It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
~ Ansel Adams

* Let us be good stewards of the Earth we inherited. All of us have to share the Earth's fragile ecosystems and precious resources, and each of us has a role to play in preserving them. If we are to go on living together on this earth, we must all be responsible for it. ~ Kofi Annan

Nature does nothing uselessly. -- Aristotle (384-322 BC) * In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous. -- Aristotle

Waste is a tax on the whole people.
~ Albert W. Atwood

 

* "A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children." ~ John James Audubon

The American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse is perhaps the most perfect symbol of the triumph of quantity over quality.... Whole forests are being ground into pulp daily to minister to our triviality.
~ Irving Babbitt

* We are committed with our lives to building a different model and a different future for humanity, the Earth, and other species. We have envisaged a moral alternative to economic globalization and we will not rest until we see it realized. -- Maude Barlow * No piecemeal solution is going to prevent the collapse of whole societies and ecosystems ... a radical re-thinking of our values, priorities and political systems is urgent. -- Maude Barlow

"The problem of climate change is so large that it can't be solved by voluntary individual responses. It requires an economy-wide solution, i.e. one that limits the total carbon intake of the economy." ~ Peter Barnes

"The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think."
~ Gregory Bateson

"This is a deeply spiritual issue...Do we want to spend more time trying to care for our fellow man or do we want to just pursue more virtual reality? That's the issue before us.. and it's being played out in the world of the environment."
~ Ed Begley, Jr.

"Kids can help the environment by riding a bike. Always wear a helmet of course and stay in the bike lane. Take public transportation with your parents and your friends and see if you like that. That’s a good way to get around. Start a home garden, be energy efficient, turn off the lights and the water. All of those things are very good for the environment and good for your pocketbook. "
~ Ed Begley, Jr.

"I was a Boy Scout, and scouting gave me an appreciation for nature and the outdoors that set the stage for my career as an environmental activist. The other thing would be growing up in Los Angeles-the smog capital of the world for quite a while."
~ Ed Begley, Jr.

The two most abundant forms of power on earth are solar and wind, and they're getting cheaper and cheaper…
~ Ed Begley, Jr.

 

"I can't imagine a right more basic than the right to breathe clean air. We've debated for years how that might be possible. Now that we know it is, will we have the courage and the conviction to get there?" ~ Ed Begley, Jr. * "Kids can help the environment by riding a bike. Always wear a helmet of course and stay in the bike lane. Take public transportation with your parents and your friends and see if you like that. That’s a good way to get around. Start a home garden, be energy efficient, turn off the lights and the water. All of those things are very good for the environment and good for your pocketbook. " ~ Ed Begley, Jr.

* "The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence." ~ Thomas Berry

* "To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival." ~ Wendell Berry The earth is what we all have in common. ~ Wendell Berry

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."
~ Wendell Berry

"The most unhappy thing about conservation is that it is never permanent. Save a priceless woodland or an irreplaceable mountain today, and tomorrow it is threatened from another quarter."
~ Hal Borland

* We’re never going to have respectful and reverential relationships with the planet- and sensible policies about what we put in the air, the soil, the water – if very young children don’t begin learning about these things literally in their houses, backyards, streets and schools. We need to have human beings who are oriented that way from their earliest memories.” -- Elise Boulding

* Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ~ Kenneth E. Boulding * With laissez-faire and price atomic, Ecology's Uneconomic, But with another kind of logic Economy's Unecologic. ~ Kenneth E. Boulding

"Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ... Does man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species, or even for the indefinite continuance of his race?
~ Kenneth E. Boulding

"The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies."
~ Mary Brave Bird

"If we go on as we are, we will destroy in the next century everything that the poets have been singing about for the past two thousand years."
~ Fred Bodsworth

 

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

* Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents. It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world. We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment. -- Richard Branson

 

There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet.
~ Brooke Medicine Eagle

* "The role of the market place is to be an instrument of environmental change and policy making. We are all consumers with a great potential for change. Environmental protection begins at home." ~ Noel Brown, Former Director of the UN Environmental Program

Our children may save us if they are taught to care properly for the planet; but if not, it may be back to the Ice Age or the caves from where we first emerged. Then we'll have to view the universe above from a cold, dark place. No more jet skis, nuclear weapons, plastic crap, broken pay phones, drugs, cars, waffle irons, or television. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea.
~ Jimmy Buffet

 

