Environmental Movement Quotes & Sayings

Regulate the banks, get money out of elections; raise the minimum wage, environmental issues. They're all very important and the Occupy movement made a difference. It shifted not only the discourse but to some extent, action on these issues. — Noam Chomsky

The co-opting of the environmental movement by the petroleum industry had a shattering effect. It crushed nascent biofuel businesses, killed research, cut off critical funding, stopped the building of new infrastructure, dissolved powerful alliances and seeded America with doubt over our ability to free ourselves from petroleum. — Josh Tickell

Everyone ought to plant a tree in their lifetime. — Lailah Gifty Akita

One of the most important lessons we can glean from the environmental movement is to 'think globally and act locally.' — Mike Love

Most of what I know about environmental conservation I learned from my father, who has been a leader within the movement for over 30 years. — Edward Norton

possibilities of our nature. Instead of reflecting first, we sometimes rush into thoughtless action. Instead of making a reflective, seriously intended, self-committing choice, we sometimes prefer to follow the line of least resistance and to drift lazily along, long-term consequences be damned. The entire environmental movement is based on these propositions. If it is not constituted by study groups, inquiries, data collection, publications, warnings and alarms, consciousness raising, propaganda, education, and political action campaigns designed, at a minimum, to raise public awareness, what is the environmental movement? If it is not concerned — Ronald Bailey

Today the environmental movement has become opposed to issues of justice. You can see this in the way issues are framed. It's a permanent replay of jobs-versus-the-environment, in nature-versus-bread. These are extremely artificial dichotomies. — Vandana Shiva

The purpose of the environmental movement is to establish control over the people. — Kent Hovind

Global warming is not a threat. But environmentalism's response to it is ... Even if global warming is a fact, the free citizens of an industrial civilization will have no great difficulty in coping with it-that is, of course, if their ability to use energy and to produce is not crippled by the environmental movement and by government controls otherwise inspired. — George Reisman

There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement. — Galen Rowell

The "environmental movement" is becoming an economic movement, is joining the social justice movement, is becoming a sustainability movement. It's leaving behind the "People's Needs versus Nature's Needs" conflict in favor of making the case for environmental health as the essential underpinning of prosperous and stable human civilization. — Edward Norton

At the same time the folk boom was happening, the civil rights movement was happening, the anti-war movement was happening, the ban the bomb movement was happening, the environmental movement was happening. There was suddenly a generation ready to change the course of history. — Arlo Guthrie

Environmental justice is the movement to ensure that no community suffers disproportionate environmental burdens or goes without enjoying fair environmental benefits. — Van Jones

The widening gap between technology and human needs can only be filled by ethics. We have seen in the last thirty years many examples of the power of ethics. The worldwide environmental movement, basing its power on ethical persuasion, has scored many victories over industrial wealth and technological arrogance. The most spectacular victory of the environmentalists was the downfall of the nuclear industry in the United States and many other countries, first in the domain of nuclear power and more recently in the domain of weapons. It was the environmental movement that closed down factories for making nuclear weapons in the United States, from plutonium-producing Hanford to warhead-producing Rocky Flats. Ethics can be a force more powerful than politics and economics. — Freeman Dyson

I think Captain Cousteau might be the father of the environmental movement. — Ted Turner

Why is there such insistence that AGW has occurred and needs drastic solutions? This is a puzzle, but my short answer is that the IPCC has been built on the AGW proposition and of course keeps plugging it, whatever the data say. The IPCC has considerable clout. Most people shy off inspecting the evidence because it looks like science and must therefore be hard. The media have been captured by AGW (it makes for great stories), the environmental movement and the Greens love it, and business is reluctant to get involved. — Don Aitkin

The religious environmental movement is potentially key to dealing with the greatest problem humans have ever faced, and it has never been captured with more breadth and force than in RENEWAL. I hope this movie is screened in church basements and synagogue social halls across the country, and that it moves many more people of faith off the fence and into action. — Bill McKibben

I think the environmental movement has failed in that it's used the stick too much; it's used the apocalyptic tone too much; it hasn't sold the positive aspects of being environmentally concerned and trying to pull us out. — Edward Burtynsky

In the environmental movement, every time you lose a battle it's for good, but our victories always seem to be temporary and we keep fighting them over and over again. — David Suzuki

