Environmental Impact Quotes & Sayings

Single-purposism, as we have seen, tends to create projects that harm the environment. Instead, we should design projects with as favourable an environmental impact as possible. This is the objective of environmental impact design. — Tom Turner

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

The industrial processes in use today were developed at a time when no one had to consider what the environmental impact was. Who cared? But making ecological concerns matter to a company's bottom line will help it do the research and development that will reinvent everything we buy. — Daniel Goleman

I make a fair amount of my food choices for environmental-type reasons than nutrition or taste. I'm trying to minimize impact, which is something most people don't necessarily think about when they're shopping. — Alex Honnold

Perhaps one of the most meaningful ways to sense the impact of the environmental crisis is to confront the question which is always asked about Lake Erie: how can we restore it? I believe the only valid answer is that no one knows. For it should be clear that even if overnight all of the pollutants now pouring into Lake Erie were stopped, there would still remain the problem of the accumulated mass of pollutants in the lake bottom. — Barry Commoner

Fundamentally, if you look at where the environmental issues are coming from, it's all because of humans and our impact on the environment, so while it's true that one individual is not going to sufficiently fix the environment, it is a necessary thing. — David Filo

Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies. — Garrett Hardin

Sustainability at Nike means being laser-focused on evolving our business model to deliver profitable growth while leveraging the efficiencies of lean manufacturing, minimizing our environmental impact and using the tools available to us to bring about positive change across our entire supply chain. — Mark Parker

The risks of transporting deadly nuclear waste, the environmental justice impacts and the long-term health effects of both these projects are untenable ... We cannot afford to be silent on these important issues. — James Cromwell

Although population and consumption are societal issues, technology is the business of business. If economic activity must increase tenfold over what it is today to support a population nearly double its current size, then technology will have to reduce its impact twenty-fold merely to keep the planet at its current levels of environmental impact. For example, to stabilize the climate we may have to reduce real carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, while simultaneously growing the world economy by an order of magnitude. — Stuart L. Hart

For businesses, biomimicry is about bringing a new discipline - biology - to the design table. It's not to write an environmental impact statement, as most biologists in business do right now. — Janine Benyus

Humans are omnivores, which means we are adapted to eat plants, fungi, and animals. The nutrients in the plant foods we consume depend on the genetics of the individual species, the quality of the soil they are grown in, and the weather conditions during that time. For animal foods, nutrient levels are dependent on what the animals eat throughout their lives and are also affected by their stress and hormone levels. Any toxins or environmental pollutants that the animals and plants are subjected to have the power to impact human health as well. — Darya Pino Rose

If people are prepared to eat locally and seasonally, then they probably do pretty well in terms of environmental impact. — Peter Singer

It's obvious nonsense, but it makes nice people feel good about themselves to do their bit for the planet. It's vanity of a grotesque kind to believe that mankind, and our 'carbon footprint', has more impact on the future of Earth than Nature, which bends our planet to its will, as it sees fit. — Charles Saatchi

But no matter how big the effort to push a propaganda line might be, climate change is bigger. This, undoubtedly and regrettably, is the biggest immediate long-term environmental challenge we face. A failure to concretely come to some policy outcome on climate change has not only a negative environmental impact but also social and economic consequences for us. — Peter Garrett

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

Threats that could wipe out the bulk of life on earth abound. Planetary catastrophe could come in the form of a killer asteroid impact, the eruption of massive supervolcanoes, a nearby gamma ray burst that sterilizes the earth, or by human-driven environmental collapse. — Ramez Naam

A social impact bond is a new way of bringing financing into social and environmental support issues. — Judith Rodin

For nearly 11 years, now, we have been on this mission; we call it, "climbing Mt. Sustainability", a mountain higher than Everest, to meet at that point at the top that symbolizes zero footprint-zero environmental impact. Sustainable: taking nothing, doing no harm. — Ray Anderson

Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the reasons we have a coal-dependent infrastructure, with the resulting environmental impact that all of us can see. I suspect environmentalists, through their opposition of nuclear power, have caused more coal plants to be built than anybody. And those coal plants have emitted more radioactive material from the coal than any nuclear accident would have. — Vinod Khosla

