Destruction Of The Environment Quotes & Sayings

The destruction of our environment and resources cannot be stemmed unless the growth of the world's population is stemmed and ultimately reduced. — Henry W. Kendall

I don't see much of a future for this planet. I think it's a cursed planet. The boundaries we've drawn between nations and the profit motive - those two factors have, in my opinion, brought us to the point where almost nothing can stop the utter destruction of the environment and all our earthly life-support systems. — George Carlin

Knowledge of self ought to be the great project of our lives. Knowing ourselves we will know others. Only by knowing ourselves can we begin to undo the madness we unleash on the world in our wars, our destruction of the environment, our divisions, our desire to dominate others, the poverty we create and exploit. Only through self-knowledge can we reverse the damage we do with all the worldly knowledge we have, which has been only a higher ignorance. — Ben Okri

[ ... ] in a predatory capitalist economy, state intervention would be an absolute necessity to preserve human existence and to prevent the destruction of the physical environment [ ... ]. — Noam Chomsky

Most of the plants grown to be fed to farm animals are heavily saturated with pesticides and herbicides and have been genetically modified, all of which contributes to the pollution and destruction of our environment, which harms us all. — Sharon Gannon

A reduction in meat consumption is the most powerful single act that you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. — John Robbins

These are the two factors that lead to the destruction of our environment: money and time-or to say it another way, greed and haste. The question is, or seems to be, are we going to have an immediate profit and an immediate saving of time, or are we going to do what we really should do as God's children? — Francis Schaeffer

Human society cannot basically stop the destruction of the environment under capitalism. Socialism is the only structure that makes it possible. — Gus Hall

Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, to halt the destruction of the environment. — Al Gore

The crimes committed against the people of West Papua are some of the most shameful of the past years. The Western powers have much to answer for, and at the very least should use their ample means to bring about the withdrawal of the occupying Indonesian army and termination of the shameful exploitation of resources and destruction of the environment and the lives and societies of the people of West Papua, who have suffered far too much. — Noam Chomsky

It's upsetting to me that so many people think of themselves as environmentalists and still eat meat and dairy products. I think it's something people should be considering given the emergency situation we're in regarding water supplies, global warming, and the destruction of ecosystems. There's a lot of overlap between animal rights and the environment. — Emily Deschanel

The destruction of the earth's environment is the human rights challenge of our time. — Desmond Tutu

Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is - or should be - the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all - perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows. — Rachel Carson

The only way in which one can make endurable man's inhumanity to man, and man's destruction of his own environment, is to exemplify in your own lives man's humanity to man and man's reverence for the place in which he lives. — Alan Paton

White males are the most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. — Robin Morgan

I don't think we're crumbling as a civilization, but this is not our finest hour, and it's good to be mindful that we're all susceptible to fall and to look at what are the earmarks of a civilization on the wane. What are they - destruction of the environment? Conspicuous consumption? Heard of those? — Mel Gibson

Become one with eternity.
Become part of your environment.
Take off your clothes.
Forget yourself. Make love.
Self-destruction is the only
way to peace. — Yayoi Kusama

Faced with the widespread destruction of the environment, people everywhere are coming to understand that we cannot continue to use the goods of the earth as we have in the past ... [A] new ecological awareness is beginning to emerge which rather than being downplayed, ought to be encouraged to develop into concrete programs and initiatives. — Pope John Paul II

If you are a feminist and are not a vegan, you are ignoring the exploitation of female nonhumans and the commodification of their reproductive processes, as well as the destruction of their relationship with their babies;
If you are an environmentalist and not a vegan, you are ignoring the undeniable fact that animal agriculture is an ecological disaster;
If you embrace nonviolence but are not a vegan, then words of nonviolence come out of your mouth as the products of torture and death go into it;
If you claim to love animals but you are eating them or products made from them, or otherwise consuming them, you see loving as consistent with harming that which you claim to love.
Stop trying to make excuses. There are no good ones to make. Go vegan. — Gary L. Francione

This book explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo - our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East - in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction. — Alan W. Watts

If we allow the destruction of the environment, we can see the terrorists have utterly won, and are destroying the future of our children and grandchildren. We must not let that happen. — Jane Goodall

Americans need to continue to develop broad-based movements that reject the established political parties and rethink the social formations necessary to bring about a radical democracy. We see this in the Black Lives Matter movement as well as in a range of other movements that are resisting corporate money in politics, the widespread destruction of the environment, nuclear war and the mass incarceration state. — Henry A. Giroux

