Good Environmental Quotes & Sayings

By polluting clear water with slime you will never find good drinking water. — Aeschylus

We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do. — Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of Lodsworth

When it is good, this is a city of fantastic strength, sophistication and beauty. It is like no other city in time or place. Visitors and even natives rarely use the words urban character or environmental style, but that is what they are reacting to with awe in the presence of massed, concentrated, steel, stone, power and life. — Ada Louise Huxtable

Why does God bless us with abundance? So we can have enough to live on and then use the rest for all manner of good works that alleviate spiritual and physical misery. Enough for us; abundance for others. — John Piper

Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good. — Elon Musk

The Nile Project is the performing side of an effort that also includes education in music and environmental issues, raising awareness of the entire Nile basin as an ecosystem. With such vibrant music, the good intentions were a bonus; the Nile Project was a superb example of what I call small-world music, of what happens to traditions in the information age. — Jon Pareles

A review of the science suggests that uncertainty is so high as to raise a good prospect that mandatory green house gas reductions will produce little or no environmental benefit. — Kenneth P. Green

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

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

Parking's expensive, so I walk or ride my bike, which is good because my girlfriend's getting her PhD as an environmental engineer. — Chaz Bundick

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

To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish, a good guy or a bad guy. My conclusion is instead a prediction, based on what I have seen happening in the past. Businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn't want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses' environmental practices. — Jared Diamond

Environmental historians ... insist that we have got to go ... down to the earth itself as an agent and presence in history. Here we will discover even more fundamental forces at work over time. And to appreciate those forces we must now and then get out of parliamentary chambers, out of birthing rooms and factories, get out of doors altogether, and ramble into fields, woods, and the open air. It is time we bought a good set of walking shoes, and we cannot avoid getting some mud on them. — Donald Worster

Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature's ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast mono-cultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature's complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain. — Michael Pollan

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

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. Design is how you treat your customers. If you treat them well from an environmental, emotional, and aesthetic standpoint, you're probably doing good design. — Yves Behar

We find ourselves facing a rising tide of biologically active, synthetic organic chemicals. Some tinker with our hormones. Some attach themselves to our chromosomes and trigger mutations. Some cripple the immune system. Some light up our genes and so enhance the production of certain enzymes. If we could metabolize these chemicals into completely benign breakdown products and excrete them, they would pose less of a hazard. Instead, a good many of them accumulate. — Sandra Steingraber

Not all introductions worked well. Rabbits were an unmitigated environmental disaster. Unchecked by any natural predator, they bred at a staggering rate and chewed their way across vast areas of pastureland as well as any garden that came their way. Attempts to control them by introducing ferrets, weasels and stoats did much more harm than good. Although these predators probably killed a reasonable number of rabbits, they also devastated populations of kiwi and raided the nests of flighted birds. — Bee Dawson

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

There's a myth out there that you have to genuflect at the altar of quarterly earnings. But it's a false choice that you can either be a good fiduciary or promote values such as environmental sustainability. — Thomas Perez

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

The capitalist system only allows us to heap up waste. I would like to propose that the trillions of money earmarked for war should be channeled to make good the damage to the environment, to make reparations to the earth. — Evo Morales

The good news about fresh water is that, even after accounting for the larger volume of water that is unavailable to people from the hydrologic cycle, there is enough on a global scale to support current and anticipated populations on a sustainable basis ... Three essential goals are dependable and safe supplies for people, protection and management of the environmental systems through which water moves, and efficient water use. Meeting these goals will require that fresh water not continue to be treated as a free good or as the principal means for disposing of human and industrial wastes. — Gilbert F. White

The sharing of goods and resources, from which authentic development proceeds, is not guaranteed by merely technical progress and relationships of utility, but by the potential of love that overcomes evil with good. — Pope Benedict XVI

While it's good that we maintain high standards for companies seeking to claim environmental leadership, I can't help but ponder the hypocrisy of it all: how much more we expect of companies than of ourselves. — Joel Makower

I was in a store in Halifax, Nova Scotia that I love, sort of like an environmental friendly sort of store. But they had a great book section. So I went in there all the time. The woman who worked there - which I feel so bad; I've forgotten her name - she handed me the book and she said, "Hey, you should read this. I think it would make a good movie." I remember reading the back of it and I was like, "Huh." Then I just devoured the book and I was so moved by it and said, "Why don't we start developing this into a film?" So that's how it [Into the Forest] all started. — Ellen Page

I've always thought the main argument for organic was more environmental than a health argument. I just don't think spraying a lot of pesticides into the environment on a routine basis is a good thing. — John Mackey

I am concerned with social and environmental issues. What rational person is not? But advocacy and art do not mix. Art is a seduction. Good art invites the reader to think and feel deeply and come to his/her own conclusions. — T.C. Boyle

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

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

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you. — John Muir

But having biologists outside the Beltway remained a problem for the adminisration. "They found they couldn't control us," Williams said ... "That sort of thing just drove them up the wall. They were so used to saying 'do this,' and we'll just go away and do it. Never ask questions. The biologists had good connections with the press and national environmental group. "So eventually they said, 'Okay we're going to send you guys out to the hinterlands.'" The Regan administration began to dismantle the Endangered Species Office in D.C. Biologists have been working from regional offices ever since. — Joe Roman

Avoid participating in any religious community where the clear truth-claims of Scripture are ignored while contemplative and mystical practices are favored simply for their spiritual experience. Be careful of any church or ministry wherein acts of mercy and environmental stewardship are devoid of a theology of the cross and wind up being little more than the worship of created people and things. And be careful not to worship a good thing as a god thing for that is a bad thing. — Mark Driscoll

