Environmental Quotes
1. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
2. Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.
3. Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.
4. We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere… can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.
5. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.
6. Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.
7. Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.
8. I’m anti-tax, but I’m pro-carbon tax.
9. By polluting clear water with slime you will never find good drinking water.
10. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
11. Climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and I think this is perhaps the most serious environmental issue facing us.
12. Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
13. Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.
14. It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
15. Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
16. As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.
17. If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
18. The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we’re not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.
19. The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature. We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters… and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult.
20. Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever.
21. A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.
22. If we’re destroying our trees and destroying our environment and hurting animals and hurting one another and all that stuff, there’s got to be a very powerful energy to fight that. I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.
23. We are aware only of the empty space in the forest, which only yesterday was filled with trees.
24. In Kenya women are the first victims of environmental degradation, because they are the ones who walk for hours looking for water, who fetch firewood, who provide food for their families.
25. All is connected… no one thing can change by itself.
26. We assume that everything’s becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that’s true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.
27. Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There’s still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.
28. In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace.
29. We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation.
30. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.
31. We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
32. Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.
33. Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
34. I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?
35. Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.
36. Mother Nature is not sweet.
37. We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital – the resource systems upon which we depend to live – instead of our human capital.
38. The time is right for electric cars – in fact the time is critical.
39. There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
40. People blame their environment. There is only one person to blame – and only one – themselves.
41. If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
42. There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change – or whatever the currently voguish phrase for it all is – certainly is one of them. But it’s low on my list.
43. The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature. We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters… and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult.
44. Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever.
45. A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.
46. If we’re destroying our trees and destroying our environment and hurting animals and hurting one another and all that stuff, there’s got to be a very powerful energy to fight that. I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.
47. We are aware only of the empty space in the forest, which only yesterday was filled with trees.
48. In Kenya women are the first victims of environmental degradation, because they are the ones who walk for hours looking for water, who fetch firewood, who provide food for their families.
49. All is connected… no one thing can change by itself.
50. We assume that everything’s becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that’s true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.
51. Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There’s still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.
52. In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace.
53. We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation.
54. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.
55. We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
56. Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.
57. Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
58. I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?
59. Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.
60. Mother Nature is not sweet.
