Quotes & Sayings About Environmentalists

From the very beginning, "witch" has been a synonym for "the Other." Witches are women when the cultural norm is male; they are pagan when the cultural norm is Christian; they are spiritual when the cultural norm is materialist; they become a religion as the cultural norm turns secular; they are healers when anxiety about the medical establishment is an issue; they are environmentalists when big business has bought the government; they are magic in the world of science. — Leslie Ellen Jones

I think there's a little more attention to human needs than to property rights. But I don't think much of political activism. It's so shortsighted. Most people are interested in their own personal comfort. I've said that about environmentalists. I think they care about bike paths and places to park their Volvos, not the planet as an abstraction. — George Carlin

The promises of pie-in-the-sky liberal environmentalists that we can convert to 'clean' energy sources and stimulate our economy are based on dubious environmental and economic assumptions, fantastic notions about alternative energy, and a disturbing acceptance of the tyrannies inherent in command-control economies. — David Limbaugh

McMansions in sprawling suburbs, without mountains of unnecessary packaging, without giant mechanized monofarms, without energy-hogging big-box stores, without electronic billboards, without endless piles of throwaway junk, without the overconsumption of consumer goods no one really needs is not an impoverished world. I disagree with those environmentalists who say we are going to have to make do with less. In fact, we are going to make do with more: more beauty, more community, more fulfillment, more art, more music, and material objects that are fewer in number but superior in utility and aesthetics. The cheap stuff that fills our lives today, however great its quantity, can only cheapen life. — Charles Eisenstein

I stopped avoiding the articles and the scientific studies and read everything I could find. I also stopped outsourcing the problem to the environmentalists, stopped telling myself this was somebody else's issue, somebody else's job. — Naomi Klein

Environmentalists changed the word jungle to rain forest, because no one would give them money to save a jungle. Same with swamps and wetlands. — George Carlin

Suddenly the land is haunted by all these dead Indians. There is this new fascination with the Southwest, with places like Santa Fe, New Mexico, where people come down from New York and Boston and dress up as Indians. When I go to Santa Fe, I find real Indians living there, but they are not involved in the earth worship that the American environmentalists are so taken by. Many of these Indians are interested, rather, in becoming Evangelical Christians. — Richard Rodriguez

Environmentalists have been outspoken in their support of smaller family size and abortion rights as keys to reducing global warming. But when it comes to immigration, the single biggest contributor to population growth in the industrial world, they stand largely silent. — Gary Bauer

The images of Earth's delicate biosphere, contrasting with the sterile moonscape where the astronauts left their footsteps, have become iconic for environmentalists: these may indeed be the Apollo programme's most enduring legacy. — Martin Rees

The environmental agenda seems swept under the rug a lot, and environmentalists are looked at as tree-huggers who aren't dealing with the real issues when in fact someone needs to be keeping an eye on how we're treating the planet. When politicians bring up the environment, they're immediately labeled as being anti-business. But for the sake of the planet on which we live, we need to take the environment into account. — Rachel Dratch

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming. — Garrett Hardin

Ecologically speaking, a spilt tanker load is like sticking a safety pin into an elephant's foot. The planet barely notices. After the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska the oil company spent billions tidying up the coastline, but it was a waste of money because the waves were cleaning up faster than Exxon could. Environmentalists can never accept the planet's ability to self-heal. — Jeremy Clarkson

The environmental effects of the automobile are well known: motor vehicles cause, for example, as much as 75 percent of the noise and 80 percent of the air pollution in our cities, and the industry must face mounting pressure from environmentalists. — Stewart Udall

There's been progress toward seeing that nature and culture are not opposing terms, and that wilderness is not the only kind of landscape for environmentalists to concern themselves with. — Michael Pollan

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

The AIDS epidemic, rather than being a scourge, is a welcome development in the inevitable reduction of human population ... If it didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent it. — David Foreman

They sense that there's a majority out there and that the emotions are all on the other side-if they can be heard. They think the politicians are going to yield to the emotions. I think the corporations are wrong about that. I think the companies will have to give in only at insignificant levels. Because the companies are too strong, they're the establishment. The environmentalists are going to have to be like the mob in the square in Romania before they prevail. — Louis O. Kelso

