Environmental Quotes & Sayings

The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe. — Barry Commoner

A farmer's work is more like that of a horse trainer than a mechanic, more like that of a healer than a computer repairperson. It is not really accurate to say that farmers grow food or raise animals. Farmers alter environmental conditions in such a way as to maximize a plant's or an animal's innate ability to do its own growing -- in the same way that the best horse trainers seek to draw out abilities already within their horses or in the way the best healers know when to stand back and let their patients' bodies do the work. There is mystery in farming. — Ben Hartman

Humans react to danger when it is immediate, immoral, visible ... Global warming does not press any of those buttons. — Daniel Gilbert

It is a mistake," he said, " to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines. — Isaac Asimov

I think the work in front of us is the first work task given our forbearers, which is to care for the garden. Now because it's the first thing commanded, maybe it's the first thing forgotten. But it is the first admonition and it is absolutely unequivocal. It is part of right livelihood. — Wes Jackson

all texts are at least potentially environmental (and therefore susceptible to ecocriticism or ecologically informed reading) in the sense that all text are literally or imaginatively situated in a place, and in the sense that their authors, consciously or not, inscribe within them a certain relation to their place. — Robert Kern

I had never liked, even feared a little, this wild reach of marsh and mud flats where everything seemed turned away from the land, looking off desperately toward the horizon as if in mute search for a sign of rescue. — John Banville

The environmental community has an opportunity to create and leverage partnerships with the development community on social issues, rather than trying to develop new expertise of its own. — Helene D. Gayle

If we continue to think of ourselves mostly as consumers, it's going to be very hard to bring our environmental troubles under control. But it's also going to be very hard to live the rounded and joyful lives that could be ours. This is a subversive volume in all the best ways! — Bill McKibben

The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side. — Eric Hobsbawm

business exist not only to make profit, but also to consider theimpacts and consequences of their business activities as there are increasingpressure from the society about the environmental changes. — Pamela White

Peace should be understood in a human way - in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights. — Muhammad Yunus

Natural gas obviously brings with it a number of quality-of-life environmental benefits because it is a relatively clean-burning fuel. It has a CO2 footprint, but it has no particulates. It has none of the other emissions elements that are of concern to public health that other forms of power-generation fuels do have: coal, fuel oil, others. — Rex Tillerson

The biggest cause of environmental destruction is poverty. Starving people can't worry about pollution. They worry about food. Half — Michael Crichton

The government should set a goal for a clean environment but not mandate how that goal should be implemented. — Dixie Lee Ray

Successfully reframing the climate debate in the United States from one based on environmental values to one based on health values ... holds great promise to help American society better understand and appreciate the risks of climate change ... — George Mason

This is a subject I've given a lot of thought to, and I think I have the answer. I've tried to encompass in my theory all the sociological, mythological, religious, philosophical, muscular, economic, cultural, musical, physical, ethical, intellectual, metaphysical, anthropological, gynecological, historical, hormonal, environmental, judicial, legal, moral, ethnic, governmental, linguistic, psychological, schizophrenic, glottal, racial, poetic, dental [this was the logical link] artistic, military, and urinary considerations from prehistoric times to the present.I have been able to synthesize these considerations into one inescapable formulation: men can knock the shit out of women. — Fran Ross

The language 'It's too late' is very unsuitable for most environmental issues. It's too late for the dodo and for people who've starved to death already, but it's not too late to prevent an even bigger crisis. The sooner we act on the environment, the better. — Jeremy Grantham

[ ... ] most of the environmental hype [regarding global warming] is really to help bring about Karl Marx's dream (nightmare) of a Communist world. [by reduction, and ultimately elimination of private property rights — Kent Hovind

It is better to buy from a small, privately owned local store than from a chain store. It is better to buy a good product than a bad one. Do not buy anything you don't need. Do as much as you can for yourself. If you cannot do something for yourself, see if you have a neighbor who can do it for you. Do everything you can to see that your money stays as long as possible in the local community. — Wendell Berry

An important measure of our true commitment to environmental quality is our dedication to protecting the wilderness and its inhabitants. We must recognize their ecological significance and preserve them as sources of inspiration and education. And we need them as places of quiet refuge and reflection. — Richard M. Nixon

Environmental degradation is one of the biggest challenges we have. I think a question that we're not asking ourselves is: 'Isn't humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature?' — Pope Francis

Sharks are just evil bastards. I'm quite happy if all the sharks just went, because they eat fish and us. And we need the fish. — Eddie Izzard

It is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an 'environmental crisis' because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, god-given world. — Wendell Berry

This exciting new field of epigenetics
meaning literally "around" the gene
allows us to see how environmental factors alter our gene expression in a specific place within each cell. As a result, we now know that when we take active control of these factors, we can literally help control our health and genetic destiny. — Woodson Merrell

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. — Paul Hawken

From the cranberry cancer scare of the 1950s to the Alar-in-apples hysteria of the 1980s, from the "new ice age" of the 1960s to the "global warming" of the 1990s, environmental alarms almost always turn out to be false. Few non-political scientists fear ozone loss, global warming, or acid rain. These are just issues that some people hope to use to reorder the lives of the rest of us. — Harry Browne

I don't know if acting is genetic. Maybe it's environmental. — Freddie Prinze Jr.