The environmental movement, like all political processes, reacts best to disasters. But these are very slow, very gradual disasters in the making. — Ted Danson

My contention throughout this book is that reconnecting to nature is one key to growing a larger environmental movement. That reconnection is visceral and immediately useful to many people's lives. Encouraging personal reconnection does not mean less engagement with global environmental issues; it means more. To act, most of us need motivation beyond despair. — Richard Louv

Those people who say that America is finite are some sense right. The environmental movement, for example, has a great wisdom to it: we need to protect, to preserve, to shelter as much as we need to develop. But I think this always has to be juxtaposed against the optimism of old, which is now represented in part by immigrants. I would like to see America achieve a kind of balance between optimism and tragedy, between possibility and skepticism. — Richard Rodriguez

So at last the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement and took over Greenpeace so that my friends who founded it left within a year because they'd captured it. Now the apotheosis is at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. — Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton Of Brenchley

The real strength of the environmental movement is the tens of thousands, even millions of individuals around the world who are really making a difference and they are doing it out of passion. — Paul Watson

I was surprised to see how much the mainstream environmental movement hates the ELF. — Marshall Curry

There really wasn't an environmental movement 30 years ago. The Sierra Club national office in 1969 consisted of one full-time volunteer. — Denis Hayes

I think an old style of addressing environmental problems is ebbing, but the rise of the so-called conservative, political movement in this country is not a trend towards the future but a reaction to this very broad shift that we are undergoing. — Paul Hawken

I stress that I am not attacking Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the environmental movement in general. They have done some good work overall. I am merely pointing out that they can, and are, used to promote the New World Order, mostly (though certainly not in every case), without their knowledge. — David Icke

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

It is vital that we avoid any hint of moral superiority in our dealings with one another in the environmental movement; if it developed into factionalism it would destroy us, as factionalism has destroyed so many other progressive movements in America. — Edward Abbey

The environmental movement doesn't have many deserters and has a high level of recruitment. Eventually, there will be open war. — Paul Watson

Judi Bari did something that I believe is unparalleled in the history of the environmental movement. She is an Earth First! activist who took it upon herself to organize Georgia Pacific sawmill workers into the IWW ... Well guess what friends, environmentalists and rank and file timber workers becoming allies is the most dangerous thing in the world to the timber industry! — Darryl Cherney

There is no larger collective-action problem than the environment. The three biggest lies of the environmental movement is that every little bit helps, you can do your part, and together we can do it. — Clay Shirky

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

The environmental movement's focus on the Keystone XL pipeline issue really used to baffle me. — Matthew Yglesias

I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital "N" and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc. — Edward Norton

I really believe in the environmental movement right now - it only takes a little effort to make a big difference. — Brooke Burke

We have endorsements of our plan from key leaders within the environmental movement. That doesn't mean that it includes the whole environmental movement. — Rachel Notley

To solve the new century's mounting social and environmental problems, people of color activist and white activists need to be able to join forces. But all too often, the unconscious racism of white activists stands in the way of any effective, worthwhile collaboration. The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop is the most powerful tool that I have seen for removing the barriers to true partnerships between people of color and white folks. If the CWS trainings were mandatory for all white activists, the progressive movement in the United States would be unstoppable. — Van Jones

[T]he great champion of the opponents of liberty, namely communism, had to find some other place to go and they basically went into the environmental movement. — Harrison Schmitt

Putting the AR movement directly in opposition to the environmental movement, which should be our natural allies in fighting human arrogance and domination of the planet. — Peter Singer

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

It really disturbs me that the environmental movement has been co-opted by creation-worshippers instead of being encouraged by the Creator-worshippers. — Joel Salatin

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

In less than a century we experienced great movement. The youth movement! The labor movement! The civil rights movement! The peace movement! The solidarity movement! The women's movement! The disability movement! The disarmament movement! The gay rights movement! The environmental movement! Movement! Transformation! Is there any reason to believe we are done? — Holly Near

Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.
Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.
Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.
It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation. — Peter Joseph

While there are many who would say that the race to the moon was hardly green, many others have noted that the photographs brought back from Apollo 8 created the environmental movement. "They fuelled an awareness of the vulnerability of the Earth which still resonates with us today and shapes our behaviour." It was Kennedy who started it all with his pledge: — John F. Kennedy

The environmental movement could do a better job incorporating the message about the connection between poverty and environmental degradation, and building that message at the grassroots level. — Helene D. Gayle

