Environmental Day Quotes & Sayings

China uses about half of the world's cement for its new roads and buildings.
According to the World Bank in 2007, China had 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities.
One day in January 2013, the air pollution index in Beijing was 755 - measured on a scale of 0 to 500!
In late 2012, 16,000 dead pigs were found floating in the river that supplies water to
Shanghai, the PRC's largest city.
For 2010, a ministry of the Chinese government estimated the monetary cost of the environmental damage caused by rapid industrialization at $230 billion, which is 3.5 percent of China's gross domestic product.
Air pollution from Chinese factories wafts over to the Koreas and Japan. Sometimes, upper atmospheric winds carry the sulphur dioxide from China's coal-burning clear over to North America's west coast. — James Peoples

Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. — John F. Kennedy

The pioneers and their new Indian partners amply displayed the American penchant for technological prowess, developing shore-to-shore windlasses and flatboat ferries to cross the rivers, innovations as vital to the country's progress as the steam engine and the telegraph. America's default toward massive waste and environmental havoc was also, and hilariously, perfected along the trail. Scammed by the merchants of Independence and St. Joe into overloading their wagons, the pioneers jettisoned thousands of tons of excess gear, food, and even pianos along the ruts, turning vast riverfront regions of the West into America's first and largest Superfund sites. On issue after issue - disease, religious strife, the fierce competition for water - the trail served as an incubator for conflicts that would continue to reverberate through American culture until our own day. — Rinker Buck

Let he who would move the world, first complete an environmental impact assessment and a 90-day public comment period. — Socrates

The problem the world faces today is that only one-third of the world's population lives in decent circumstances, while half the population of the world lives on one or two dollars a day. And even as we have this poverty and backwardness, we are facing a global environmental crisis. We need developmental models that will take into account the specific and unique position of each country and at the same time will address the environmental crisis. — Mikhail Gorbachev

Sadhana You may have noticed this about yourself: when you are feeling pleasant, you want to expand; when you are fearful, you want to contract. Try this. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won't limit yourself to a tree. Using this simple process, we at the Isha Yoga Center have unleashed an environmental initiative in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, under which twenty-one million trees have been planted since 2004. We spent several years planting trees in people's minds, which is the most difficult terrain! Now transplanting those onto land happens that much more effortlessly. — Sadhguru

When we do harm to one thing we are essentially harming ourselves. For example when we use poisonous toxins and pesticides to grow our food, we pollute the soil, kill the life of the surrounding ecosystems, decrease the quality of the food supply, which then decreases our health and the level of energy we operate on. When we do this every day on a global scale for several decades we end up with soil infertility, habitat loss, environmental pollution, low quality food, poor health, malnutrition, and a lack of productivity, which is so apparent in today's society. — Joseph P. Kauffman

I credit the motion picture industry as the strongest environmental factor in molding the children of my day. — Lenny Bruce

How endless is that volume which God hath written of the world! Every creature is a letter, every day a new page. — Joseph Hall

You are an indispensable and irreplaceable asset to the human family. — Ilchi Lee

Congressman Upton insisted that he hadn't changed his position on environmental issues. But Jeremy Symons, then a senior vice president of the nonpartisan National Wildlife Federation, said that the transformation was "like night and day." He continued, "In the past the committee majority viewed the Clean Air Act as an effective way to protect the public. Now the committee treats the Clean Air Act and the EPA as if they are the enemy. Voters didn't ask for this pro-polluter agenda, but the Koch brothers spent their money well and their presence can be felt." At — Jane Mayer

Determining the value of individual texts has been an ideological scuffle in literary criticism for centuries: but the environmental cost of printing them hauls this dispute from the ivory tower into day-to-day decision-making. Is it right to write? The publishing industry is slowly beginning to commit to using sustainably harvested trees. — Tristram Stuart

Nuclear power is a permanent disaster. Producing its uranium fuel is an environmental disaster - now tucked and folded over the horizon in mostly-poor countries where miners are paid $5 a day and unprotected against radiation. Building reactors is a financial disaster, always shifted to government subsidies. Waste disposal is both an environmental and economic disaster. When the fateful time comes to decommission the Doomsday Machines, after the easy 10-year life extensions run out, this is another economic disaster. But when a reactor becomes what it really is - the most massive Dirty Bomb you or Bin Laden (radhi Allah anhu) can imagine - the nuclear disaster will be hard to yank out of the media, quicktime, and carry on like nothing ever happened. — Andrew McKillop