Corporate polluters, their phony think tanks and political toadies like to marginalize environmentalists as tree huggers, or radicals. But there is nothing radical about clean air or water. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The airline business is it is mostly run by a bunch of spineless nincompoops who actually don't want to stand up to the environmentalists and call them the lying wankers that they are. — Michael O'Leary

That whole thing has been overstated by environmentalists. First of all, what is it, rocks and snow? C'mon, what is that, you want that? Go to Canada my friend. Believe me, rocks and snow are overrated. I've seen otters - they look better covered in oil. — Jon Stewart

Environmentalists have a very conflicted relationship with their cars. — Tom Arnold

....in 1991 we coauthored the Hannover Principles, design guidelines for the 2000 World's Fair that were issued at the World Urban Forum of the Earth Summit in 1992. Foremost among them was "Eliminate the concept of waste" - not reduce, minimize, or avoid waste, as environmentalists were then propounding, but eliminate the very concept, by design — Michael Braungart

....Environmentalists try to preserve these ecosystems through political action. Yet no law will succeed in preserving something that people know only from a distance or do not understand at close range. — Richard Rabkin

I think that environmentalists have been terribly misunderstood over the years. I believe that anyone that cares about the earth is an environmentalist. People that make a decision to not throw garbage out on the street because they consider the possible impacts. That's environmentalism in its most basic form. — Jerome Ringo

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

To ensure the survival of Payoh, we must first understand the reason for its existence in the first place. If you think Payoh exists because of us, the resident birds, you're wrong. This may surprise you, but this sanctuary is really meant for the migrants from the north who make it their winter feeding ground. And, if you believe that the greedy local authorities give a hoot about our friends from the north, you couldn't be more mistaken. The truth is that they are pressured by powerful international environmentalists. — Jim Tan

If the human species, or indeed any part of the biosphere, is to continue to survive, it must eventually leave the Earth and colonize space. For the simple fact of the matter is, the planet Earth is doomed ... Let us follow many environmentalists and regard the Earth as Gaia, the mother of all life (which indeed she is). Gaia, like all mothers, is not immortal. She is going to die. But her line of descent might be immortal ... Gaia's children might never die out-provided they move into space. The Earth should be regarded as the womb of life-but one cannot remain in the womb forever. — Frank J. Tipler

Mankind is considered (by the radical environmentalists) the lowest and the meanest of all species and is blamed for everything. — Dixie Lee Ray

There is a new wave of environmental consumers I like to call Pocketbook Environmentalists. They're going green primarily because it makes good financial sense, but the fact that it benefits their families' health and the environment also makes them feel good. — Lynn Jurich

Despite one or two minority appeals our society is not outraged at man's unremitting use of the animal world. Ecologists and environmentalists may talk of "ecological consciousness" or "environmental responsibility" but seldom, if ever, is this responsibility articulated towards other non-human species in particular. — Andrew Linzey

For all of the hurtling towards climate change, there's also a lot more understanding of it than there was when we were kids. They don't call environmentalists tree huggers any more, so there's hope! — Ewan McGregor

I don't understand "animal people" who say they are not environmentalists. Do they not realize that the vast majority of animals live in the environment? — Karen Dawn

If (environmentalists) want to continue to beat those drums to solicit money from concerned soccer moms, they can do that. The reality on the ground is things are better as a result of Gale Norton's tenure. — Christopher West

Marx called Darwin a plagiarist and Malthus a fraud. Now all Marxists are Malthusian Darwinists. — A.E. Samaan

The philosophy that I have worked under most of my life is that the serious study of natural history is an activity which has far-reaching effects in every aspect of a person's life. It ultimately makes people protective of the environment in a very committed way. It is my opinion that the study of natural history should be the primary avenue for creating environmentalists. — Roger Tory Peterson

What you don't hear from these GOP candidates is that they really can't go after this president on domestic production of oil and gas. He's actually done quite a lot. In fact, I would suspect they're environmentalists who are worried that we're doing too much drilling and fracking, in fact. I know that for a fact. — Jared Bernstein

Environmentalists generally object to battery-powered devices and for good reason: batteries require mined minerals, employ manufacturing processes that leak toxins into local ecosystems and leave behind an even-worse trail of side effects upon disposal. Though when it comes to the largest mass-produced battery-powered gadget ever created - the electric car - environmentalists cannot jump from their seats fast enough to applaud it. — Ozzie Zehner