No, there is no real Left now. If you are just counting heads, there are probably more people involved than in the 1960s, but they are atomized, committed to different special interests - gay rights, environmental rights, this, that. They don't coalesce into a movement that can really do things. — Noam Chomsky

Ted Turner is still a leader. And he sets a great example. His ability financially has been reduced, but his influence and his example still is an important asset to the whole environmental movement. — Maurice Strong

Christian people should surely have been in the vanguard of the movement for environmental responsibility, because of our doctrines of creation and stewardship. Did God make the world? Does he sustain it? Has he committed its resources to our care? His personal concern for his own creation should be sufficient to inspire us to be equally concerned. — John Stott

Sound, in its distributive and dislocating permeability appears as if from everywhere; it flows as an environmental flux, leaving objects and bodies behind to collect others in its movement — Brandon Labelle

When a journalist pressed Werner for a clear answer on the "Is Earth f**ked" question, he set the jargon aside and replied, "More or less."4 There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope. Werner described it as "resistance" - movements of "people or groups of people" who "adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture." According to the abstract for his presentation, this includes "environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by Indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups." Such mass uprisings of people - along the lines of the abolition movement and the civil rights movement - represent the likeliest source of "friction" to slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control. — Naomi Klein

I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies. — Paul Krugman

He [Aldo Leopold] recognized that industrial-age tools were incompatible with truly wild country - that roads eventually brought with them streams of tourists and settlers, hotels and gas stations, summer homes and cabins, and a diminishment of land health. He sort of invented the concept of wilderness as we now understand it in America: a stretch of country without roads, where all human movement must happen on foot or horseback. He understood that to keep a little remnant of our continent wild, we had no choice but to exercise restraint. I think it's one of the best ideas our culture ever had, not to mention our best hope for preserving the full diversity of nonhuman life in a few functioning ecosystems. — Philip Connors

Most of us still believe in the intrinsic value of nature, but I think the first century of the environmental/conservation movement demonstrated pretty clearly that this value cannot compel a civilization-wide shift toward sustainable behavior and enterprise when stacked up against the urgent economic and social needs of 7 billion people, most of whom are struggling to get out of poverty. — Edward Norton

Musicians have made incredible contributions to the conservation and environmental movement and continue to do so, more than ever. — Paul Watson

Comrades, thank you for the warm welcome. I have been sent here to bring down the United States through its political system, no matter how long it takes. All of you will be with me along the way as we infiltrate every part of this society. We must include those who agree with us if we are to succeed, so we must recruit members of the Greens and the Democrats. The environmental movement will help us consolidate our power, and restrict these so-called freedoms the people in this country have had, by saying the Earth is threatened by everything we humans are doing. — Cliff Ball

Environmental movement sought to distance themselves from Leopold's "radical" suggestion that nature had an inherent value beyond its utility to man. If watersheds and old-growth forests had a "right to continued existence," as Leopold argued (a preview of the "rights of nature" debates that would emerge several decades later), then an owner's right to do what he wished with his land could be called into question. — Naomi Klein

Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbaninzation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. — Stewart Brand

Supporters of the [environmental] movement often appear to worship not the God of heaven, but the god of nature. This is a dangerous form of idolatry. Anytime animal life becomes more sacred in our view than human life, we have lost sight of our proper priorities. — Billy Graham

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

A fascinating challenge facing today's environmental movement is how to best approach the reversal of past decisions that altered once-pristine environmental spaces for the sake of urgent man-made needs. — Matt Gonzalez

environmental movement — Nicholson Baker

The women of the Green Belt Movement have learned about the causes and the symptoms of environmental degradation. They have begun to appreciate that they, rather than their government, ought to be the custodians of the environment. — Wangari Maathai

I always felt that if someone shot me, it would be great for the environmental movement, because they would make me a martyr. Our biggest fear was our children, because there was a tremendous amount of threat and intimidation, and my wife was terrified that the children might be grabbed or assaulted in some way. That was the real fear. — David Suzuki

In the 1940s and 1950s, the study of natural history
an intimate science predicated on the time-consuming collection and naming of life-forms
gave way to microbiology, theoretical and commercial. Much the same thing happened to the conservation movement, which shifted from local preservationists with soil on their shoes to environmental lawyers in Washington, D.C. — Richard Louv