We want to encourage investors to target businesses that focus on achieving more than just profits - by placing their money into businesses that also positively contribute to social or environmental benefits in Ontario. Angel investors can help social enterprises grow and succeed, and through our partnership with the Network of Angel Organizations and the Impact Angel Alliance, we are making it easier for social ventures and angel investors to connect, contribute, and make our society a better place to live. — Brad Duguid

China leads the world in energy consumption, carbon emissions, and the release of major air and water pollutants, and the environmental impact is felt both regionally and globally. — Ma Jun

Human brains have three layers of programming. Each layer adds a twist or turn to sexual preferences and tendencies. The first layer is genetic progamming from the inherited genes. The second involves environmental influences that impact genes and their expression. The third level deals with the way we "fill in the blanks" as social and cultural beings. This level can become a feedback loop that influences the inherited genes by influencing with whom we choose to have sex. — Darrel Ray

For an entire year he saved all of his trash. Except for what he actually ate, everything was sorted into bins. At year's end, his living room and kitchen were filled with nearly a hundred cubic feet of stuff. Some was compostable. But the vast majority was leftover food packaging. Derfel's experimentation shows what happens when someone intentionally holds onto everything. The point of his exercise was to raise consciousness about the environmental impact of one individual's consumer waste. At another level, it demonstrates that we readily discard most of what passes though daily life as useless trash. — Richard J. Borden

If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement. — Ronald Reagan

Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of "environmental refugees", people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it - and often their possessions as well - in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement? Can we remain impassive in the face of actual and potential conflicts involving access to natural resources? All these are issues with a profound impact on the exercise of human rights, such as the right to life, food, health and development. — Pope Benedict XVI

What's it like to envision the ten-thousand-year environmental impact of tossing a plastic bottle into the trash bin, all in the single second it takes to actually toss it? Or the ten-thousand-year history of the fossil fuel being burned to drive to work or iron a shirt? It may be environmentally progressive, but it's not altogether pleasant. — Douglas Rushkoff

This (environmental treaty) process has nothing to do with the weather. It has nothing to do with man's impact on the weather. It has everything to do with establishing the socialist international at the heart of the UN and making every nation bow the knee to this new dictatorship, and the climate is merely a fig leaf to cover what they are trying to do. — Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton Of Brenchley

Superfluous focus on accounting and other procedural details is preventing U.S. industry from competing with rough-and-ready rivals in Asia that can build thousands of factories and skyscrapers while the United States dithers with environmental-impact litigation, re-computation, and backup of accounting reports. — George Gilder

CAFE standards have little impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and the environmental benefits of increasing CAFE standards are frequently overstated. Their impact on human health is more certain: CAFE standards have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths since their adoption. — Amy Ridenour

Familiarity reduces insecurity, so we feel more comfortable describing and combating the risks we think we understand: terrorists, immigrants, job loss or crime. But the true sources of insecurity in decades to come will be those that most of us cannot define: dramatic climate change and its social and environmental effects; imperial decline and its attendant 'small wars'; collective political impotence in the face of distant upheavals with disruptive local impact. These are the threats that chauvinist politicians will be best placed to exploit, precisely because they lead so readily to anger and humiliation. — Tony Judt

Those of us who think about what we eat, how it's grown, those of us who care about the environmental impact of food - we've been educated by fabulous books, like Fast Food Nation and documentaries like Food Inc. But despite these and other great projects that shine a critical light on the topic, every year the food industry spends literally tens of millions of dollars to shape the public conversation about our food system. — Anna Lappe

I don't know the science behind climate change. I can't say one way or another what is the direct impact, whether it's man-made or not. I've heard arguments from both sides, but I do believe in protecting our environment, but without the job killing regulations that are coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency ... — Joni Ernst

Businesses typically look at issues like price, quality, time of delivery. They don't often think about social and environmental impact because they're focused on their financial bottom line. — Jerry Greenfield

But the sun itself, however beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the thing it looks upon to bless. — Charles Dickens

The way to make the world a better place, through your eating, is simply to eat a bit less meat. Local is sometimes good, sometimes bad. But even when it's good, its environmental impact is relatively small compared to other possible improvements. — Tyler Cowen