Benign environmentalists are opposed to pollution, as all sensible people are; malign environmentalists are opposed to energy and most of what it enables. — Kevin D. Williamson

I get mad at the New York-based environmentalists because if you were truly environmentalists you wouldn't have a storm surge system and a sanitary system hooked together here that requires you to close your beaches 10 times a year. — Aubrey McClendon

Admittedly, I possess virtually no expertise in science. That puts me in exactly the same position as most dogmatic environmentalists who want to craft public policy around global warming fears. — David Harsanyi

Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists. — David Brin

The movie industry would never purposely offend homosexuals, native Americans, environmentalists, animal rights activists, or women's groups, but they don't think twice about something that might offend Christians. — Tim LaHaye

For Pocketbook Environmentalists, financial savings are the primary motivator. However Pocketbook Environmentalists are changing the face of the market and the planet for the better by demanding that going green saves you money. — Lynn Jurich

Environmentalists blame the farmers for overdosing with pesticides, and the farmers blame the consumers for demanding blemish-free fruit. — William Alexander

Environmentalists and secular humanists insist that humans will destroy the planet. Corporate capitalists and many religious fundamentalists have no regard for wildlife and nature. Ultimately, this dualistic battle is based on false premises. In fact, this planet is more powerful than the human species. — Zeena Schreck

This disaster was caused by environmentalists charged with protecting the wilderness, who made one dreadful mistake after another - and, along the way, proved how little they understood the environment they intended to protect. — Michael Crichton

The unmistakable lesson is that such is the myopic zealotry of environmentalists like Obama that they would implement policies virtually guaranteed to harm our economy significantly, even when they offer no promise of appreciable environmental benefits. — David Limbaugh

It's time to face facts: Most people stop being environmentalists when they sit down to eat. — Ingrid Newkirk

To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing. Attempts to 'green' capitalism, to make it 'ecological', are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth. — Murray Bookchin

The revolutionary environmentalists twist science to get what they want, saying they're using the "best available science" to determine public policy, when in fact these are code words for cherry picking from a repertoire of biased science studies. Arguing with the Greenies' faulty science is like shouting into the wind, because they will disregard or minimize evidence that disputes any position they are trying to assert. Your points will be ignored, and you will be demonized. — Brian Herbert

The emotional pattern seems to be something like, "[Karl] Polanyi, a person of the left like me, says many true things, beautifully. Therefore his tales about what happened in economic history must be true." Marx before him got similar treatment. Lately the more eloquent of the environmentalists, such as Wendell Berry, get it too. People want to believe that beauty is truth. A supporting emotional frame on the left arises from the very idea of historical progress: "We must be able to do so much better than this wretched capitalism." It is not true, but it motivates. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

The responses that environmentalists evoke - fear, anxiety, numbness, despair - are not helpful, even if they are understandable. It should be fascinating, even enthralling, to be in the milieu of environmental change. — Paul Hawken

The biophilia hypothesis is not your run-of-the-mill Berkeley/Al Gore/Eat Your Spinach environmentalism. It does not appeal directly to our sense of stewardship or responsibility. It appeals to a much more base, and common, human proclivity: selfishness. It says, in effect, protect the environment because it will make you happy. For a country like the United States, with the word "happiness" in its founding document, you'd think environmentalists would have latched on to biophilia a long time ago. — Eric Weiner

the Precautionary Principle, a favorite tool of environmentalists to bypass the need for facts as the basis of decision-making. — Tim Ball

On a grander scale, when a society segregates itself, the consequences affect the economy, the emotions, and the ecology. That's one reason why it's easy for pro-lifers to eat factory-raised animals that disrespect everything sacred about creation. And that is why it's easy for rabid environmentalists to hate chainsaws even though they snuggle into a mattress supported by a black walnut bedstead. — Joel Salatin

To end any sort of conflict, environmentalists as a whole, should cut off their legs so they don't leave any kind of footprint — Josh Stern

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

Environmentalists believe that monolithic solutions - be they in the auto, nuclear, or genetics field - are doomed to fail and lead only along the path to dependence. They feel rather that it is far more sensible to approach the future by opening up more possibilities. Likewise, polyamorists believe that monogamy sterilizes love and fosters unhealthy codependence, whereas multiple relationships feed off of each other's differences and ultimately lead to an enriching fulfillment. — Francoise Simpere