Every species embodies a solution to some environmental challenge, and some of these solutions are breathtaking in their elegance. — Linda Bender

These three conceptual and ideological challenges (Hindu fundamentalism, Communist dictatorship and ethnic separatism) all date to the founding of the nation. To these have, more recently been added, three more mundane and materialist challenges. These are inequality, corruption and environmental degradation. — Ramachandra Guha

When I vote for a candidate I always try to learn as much as I can about them, but I guess I focus a lot on environmental issues, and I tend to vote along those lines. — Jack Johnson

In this context, fear of toxicity strikes me as an old anxiety with a new name. Where the word filth once suggested, with its moralist air, the evils of the flesh, the word toxic now condemns the chemical evils of our industrial world. This is not to say that concerns over environmental pollution are not justified - like filth theory, toxicity theory is anchored in legitimate dangers - but that the way we think about toxicity bears some resemblance to the way we once thought about filth. Both theories allow their subscribers to maintain a sense of control over their own health by pursuing personal purity. For the filth theorist, this meant a retreat into the home, where heavy curtains and shutters might seal out the smell of the poor and their problems. Our version of this shuttering is now achieved through the purchase of purified water, air purifiers, and food produced with the promise of purity. — Eula Biss

There are no articles any more that dream about the cities of tomorrow. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Ren, her official second, was a Belter and, like all Belters, passionate about environmental control systems the way normal people were with sex or religion. — James S.A. Corey

The sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away. — Stephanie Mills

One in eight plant species face extinction. — David Attenborough

We have ignored this cancer for so long that the romance of environmental concern is already fading in the shadow of the grim realities of lakes, rivers and bays where all forms of life have been smothered by untreated wastes, and oceans which no longer provide us with food. — Edmund Muskie

Planting and growing increasing quantities of trees is the scientific solution to Earth's environmental dilemma. — Richard St. Barbe Baker

In reality, Kyoto was a huge transfer of resources from the United States to the Third World, under the guise of environmental protection. — Charles Krauthammer

Everything we personally own that's made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we're either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf. — Yvon Chouinard

You may have heard that America doesn't have enough scientists and is in danger of "falling behind" (whatever that means) because of it. Tell this to an academic scientist and watch her laugh. For the last thirty years, the amount of the U.S. annual budget that goes to non-defense related research has been frozen. From a purely budgetary perspective, we don't have too few scientists, we've got far too many, and we keep graduating more each year. America may say that it values science, but it sure as hell doesn't want to pay for it. Within environmental science in particular, we see the crippling effects that come from having been resource-hobbled for decades: degrading farmland, species extinction, progressive deforestation... The list goes on and on. — Hope Jahren

As a consumer an individual expresses "personal or self-regarding wants and interests"; as a citizen she expresses her "judgements about what is right or good". The mistake of market approaches to environmental problems is that they transform an issue that requires public deliberation by citizens into one to be resolved by consumer preferences. The market responds only to those preferences that can be articulated through acts of buying and selling. Hence the interests of the commercially inarticulate, both those who are contingently so (the poor) and those who are necessarily so (future generations and non-humans) cannot be adequately represented. — John O'Neill

We can have technology, prosperity, nice homes and cars, but at the same time we must be conscious of what we are dumping into the water, the air and our food. — Kevin Richardson

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. — Wangari Maathai

America ships tons of sugar cookies to Denmark and Denmark ships tons of sugar cookies to America. Wouldn't it be more efficient just to swap recipes? — Michael Pollan

As a group, we want to follow good and green strategy. Setting targets is one element of that. The second part is to design products which meet environmental goals. — Jamshyd Godrej

Her [Jurdge Sandra Day O'Connor] judgment has also been critical in protecting our environmental rights. She joined in 5-4 majorities affirming reproductive freedom and religious freedom and the Voting Rights Act. — Patrick Leahy

We are using resources as if we had two planets, not one. There can be no 'plan B' because there is no 'planet B.' — Ban Ki-moon

The world beyond 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the world that crosses carbon cycle tipping points that quickly take us to 1000 ppm, is a world not merely of endless regional resource wars around the globe. It is a world with dozens of Darfurs. It is a world of a hundred Katrinas, of countless environmental refugees — Joseph J. Romm