Earth Citizens are people who care for the earth as they care for their own bodies. — Ilchi Lee

An NDP government will establish, in law, clear criteria for resource extraction and transportation based on the principles of sustainable development, which include internalizing all pollution costs and putting a price on carbon. In our day and age there is no longer any way around it. Any new energy project requires a thorough, credible environmental assessment process, based on criteria of sustainable development and social acceptability. We don't have one in Canada, because the Conservatives have gutted all the relevant existing legislation and reduced the staff responsible for enforcing it. — Tom Mulcair

Since the day he came into office, President Bush has worked to gut more than 34 years of hard work by weakening many of our Nation's standing environmental laws, some of which were signed into law by his father. — Jim Jeffords

Earth Citizens have minds and hearts that know the Earth is the foundation of everything they do. — Ilchi Lee

Celebrate Earth Day! A time to recognize the gains we have made. A time to create new actions to accelerate environmental progress. Protect our planet not only on Earth Day, but everyday! — Ciaran Lynch

The title says it all: 'Little House on a Small Planet.' With population,
pollution and environmental pressures weighing heavily upon us, our planet
grows smaller every day and the need for thoughtful, lower-impact housing becomes more urgent. This delightful book is full of inspiring ideas that will help you simplify your housing choices, make more environmentally responsible product and material choices and bring down the square footage of your next home. Or maybe you'll decide to take your current home and turn it into several. You won't be disappointed. — Wanda Urbanska

Knowledge is power and at the end of the day, our health, the health of our children, the health of our community, and the health of Mother Earth is our responsibility. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand the human and environmental affects of the products that we buy. — Obiora Embry

Why is Earth Day, today, also Lenin's birthday? Coincidence? Or does it signal the true intent of the national and worldwide environmental movement? — Alan Caruba

You have established the earth and it continues. All things stand this day according to your directions. For all things are your servants (Ps. 119:91). God himself loves the earth dearly and never takes his hands off it. And because he loves it and it is good, our care of it is also eternal work and a part of our eternal life. — Dallas Willard

Nothing can ever fix nature' not even all monies in the world and money rules, are never worthy following. — Auliq Ice

An environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world. The present is always invisible because it's environmental and saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone is alive in an earlier day. — Warren Ellis

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation. — Barry Commoner

If I had to catalog all the moronic plot turns in The Day After Tomorrow, we'd be here until the next ice age. It's just so very bad. You can have a pretty good time snickering at it-unless, like me, you think there's something to this global warming thing, and you shudder at the irony of a movie meant to warn people about a dangerous environmental trend that completely discredits it. Is it possible that the film is a plot to make environmental activists look as wacko as anti-environmentalists always claim they are? — David Edelstein

We need to make growth greener, to make our economic and environmental policies more compatible and even mutually-reinforcing. This is not just a matter of new technologies or new sources of renewable, safe energy. It is about how we all behave every day of our lives, what we eat, what we drink, what we recycle, re-use, repair, how we produce and how we consume — Jose Angel Gurria

Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it. — Barry Commoner

He returned to Pinch, waiting for the mine whistle to break the day into pieces. When it did, the miners surfaced with empty lunch buckets, leaving the portal, walking the narrow main drag with its bank, post office, and commissary. They found their own company shacks in straggling rows three deep, each one identical, with the same stovepipe, same curl of smoke, same yellow dog lazing in a bare yard. its tail beginning to wag. — Matthew Neill Null

Why should I listen to society? Society - as far as I was concerned - was insane. To me, society was boob jobs and sweaters on dogs and environmental devastation of incalculable proportions. We do not listen to the lunatic on the city corner who screeches every day about how the world is going to end, so why should I stop and let society shout nonsense in my ears? These — Ken Ilgunas

