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Quotes by Environmentalist

"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."


"If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers."

"Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there."

"Bring diversity back to agriculture. That's what made it work in the first place."

"The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum."

"All is connected... no one thing can change by itself."

"It may be proper to observe, that I had now passed the utmost frontier of the white settlements on that border."


"Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient."

"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."

"Everyone except the far right wing of the Republican Party realizes that oil, gas and coal burning are the main activities that have sent the climate into bigger floods, droughts, hurricanes, and El Ninos."

"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."

"It's like turning the space program over to the Long Island Railroad."

"Less than fifteen per cent of the people do any original thinking on any subject. The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think."

"First I shall name the eagle, of which there are three species: the great grey eagle is the largest, of great strength and high flight; he chiefly preys on fawns and other young quadrupeds."

"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."

"In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I will say this, - though: If it is true that fusion will put unlimited amounts of energy into our hands, then I'm worried. Our record on this score is extremely poor."

"If we bestow but a very little attention to the economy of the animal creation, we shall find manifest examples of premeditation, perseverance, resolution, and consumate artifice, in order to effect their purpose."

"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."

"I believe that the average guy in the street will give up a great deal, if he really understands the cost of not giving it up. In fact, we may find that, while we're drastically cutting our energy consumption, we're actually raising our standard of living."

"We tried burying the waste at sea and the concrete cannisters that held it cracked open."

"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?"


"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."

"The European nations take climate change very seriously."

"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,

"A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality."

"Once again I stopped listening to the news this week."

"Once we open the door to the plutonium economy, we expose ourselves to absolutely terrible, horrifying risks from these people."

"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."

"It seems that every time mankind is given a lot of energy, we go out and wreck something with it."

"The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them."

"It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience."

"Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable."


"Recreational development is a job not of building roads into the lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind."


"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."

"Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed."

"Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?"

"Science is knowledge arranged and classified according to truth, facts, and the general laws of nature."

"But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere."
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