Our land-healing ministry really is about cultivating relationships: between the people, the loving stewards, and the ecology of a place, what I call the environmental umbilical that we're nurturing here. — Joel Salatin

In the state of Wisconsin it's mandated that teachers in the social sciences and hard sciences have to start giving environmental education by the first grade, through high school. — Gaylord Nelson

Look at your business and the activities that you undertake. Then, start to think about not just your economic concerns, but about social and environmental impacts that businesses have. — Jerry Greenfield

We can find peace among ourselves, when we find peace with nature. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The environmental problems of developing countries are not the side effects of excessive industrialisation but reflect the inadequacy of development. — Indira Gandhi

The United States inherited a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in natural resources, yet it has responded to its environment with a dismaying mixture of materialism and inertia. The nation was virtually founded upon a ubiquitous desire for access to land and its contents. Its amazing growth during the nineteenth century was based directly upon the exploitation - immediate, unplanned, full use of soils, minerals, forests, and rivers. Equitable access to these natural bounties rather than constitutional guarantees would be the practical basis for democracy. Subsequently, political institutions were shaped in such a way that they could facilitate the disposition of the public domain. But that expectation, as later generations ruefully observed, did not materialize. The combination of economics and government had instead produced a handful of owners and policy makers who were beyond the control of the ballot box. — Elmo Richardson

I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes. — Jay Inslee

It seems clear at last that our love for the natural world-Nature-is the only means by which we can requite God's obvious love for it. — Edward Abbey

I thought I was gonna be an attorney, so I went to Dartmouth and I was a government major and I minored in environmental policy, and I didn't do anything academically around the arts. — Aisha Tyler

The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment. — Ralph Nader

A united humanity will be able to confront the many troubling problems of the present time: from the menace of terrorism to the humiliating poverty in which millions of human beings live, from the proliferation of weapons to the pandemics and the environmental destruction which threatens the future of our planet. — Pope Benedict XVI

Premium will increasingly be defined in terms of sustainability and environmental compatibility — Norbert Reithofer

Climate change is the world's greatest environmental challenge. It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth ... is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable. — Tony Blair

It is unfortunate that some in our party have lost sight of the importance of conservation and environmental protection for keeping America strong, healthy, prosperous, and secure. It's time for all of our Republican leaders to recognize that conservation is conservative. — David Jenkins

When I visited the Water Institute's Baton Rouge offices overlooking the Mississippi River, I couldn't find a drop of the charged politics that drives so many environmental conversations in Washington. — Nina Easton

What I see are people who want affordable energy. They want strong environmental standards - they want a lot of things - but first and foremost they want affordable energy. And if you want affordable energy, you want oil, gas and coal. — John S. Watson

Civilization is in no immediate danger of running out of energy or even just out of oil. But we are running out of environment-that is, out of the capacity of the environment to absorb energy's impacts without risk of intolerable disruption-and our heavy dependence on oil in particular entails not only environmental but also economic and political liabilities. — Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran

A lot of lies and misinformation has been put about by eco nuts on the back of a report by an idiot economist [Sir Nicholas Stern]. Environmental head bangers are talking nonsense when they claim that aviation is the fastest-growing source of carbon emissions. Coal-fired and oil-fired power stations are the biggest contributor of carbon but I have yet to hear any fearless eco warriors advocating nuclear power as they drive around in their SUVs to their next protest meeting. — Michael O'Leary

The problem of numbers can only be dealt with by recognizing that people have a fundamental right to economic security. If you provide them with economic and environmental security, the population will stabilize itself. — Vandana Shiva

There are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents. — Preston Manning

If you, as CEO, have recognized an approach as being the right one, you have to pursue it consistently, even if some people disagree. But it is now clear to everyone that we, as an automaker, have no alternative but to take [environmental protection] course. — Norbert Reithofer

Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life. — Alan Dundes

We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us. — O. Henry

Loving the Earth with a fierce devotion can mean that we view the damage being done to nature as attacks on our own family and kinship group. The despair and rage we feel as witnesses to terracide, animal exploitation and the everyday callous disregard for the environment can be channelled into creating awareness, resistance efforts, the earth rights movement, and by rejecting the numbing and destructive values of Empire. By opening our hearts to the Earth in our thoughts, words, actions and cultural life we will find sacred purpose in the co-creation of an earth-honoring society. Our re-enchantment with the natural world is essential for devoting ourselves to eco-activism, environmental healing, earth restoration and rewilding, and the future rests with us! — Pegi Eyers

Global food insecurity is increasing ... the slim excess of growth in food production over population is narrowing. — Lester R. Brown

Less than 10% of the fuel energy burned in automobiles is translated into forward motion of the vehicle and even then most of this energy is needed to move the vehicle itself, which typically weighs 20 times more than its passengers. — David Suzuki