Environmental protection doesn't happen in a vacuum. You can't separate the impact on the environment from the impact on our families and communities. — Jim Clyburn

When the government undertakes or approves a major project such as a dam or highway project, it must make sure the project's impacts, environmental and otherwise, are considered. In many cases, NEPA gives the public its only opportunity to be heard about the project's impact on their community. — Frances Beinecke

Fossil fuels will run out not because of limited resources but because of the environmental impact. If I can solve that impact, I have basically increased the resource base by a vast amount. — Klaus Lackner

Everyone must be clear that business as usual is not an option. Most of us live in buildings erected long before we were born and our successors will have to live with the environmental consequences of the buildings we construct today. It is vital that we minimise harmful impacts for those who come after us — Margaret Beckett

I think that overall, ultimately the impact of advertisers calling the shots is a more cloying, complacent culture. For example, it was just announced that Unilever is branding environmental content at The Guardian. How radical or pointed can that content be? — Astra Taylor

The gains made by better management and technology are still being outpaced by the environmental impacts of population and economic growth. We are on an unsustainable course. — Klaus Topfer

Surveying the available alternative energy sources for criteria such as energy density, environmental impacts, reliance on depleting raw materials, intermittency versus constancy of supply, and the percentage of energy returned on the energy invested in energy production, none currently appears capable of perpetuating this kind of society. — Richard Heinberg

Women spend 80 cents of every dollar in the marketplace. We could be the most powerful force for economic and environmental change in the 21st century if we focused our money where it could make the biggest difference. If a million people did that, it would have a $1 billion impact. — Diane MacEachern

I don't believe vegans (or vegetarians) who still get their (packaged, preservative/chemical-ridden) food from industrial food systems have any righteous ground to stand on, nor do I think a deep look at the sentient life of plants or the true environmental impact of agriculture permits them any comfortable distance from cruelty. Everything in this world eats something else to survive, and that something else, whether running on blood or chlorophyll, would always rather continue to live rather than become sustenance for another. No animal wants to be penned up and milked, or caged and harvested, and you've never seen plants growing in regimented lines of their own accord. — Brian Awehali

Helping people understand the impact of key environmental and human issues worldwide is something that I'm passionate about. CNN's 'Going Green' series of specials are engaging viewers around the world through important messages of conservation and hope. — Philippe Cousteau Jr.

In terms of environmental impact, Samasource jobs are very green. Our product is human intelligence, and it's transported through the Internet rather than via carbon-intensive trucking, shipping, and warehousing. — Leila Janah

I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest. — Tony Hayward

Failing to curb the impact of climate change could damage the global economy on the scale of the Great Depression or the world wars by spawning environmental devastation that could cost 5 to 20 percent of the world's annual gross domestic product. — Nicholas Stern

Tens of millions of acres have been added to the federal wilderness system, environmental impact assessments are now required for all major developments, some lakes that were declared dead are living again. . . . Lead particulates have been impressively reduced in the atmosphere; DDT is no longer found in American body fat, which also contains considerably fewer polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) than it once did. Mercury has virtually disappeared from Great Lakes sediment; and Strontium 90 is no longer found in either cows' milk or mothers' milk." And Dowie stressed: "What all these facts have in common is that they are the result of outright bans against the use or production of the substances in question."III, 27 — Naomi Klein

and produce as a result of their inundation with industrial herbicides and pesticides which, of course, make their way, again, into the Russian River. Then into the Pacific Ocean. And ultimately, into all the fish in your local supermarket. What is said about the environmental impact of vineyards in Sonoma County? Fucking nothing. It is our sacred cow." Darren raised his shot glass again, "Long live the sacred cow." Colin — Rob Loughran

When we think about lung cancer, the biggest environmental factor is without doubt smoking. Um, that would make a huge impact and has made a huge impact on the incidence of lung cancer. We have to keep pushing that and making it clear to everybody why smoking is so dangerous. — Laurie Glimcher

This is absolutely bizarre that we continue to subsidize highways beyond the gasoline tax, airlines, and we don't subsidize, we don't want to subsidize a national rail system that has environmental impact. — Joe Biden