You are not exposed to one chemical at a time, but a complex mixture of chemicals that changes day by day, hour by hour, depending on where you are and the environment you are in ... In the United States alone it is estimated that over 72,000 different chemicals are used regularly. Two thousand five hundred new chemicals are introduced annually-and of these, only 15 are partially tested for their safety. Not one of the chemicals in use today has been adequately tested for these intergenerational effects that are initiated in the womb. — Theo Colborn

It will be impossible for us to maintain the health of the organism called the earth unless we feel and care for other organisms as we do for ourselves - and unless we take action. — Ilchi Lee

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

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

What motivates Olympic athletes to train for years for one event - in some cases, for just seconds of actual competition? It's the same thing that kept my friend Pete nosing around old bookstores for years. It's the same thing that makes a person venture out of a comfortable job to start a new business. We see it in the artist who spends day after day in a studio chipping away at a block of stone. Look closely and you'll find it in the shopper who passes up the good deal in search of the best deal. It's one of the things that makes us most human. We consciously pursue what we value. It's not simply a matter of being driven by biology or genetics or environmental conditioning to satisfy instinctive cravings. Rather, we perceive something, prize it at a certain value, then pursue it according to that assigned value because we were created that way. This ability to perceive, prize, and pursue is part of our essential humanness, and it's the essence of ambition. — Dave Harvey

No day is alike - I do many other things, and I'm very active in the environmental movement. — Jostein Gaarder

On the third day of their honeymoon, infamous environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride, Annabel Bellotti, were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy. — C.J. Box

Through our belly buttons, not only can we connect with ourselves, but we also gain the wisdom to see the earth as an extension of ourselves. — Ilchi Lee

Earth Day gathered up those strands, and dozens more, and knitted them together in the public consciousness as "environmental" issues. The nation was pretty startled when 20 million people hit the streets. Congress, which had adjourned for the day to go back to its districts, was blown away. — Denis Hayes

Planting trees, I myself thought for a long time, was a feel-good thing, a nice but feeble response to our litany of modern-day environmental problems. In the last few years, though, as I have read many dozens of articles and books and interviewed scientists here and abroad, my thinking on the issue has changed. Planting trees may be the single most important ecotechnology that we have to put the broken pieces of our planet back together. — Jim Robbins

We line up and make a lot of noise about big environmental problems like incinerators, waste dumps, acid rain, global warming and pollution. But we don't understand that when we add up all the tiny environmental problems each of us creates, we end up with those big environmental dilemmas. Humans are content to blame someone else, like government or corporations, for the messes we create, and yet we each continue doing the same things, day in and day out, that have created the problems. Sure, corporations create pollution. If they do, don't buy their products. If you have to buy their products (gasoline for example), keep it to a minimum. Sure, municipal waste incinerators pollute the air. Stop throwing trash away. Minimize your production of waste. Recycle. Buy food in bulk and avoid packaging waste. Simplify. Turn off your TV. Grow your own food. Make compost. Plant a garden. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. If you don't, who will? — Joseph Jenkins

Every time you see your belly button, remember that your life is connected with the life of the planet, — Ilchi Lee

Earth Citizens recognize themselves as members of a planetary community, instead of as members of a single nation, religion, or organization. And, most importantly, they live that awareness. — Ilchi Lee

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

A 1.5 litres/100km (3 mpg) increase in the auto and light truck fleet is worth 158,968.35 cubic metres (41,994,994.53 US gallons) of oil a day. — Ernest Moniz

The young generation can influence their elders and can make them understand the environmental problems that are faced by us today. The youth can make them see that our environment is deteriorating day by day. — Oren Lyons

The economic logic of gathering so many animals together to feed them cheap corn in CAFOs is hard to argue with; it has made meat, which used to be a special occasion in most American homes, so cheap and abundant that many of us now eat it three times a day. Not so compelling is the biological logic behind this cheap meat. Already in their short history CAFOs have produced more than their share of environmental and health problems: polluted water and air, toxic wastes, novel and deadly pathogens. — Michael Pollan

We had some major successes and we did so because the country embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced this concept that we have to have forward-looking, visionary environmental policy and energy policy in this country. — Jay Inslee

The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it. — P. J. O'Rourke