Neo-Darwinian language and conceptual structure itself ensures scientific failure: Major questions posed by zoologists cannot be answered from inside the neo-Darwinian straitjacket. Such questions include, for example, 'How do new structures arise in evolution?' 'Why, given so much environmental change, is stasis so prevalent in evolution as seen in the fossil record?' 'How did one group of organisms or set of macromolecules evolve from another?' The importance of these questions is not at issue; it is just that neo-Darwinians, restricted by their resuppositions, cannot answer them. — Lynn Margulis

The itch for naming things is almost as bad as the itch for possessing things. Let them and leave them alone
they'll survive for a few more thousand years, more or less, without any glorification from us. — Edward Abbey

This is where the will to grapple with our hard and pressing environmental problems begins: in relationship to something other that you love beyond any utility, beyond any logic. — Susan Freinkel

The Lockean assumption that if we put our labor to it then it becomes our own is totally fallacious. We have to figure out how to leave things alone, and build an economic system that's not built on a linear model, but instead on a cyclical model, because that's the natural world - it's cyclical and not linear. That is going to take a lot of transformation. — Winona LaDuke

I had long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no. — Jeff VanderMeer

The threat of environmental crisis is the 'international disaster key' to unlock the New World Order. — Mikhail Gorbachev

No conscious person can read Peter D'Adamo's works without considering much more thoughtfully how their genetic inheritance relates to their needs for specific food, lifestyle and environmental factors to improve their health. — Jeffrey Bland

From year to year, environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives, but from evolutionary or geological perspectives, what is happening is explosive change. — David Suzuki

to raise awareness about environmental problems and to inspire people to take action. The youth has immense potential to contribute towards environmental protection, provided they are given the right tools and inspiration. This contest empowers the youth to take charge of their local communities by exposing them to environmental issues, and pushing them to come up with solutions. — Anonymous

The choices and decisions we make in terms of how we use the land ultimately affect our very DNA. Environmental issues are life issues. — Terry Tempest Williams

Energy conservation is the foundation of energy independence. — Tom Allen

Finally, "industrial society," to use a genteel euphemism for capitalism, has also become an easy explanation for the environmental ills that afflict our time. But a blissful ignorance clouds the fact that several centuries ago, much of England's forest land, including Robin Hood's legendary haunts, was deforested by the crude axes of rural proletarians to produce charcoal for a technologically simple metallurgical economy and to clear land for profitable sheep runs. This occurred long before the Industrial Revolution. — Murray Bookchin

In the 1890's horses, carrying people to work, dropped 4.5 million tons of manure on the streets of Manhattan, every year. That was the big environmental problem of the day. "NYC will be buried in horse manure by 1950!" screamed the headlines. It doesn't matter what your opinion about this was. None of the people living in NY solved the problem despite the 1000s of opinions. People with passion for mechanics in Detroit made something called a car. Problem solved. — James Altucher

I have voted against only one of President Obama's nominees: Michael Froman, a Citigroup alumnus who is currently storming the halls of Congress as U.S. Trade Representative pushing trade deals that threaten to undermine financial regulation, workers' rights, and environmental protections. — Elizabeth Warren

Some behaviour is more heritable than others; you may start off with some genes loaded for depression but they don't just switch on without some environmental input. No one knows if you become 'you' because of nature or nurture: it's a combination of what you're born with and how you live your life. In — Ruby Wax

There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm. — Theodore Roosevelt

The beauty of the world is Christ's tender smile for us coming through matter. — Simone Weil

Mankind is busily manufacturing its way into extinction. — Steven Magee

Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the worlds resources will be negotiated. — Ottmar Edenhofer

The obvious one, in a market system, in a really functioning one, whoever's making the decisions doesn't pay attention to what are called externalities, effects on others. I sell you a car, if our eyes are open we'll make a good deal for ourselves but we're not asking how it's going to affect her [over there.] It will, there'll be more congestion, gas prices will go up, there will be environmental effects and that multiplies over the whole population. Well, that's very serious. — Noam Chomsky

We are facing a tipping point of environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and our very survival is dependent on protecting nature. — Leonardo DiCaprio

The main environmental challenge of the 21st century is poverty. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, it's hard to consider the environment 100 years down the line. — Bjorn Lomborg

Fracking is doable if there's full disclosure of all chemicals used. Secondly, science dictates the policy rather than politics. Third, there's collaboration between environmental groups and the natural gas industry. — Bill Richardson

People are overwhelmed looking up at the Mount Everest of environmental challenges that we face. But you put one foot in front of the other and you recognize that not everyone is Sir Edmund Hillary. — Ed Begley Jr.

Environmental scientists in Canada said it was impossible for me to get to the Pole in 2004 ... I said 'no,' it's still OK, and I can still get there, and I did. — Ben Saunders