* Grassroots groups challenge the "business-as-usual" environmentalism that is generally practiced by the more privileged wildlife-and conservation-oriented groups. The focus of activists of color and their constituents reflects their life experiences of social, economic, and political disenfranchisement. -- Robert Bullard

“There is no level playing field. Any time our society says that a powerful chemical company has the same right as a low income family that's living next door, that playing field is not level, is not fair.”
-- Robert Bullard

An environmental revolution is taking shape in the United States. This revolution has touched communities of color from New York to California and from Florida to Alaska -- anywhere where African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans live and comprise a majority of the population. Collectively, these Americans represent the fastest growing segment of the population in the United States. They are also the groups most at risk from environmental problems.
-- Robert Bullard

* "We can use our scientific knowledge to improve and beautify the earth, or we can use it to ...poison the air, corrupt the waters, blacken the face of the country, and harass our souls with loud and discordant noises, [or]...we can use it to mitigate or abolish all these things." ~ John Burroughs

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
~ John Burroughs

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
~ John Burroughs

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
~ John Burroughs

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
~ John Burroughs

The World we all share is given to us in trust. Every choice we make regarding the earth, air, and water around us should be made with the objective of preserving it for all generations to come.
-- August A. Bush III

Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain, For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain. America, America, man sheds his waste on thee, And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.
~ George Carlin

* Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strengths that will endure as life lasts ~ Rachel Carson * The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. ~ Rachel Carson

The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.
~ Rachel Carson

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.
~ Rachel Carson

The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world--the very nature of its life.
~ Rachel Carson

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction."
~ Rachel Carson

* Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries. ~ Jimmy Carter * "I want to make it clear,if there is ever a conflict (between environmental quality and economic growth), I will go for beauty, clean air, water, and landscape." ~ Jimmy Carter

Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this Nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.
~ Jimmy Carter

Acknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world -- water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution -- if we tackle them with courage and foresight.
~ Jimmy Carter

* Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God. ~ George Washington Carver

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Let them talk to you. You learn to talk to them.
~ George Washington Carver

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.
~ George Washington Carver

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
~ Anton Chekhov

* "I have never believed we had to choose between either a clean and safe environment or a growing economy. Protecting the health and safety of all Americans doesn’t have to come at the expense of our economy’s bottom line. And creating thriving companies and new jobs doesn’t have to come at the expense of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, or the natural landscape in which we live. We can, and indeed must, have both." ~ Bill Clinton

"Most of us have become Ecozombies, desensitized, environmental deadheads. On average, society conditions us to spend over 95% of our time and 99.9% of our thinking disconnected from nature. Nature's extreme absence in our lives leaves us abandoned and wanting. We feel we never have enough. We greedily, destructively, consume and, can't stop. Nature's loss in our psyche produces a hurt, hungering, void within us that bullies us into our dilemmas."
~ Michael J. Cohen

As we gain satisfaction from artificial substitutes for nature we forget that there is no known substitute for Nature, the real thing and its eons of intelligent, life supportive, experience. Each substitute we create falls short of nature's balanced perfection, thus producing our pollution, garbage and relationship conflicts."
~ Michael J. Cohen

"Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you don't put something in the ecology, it's not there."
~ Barry Commoner

"The air, the water and the ground are free gifts to man and no one has the power to portion them out in parcels. Man must drink and breathe and walk and therefore each man has a right to his share of each."
~ James Fennimore Cooper

" There are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United States, no Soviet Union, no China, no Taiwan.... Rivers flow unimpeded across the swaths of continents. The persistent tides -- the pulse of the sea -- do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on Earth." ~ Jacques Cousteau * Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans. -- Jacques Cousteau

* "Is it too late to prevent us from self-destructing? No, for we have the capacity to design our own future, to take a lesson from living things around us and bring our values and actions in line with ecological necessity. But we must first realize that ecological and social and economic issues are all deeply intertwined. There can be no solution to one without a solution to the others." ~ Jean-Michel Cousteau

Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money can not be eaten.
~ Cree Indian Prophecy

"We go to sanctuaries to remember the things we hold most dear, the things we cherish and love. And then--the great challenge--we return home seeking to enact this wisdom as best we can in our daily lives."
~ William Cronon

* I feel we are so blessed to live in a country where we enjoy so many rights that other countries cannot even begin to imagine. However, it terrifies me that we seem to have lost touch with our connection to the earth. I am concerned that we have risen to such heights of arrogance in our refusal to acknowledge that our earth is rapidly changing in ways that might affect us catastrophically but instead, we hold steadfast to our belief that nothing can happen to us as a people. -- Sheryl Crow