I drove an electric car for seven years because of its advanced technology, not because I have any concerns about energy resources. I have none at all. And when environmentalists say that global warming is dangerous, unprecedented and that we'll have a tipping point for atmospheric carbon dioxide, it's just nonsense. — Burt Rutan

Mountain biking helps people become environmentalists. A mountain bike is a vehicle to appreciate the backcountry. — Ned Overend

I believe strongly that we need to get beyond rhetoric, beyond industry and environmentalists fighting with each other, and seriously solve problems. — Gale Norton

I know they are all environmentalists. I heard a lot of my speeches recycled. — Jesse Jackson

Environmentalists should like fracking for its relative cleanliness. But they don't. They have made a bugaboo out of the chemicals in fracking fluids, which supposedly can leach into groundwater sources. I'm convinced they're dead wrong. Ultimately, good technology with a cost advantage will win out over paranoia. — Kenneth Fisher

Like environmentalists, politicians generally privilege flora and fauna over folks. — Ilana Mercer

We want to annoy the whenever we can. The best thing we can do with environmentalists is shoot them. — Michael O'Leary

Berta Caceres was a Lenca Indian activist well-known in her country, shot in her home. She was not only known in Honduras, she was one of the world's best-known environmentalists and had recently opposed plans for a dam on a river considered sacred by the Lenca. Honduran police have said they are investigating the murder as a botched robbery, but many of her colleagues believe Caceres was targeted. — Renee Montagne

At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we were to create and preserve a less violent world. 1) Every culture must begin to affirm the female future. 2) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. 3) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race. — Sally Miller Gearhart

Genetically modified organism (GMO) foods are feared and hated by environmentalists and the public alike. Yet the scientific assessment of GMOs is remarkably different. Every major scientific evaluation of GMO technology has concluded that GMOs are safe for human consumption and are a benefit to the environment. — Ramez Naam

A book came out recently written by scientists and environmentalists that made me so angry. It said the only thing we have to worry about is big industry. Each individual who tries to make his or her own environment better is useless. I find this criminal, because then you have a billion people all saying, It doesn't matter what I do because I'm just one person. But if you turn that around and a billion people say, What I do does make a difference, then it will make a difference. — Jane Goodall

Some environmentalists have had the feeling that Indians are not good stewards. I've always been critical of that. — Stewart Udall

The Mexican gray wolves are actually responsible for the spark of legendary environmentalists Aldo Leopold and Ernest Seton. In both cases, the men found their lives and souls forever changed after they killed Mexican gray wolves. — Joy Covey

One of the reasons that people, many people, many environmentalists are critical of President [Barack] Obama's policies towards global warming is on the one hand he says the right things and he says he's committed to trying to reduce our current emissions. — Elizabeth Kolbert

Environmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat Party. I'm proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans. — Don Young

Jack smiled. There're two kinds of environmentalists, Ella. The kind who hugs trees and thinks a single-cell amoeba is as important as a Nova Scotian elk ... and then there's my kind, which thinks of regulated hunting as part of responsible wildlife management. And since I like to be out in nature as much as possible, I'm against pollution, overfishing, global warming, deforestation, or anything else that messes with my stomping grounds. — Lisa Kleypas

So often, environmentalists and others working to slow the destruction are capable of plainly describing the problems (Who wouldn't be? The problems are neither subtle nor cognitively challenging), yet when faced with the emotionally daunting task of fashioning a response to these clear and clearly insoluble problems, we generally suffer a failure of nerve and imagination. Gandhi wrote a letter to Hitler asking him to stop committing atrocities, and was mystified that it didn't work. I continue to write letters to the editor pointing out untruths, and continue to be surprised each time the newspaper publishes its next absurdity. At least I've stopped writing to politicians. — Derrick Jensen

As Siri walked along that oh-so-noisy riverbank on his way to work, he saw a pelican gliding above the surface of the water. It was a marvelous bird, proud and resourceful, and he imagined how it would taste with a little chili paste and fresh yams. Hungry people made poor environmentalists. — Colin Cotterill

the economic pain gripping the United States will not actually be the fault of immigrants - or China, Muslims, environmentalists, or even terrorists. Nor is the essential problem Big Government: As we have seen, the desperate effort to inflate government spending and power is more of an effect than a cause of the nation's predicament. — Richard Heinberg