Good environmental policy is good economic policy. — Bernie Sanders

It has often been said that our environmental crisis is a crisis of perception. We do not readily see the patterns that would reveal our dependence on the natural world, nor are we commonly aware of the systems within which we are deeply embedded. Our attention, entrained on objects and focused on flat screens, is far removed from the dynamic and animated nonhuman world. We are as good as blind to the wonder at our feet or the daily spectacle of an ever-changing sky. — Laura Sewall

The natural environment is not particularly hospitable to human life ... the key to having a good environment is improving it through work ... Energy is fundamentally an environmental improver and if we classify it that way it makes sense out of a lot of these controversies ... It's our obligation and our right to make [our environment] as good for human beings as possible. With that view, it's very easy for people to understand precisely the reason it's good to alter it - because it doesn't naturally come the way we need it to be. — Alex Epstein

I am afraid that I think both the near future environmental reality and political landscape are not looking good - and they are connected. The best tool we have for advancing environmental solutions is our democracy, and we can't currently access it because it has been so thoroughly hijacked by big corporate interests. — Annie Leonard

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

I'm a fan of Tom's of Maine natural oral care line for those very reasons; they deliver on both healthy and environmental goodness. The beauty of it is you'll feel even more empowered knowing you're doing something good for yourself and the environmental footprint of your beauty routine. — Sophie Heyman Uliano

He looked from His heavens and saw it was good, the toes and the crows all looked like they should. The bunny was quick, the finch bright as a daisy, the owl flew at night, and the tortoise was lazy. — Lois Greiman

It is all very well for 2% of the population to live in a monastic state of meatlessness while everyone else gorges their way towards environmental meltdown or the nearest heart clinic. Vegetarianism is good for the willing minority, but not much use as a campaign tool. — Tristram Stuart

We can and should seize upon the energy crisis as a good excuse and great opportunity for making some very fundamental changes that we should be making anyhow for other reasons. — Russell E. Train

Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around. — Sylvia Earle

Cost-effective, attractive to business partners, environmentally friendly, easy access to a wide range of guidance and support - it makes good business sense to implement and maintain a robust and effective environmental management system — Elliot Morley

Forget your environmental footprint. Think about your ethical footprint. What good is it to build a zero-carbon, energy efficient complex, when the labor producing this architectural gem is unethical at best? — Cameron Sinclair

There's very good evidence that the average cat in Europe has a larger environmental footprint in its lifetime than the average African. — Jason W Clay

If men would understand and appreciate the good efforts that went into creation and how beautiful, good and awesome the creations were at the beginning, they would never think of undermining the Creators effort and integrity by destroying the beauty of nature! God is watching us! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Until now I believed that the nation which has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works. — George Monbiot

In a world where millions of human beings live in extreme poverty, die of malnutrition and lack medical care, where pandemics continue to kill, it is imperative to pursue good faith disarmament negotiations and to shift budgets away from weapons production, war-mongering, surveillance of private persons and devote available resources to address global challenges including humanitarian relief, environmental protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation, prevention of pandemics, and the development of a green economy. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

This is a timely and relevant initiative. The environmental challenges facing Singapore and the region are becoming more complex. Tackling them will require inter-disciplinary approaches combined with a good understanding of science, economics and governance aspects. The NUS Bachelor of Environment programme will fill a much needed gap in the current framework. NEA is pleased to be a partner to this programme. — Andrew Tan

Now, while watching these two mini-you's, I want you to see that as dysfunctional as they may be, both of them are essentially good. The Dictator wants you to be healthy and beautiful. It gets frantic about your weight for the same reason you might freak out if you saw a beloved pet wandering into traffic. It screams and yells, pens you in or drags you around - anything to keep you from a horrible fat fate. On the other hand, the Wild Child is the part of you that evolved to avoid starvation and captivity. It panics when the Dictator berates, shames, and tries to control it. It knows the Dictator is planning to starve it. So it's not surprising that the instant the Dictator is weakened by stress, hunger, or environmental chaos, the Wild Child leaps into action and eats like a junkyard dog. — Martha N. Beck

Politicians usually get the blame for dragging their feet on environmental issues. And fair enough. Most of them do just that. But the blame isn't theirs alone. For politicians afraid of losing votes, a bristling media waiting to transform good green ideas into monsters is a colossal disincentive. — Zac Goldsmith

I don't know anything about propaganda for Chinese reunification. I only know about charity and environmental work. I just want to do good. — Chen Guangbiao

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

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

So long as we are under the illusion that we know best what is good for the earth and for ourselves, then we will continue our present course, with its devastating consequences on the entire Earth community ... We need only listen to what the Earth is telling us ... the time has come when we will listen, or we will die. — Thomas Berry

A building that has great environmental responsibility is a political animal in a way because it becomes promotional of a cause. I think that kind of advocacy through architecture is really good. — Antoine Predock

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

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

But how we should care for other people remains a question. In his discussion of efforts to control childhood obesity, the philosopher Michael Merry defines paternalism as "interference with the liberty of another for the purposes of promoting some good or preventing some harm." This type of paternalism, he notes, is reflected in traffic laws, gun control, and environmental regulations. These are limits to liberty, even if they are benevolent. Interfering with the parenting of obese children, he argues, is not necessarily benevolent. There is risk in assigning risk. — Eula Biss

Environmental policies are not just about good publicity; they are about responding to the moral imperative to address both climate change and resource depletion ... A company culture that is based on measuring everything in purely financial terms will be crippled by a high turnover of staff, customers and suppliers — Toby Robins

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