* "It is our collective and individual responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live." ~ Dalai Lama

* "There is something fundamentally wrong with treating the earth as if it were a business in liquidation." ~ Herman Daly

* "...we all have an obligation as citizens of this earth to leave the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place for our children and future generations.” ~ Blythe Danner

“Can we really be so uncaring as a country to refuse to accept our responsibility for global warming when the United States is the largest contributor to this problem? It breaks my heart to read everyday of another environmental law that is being chipped away, eroded by this Administration, and we’re not being provided with incentives by Bush to cut back on our shameful waste of energy. My husband, Bruce, wrote in one PSA that during World War II the government asked everyone to make sacrifices for the common good. We must demand this of our Administration today for we all have an obligation as citizens of this earth to leave the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place for our children and future generations.”
~ Blythe Danner

* I PLEDGE to live, work and act in a loving, respectful way towards this Earth that I call home, and towards all who live upon it, every insect, animal, fish, bird, plant, human and tree.... ~ Guy Dauncey

Today's world is one in which the age-old risks of humankind - the drought, floods, communicable diseases - are less of a problem than ever before. They have been replaced by risks of humanity's own making - the unintended side-effects of beneficial technologies and the intended effects of the technologies of war. Society must hope that the world's ability to assess and manage risks will keep pace with its ability to create them.
~ J. Clarence Davies

Children have become disengaged from nature and we need to reintroduce them to the pleasure that it brings. If we do that they will care for it. Through the simple act of planting a tree we can open their eyes to nature's beauty.
-- Dame Judi Dench

 

"Love the earth as you would love yourself." ~ John Denver * "No one person has to do it all but if each one of us follow our heart and our own inclinations we will find the small things that we can do to create a sustainable future and a healthy environment." ~ John Denver

* We must set an example now and move environmentalism from being the philosophy of a passionate minority ... to a way of life that automatically integrates ecology into governmental policy and normal living standards. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

We've been given this gift, our planet, and we've found no other place in the universe that we can inhabit. I want to do something to create radical change to help save it. It's our responsibility.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

As we progress into the twenty-first century, anyone who considers themselves a realist will have to make the environment a top priority.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

* Our planet's alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action!
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

Our oil-based society depends on non-renewable resources. It requires relentless probing into vast reaches of pristine land, sacrificing vital bioregions, and irreplaceable cultures. The possibility of catastrophic climate change is substantially increased by the 40 million barrels of oil burned every day by vehicles. We must all move shoulder to shoulder in a unified front to show this administration that the true majority of people are willing to vote for a cleaner environment and won't back down.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

I urge individuals around the world to stand up, and ask local leaders, if they haven't already, to pledge to purchase cleaner cars, build green facilities, and buy green power like wind or solar energy. Our actions may determine if we become a casualty in the war for a habitable planet for generations to come.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

When I was very young, biology, the diversity of life, was one of my main interests. I know there's this image people have that I'm this spoiled, cocky punk of an actor. Honestly, that's not who I am. I really care that so many species have been wiped out, like genocide of entire races. I believe in the divine right of all species to survive on this planet. So I decided I want to be active as an environmentalist. I learned. I asked experts. I got active.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

"The use of plant oil as fuel may seem insignificant today. But such products can in time become just as important as kerosene and these coal-tar-products of today." ~ Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, which originally ran on peanut oil.

"In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."
~ Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet

"The most unhappy thing about conservation is that it is never permanent. If we save a priceless woodland today, it is threatened from another quarter tomorrow."
~ Marjory Stoneman Douglas

"I hope to be remembered as someone who made the earth a little more beautiful." ~ Justice William O. Douglas

I realized that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all living things. Man was a form of life that in another reincarnation might possibly be a horsefly or a bird of paradise or a deer. So a man of such a faith, looking at animals, might be looking at old friends or ancestors. In the East the wilderness has no evil connotation; it is thought of as an expression of the unity and harmony of the universe.
~ Justice William O. Douglas

"The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive ... the values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well balanced as well as carefully patroled."
~ Justice William O. Douglas

"Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment." ~ René Dubos * "The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is almost universal." ~ René Dubos

It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life.
~ René Dubos

Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in a automobile which is traveling downhill without lights at a terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child. The signposts along the way are all marked "progress."
~ Lord Dunsany

"The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man."
~ Gerald Durrell

ECOLOGY QUOTES

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