I feel that working environmentalists are, in the main, happier than armchair environmentalists. — Jonathan Franzen

Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city's drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city's waterways pose serious health risks. — Charles Duhigg

It's incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists getting together to stop the corporate mentality that destroys both jobs and the environment. — Bonnie Raitt

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

Among environmentalists sharing two or three beers, the notion is quite common that if only some calamity could wipe out the entire human race, other species might once again have a chance. — Richard Conniff

When facing the public, politicians constantly filter their ideas through a political sieve. 'How will this affect the environmentalists, labor, management?' Sometimes the sieve gets so clogged by political taboos that no new ideas pass through. — Madeleine M. Kunin

The Democratic Party is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, government employees, big city political machines, the coercive utopians, the radical environmentalists, feminists, and others who want to restructure society with tax dollars and government fiat. — Grover Norquist

Sand did not suddenly come into being because we had need for glass and silicone. Neither did wild flowers suddenly spring up because a bunch of environmentalists in Texas wanted alternative ways of helping the world without dumping more chemicals into it - these things were already there. — Stephen Richards

Environmentalists, by and large, are very deeply invested in tactics that have worked to their satisfaction over the last thirty years, namely scaring and shaming people ... I am questioning whether you can go on doing that indefinitely ... [pushing] that same fear-guilt button over and over again. As psychologists will tell you, when a client comes in with an addiction, they are already ashamed. You don't shame them further. — Theodore Roszak

God then makes people whom he puts right in the middle of all this loaded creation. Commanding them to care for creation, to manage it, to lovingly use it, to creatively order it ... They are environmentalists. Being deeply connected with their environment is who they are. For them to be anything else or to deny their divine responsibility to care for all that God has made would be to deny something that is at the core of their existence. This is why litter and pollution are spiritual issues. — Rob Bell

First of all, the idea that natural gas is better than coal is a lie, especially when it comes to fracking for natural gas. It is a lie that was bought into by a lot of Democrats and a lot of environmentalists because I think they wanted to have a win against something; against coal. — Josh Fox

At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been visionary in his efforts to preserve this country's wild and scenic areas, both in film and on Earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature's monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans. — Ansel Adams

Teddy Roosevelt is still a hero among environmentalists for his conservationist policies. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Our forests are not for toilet paper. They are worth more standing than cut. That deserves to be defended, not only by native peoples but also by environmentalists. — Winona LaDuke

Ever since I've been in Congress, various groups on the business side, those entities that are creating jobs out there, have felt that the Clean Air Act is really - that there are all sorts of presumptions in favor of the environmentalists. — Ed Whitfield

People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience ... but we'd be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives ... because we didn't like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution? — Rebecca McNutt

I think an erotics of place may be one of the reasons why environmentalists are seen as subversive. There is a backlash now: ... [ellipsis in source] take all the regulations away; weaken existing legislation; the endangered species act is too severe, too restrictive; let there be carte blanche for real-estate developers. Because if we really have to confront wildness, solitude, and serenity, both the fierceness and compassionate nature of the land, then we ultimately have to confront it in ourselves, and it's easier to be numb, to be distracted, to be disengaged. — Terry Tempest Williams

Every concerned citizen and policy maker should read this book. The environmentalists will hate it. The world's destitute masses will love it. And everyone will be challenged by it to reexamine their beliefs and the environmental establishment's claims. — Niger Innis

Today is Earth Day. Environmentalists spent the day drawing attention to the Earth, while the Earth just spent the day checking Facebook to see which planets wished it a happy Earth Day. — Jimmy Fallon

In fact, because of their connection to the land, farmers do more to protect and preserve our environment than almost anyone else. They are some of the best environmentalists around. — Ike Skelton

At the very time that Congress is considering a Bush administration request to equip our troops in Iraq with vehicles that are more resistant to roadside bombs, its leadership is fighting for a proposal that would have the opposite effect on roads here at home: a measure sought by environmentalists that would force automakers to make vehicles sold domestically much lighter and, thus, more vulnerable in collisions. — Deneen Borelli

Environmentalists hate sprawl - except when it comes to the size of their expansive pet legislation on Capitol Hill. — Michelle Malkin

Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful. — B.F. Skinner