our hands."
16
"Not all is doom and gloom. We are beginning to understand the natural world and are gaining a reverence for life - all life."
16
"Some tribes of birds will relieve and rear up the young and helpless, of their own and other tribes, when abandoned."
16
"I was actually telling people that - by harnessing the atom - we could enter a new era of unlimited power that would do away with the need to dam our beautiful streams."
16
"But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights."
15
"Local companies don't have to internalize their costs, and few actually do, but they tend to more often because the owners live there and they have to show their face in town, and their kids play with other kids."
15
"That inefficiency is masked because growth and progress are measured in money, and money does not give us information about ecological systems, it only gives information about financial systems."
15
"I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection."
15
"We tried burying the waste at sea and the concrete cannisters that held it cracked open."
15
"They simply don't know that much about what they're doing. There isn't enough control. There isn't enough capability in ordinary people to tinker with such a complicated piece of machinery."
15
"Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient."
15
"That appropriation of resources and the transformation of them into goods and services through the European production system characterized, and characterizes to this day, all industrial systems including the information age."
15
"Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies."
14
"Understanding how DNA transmits all it knows about cancer, physics, dreaming and love will keep man searching for some time."
14
"All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, by the year 2000, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors."
14
"If we had paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weed."
14
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