We have to heal our wounded world. The chaos, despair, and senseless destruction we see today are a result of the alienation that people feel from each other and their environment. — Michael Jackson

Mangrove destruction is not only an ecological threat to a valuable ecosystem but also a social threat for [the poor]. External debt pressure on exporting countries, neo-liberal doctrines and ecological blindness of northern importing consumers, together with a flagrant lack of local governmental action to protect the environment in most shrimp-producer countries, are the main driving forces of mangrove destruction. — Joan Martinez-Alier

The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the Earth's resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development. — Pope Benedict XVI

We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly. — T. S. Eliot

The immersive ugliness of the built environment in the USA is entropy made visible. It indicates not simple carelessness but a vivid drive toward destruction, decay and death: the stage-set of a literal "death trip," of a society determined to commit suicide. Far from being a mere matter of aesthetics, suburbia represents a compound economic catastrophe, ecological debacle, political nightmare, and spiritual crisis - for a nation of people conditioned to spend their lives in places not worth caring about. — James Howard Kunstler

Modern man's capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity's capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction. — George Will

On the issues that I care deeply about - the environment, Roe vs. Wade, the war in Iraq, with no weapons of mass destruction, the tax cuts that are now leading to deficits, I've got some deep issues with the president. — Lincoln Chafee

Years of misguided teaching have resulted in the destruction of the best in our society, in our cultures and in the environment. — Cesar Chavez

Minor segments of earlier history may have been rescued or 'retrieved' -- e.g. Greek 'democracy,' Aristotle, the Magna Carta, etc. -- but these remain subservient, if not instrumental, to the imperatives of the modern historical narrative and to the progress of 'Western civilization.' African and Asia, in most cases, continue to struggle in order to catch up, in the process not only forgoeing the privilege of drawing on their own traditions and historical experiences that shaped who they were and, partly, who they have become but also letting themselves be drawn into devastating wars, poverty, disease and the destruction of their natural environment. Modernity, whose hegemonic discourse is determined by the institutions and intellectuals of the powerful modern West, has not offered a fair shake to two-thirds of the world's population, who have lost their history and, with it, their organic ways of existence. — Wael B. Hallaq

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. — Cormac McCarthy

Let's stop fighting over who we believe created the planet, work together against those that choose to destroy it. — Jack Barker

Development requires modification and transformation of the environment ... the planet's capacity to support its people us being irreversibly reduced by the destruction and degradation of the biosphere and the need to understand the problem and take corrective action is becoming urgent. — Malcolm Fraser

Wars results in immediate deaths and destruction, but the environmental consequences can last hundreds, often thousands of years. And it is not just war itself that undermines our life support system, but also the research and development, military exercises and general preparations for battle that are carried out on a daily basis in most parts of the world. The majority of this pre-war activity takes place without the benefit of civilian scrutiny and therefore we are unaware of some of what is being done to our environment in the name of 'security. — Rosalie Bertell

Many problems that confront us today are created by man, whether they are violent conflicts, destruction of the environment, poverty or hunger. These problems can be resolved thanks to human efforts by understanding that we are brother and sister and by developing this sense of closeness. We must cultivate a universal responsibility toward each other and extend it to the planet that we have to share. — Dalai Lama

Self-centeredness will bring on the destruction of our world. National pride separates people. All people need the same thing. When you really get down to it, you'll find that all people need good food, clean water, clean air, and a decent environment, meaning education as to how to relate to one another and to avoid conflict, how to accept the differences where different people draw different conclusions. — Jacque Fresco

Until every individual feels personally responsible for the careful planning and the preservation of natural resources, the inexorable destruction will go on. — Eda LeShan

Watching 40 mile chunks of ice break off of Antarctica will change your life forever, but realizing that driving a car, or flying a plane, or having a nice steak, or drinking from a plastic bottle all contributed to the destruction of the environment - it's a bit complex, but music needs to pave the way for getting people to think about this kind of complexity. I'm just doing my share. — DJ Spooky

Whenever he reads articles in newspapers or magazines written by politicians using global warming or the destruction of the environment for their electoral campaigns, he thinks:
How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing.
Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us? Because "Saving the planet" gives a sense of power, action and nobility. Whereas "not letting the planet destroy us" might lead us to feelings of despair and impotence, and to a realisation of just how very limited our capabilities are. — Paulo Coelho