Quotes & Sayings About Sustainability Environment

These steel monstrosities screamed night and day, blotted out the starlit skies and Northern Lights with flashing red strobes, slaughtered thousands of bats and entire flocks of birds banished tourism and wildlife, made people sick and drove them from their now-valueless homes. — Mike Bond

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. — Robert Lynd

Many of our partners are here and this is where the world's expertise on environment and the wider sustainability agenda often and regularly gathers. Here is where international initiatives frequently start and are nurtured. Geneva is one of the hubs where global programs can be often most effectively managed. — Achim Steiner

Since stepping down as laboratory director in 1999, I have devoted an increasing fraction of my time to international issues. I am involved with energy, environment, and sustainability issues, particularly as they involve new energy sources free of greenhouse gases. — Burton Richter

The aquatic environment must be safeguarded by men. God created mankind to care for the environment and all the living resources. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Sustainability is growth based on forms and processes of development that do not undermine the integrity of the environment on which they depend — Jim MacNeill

If we each take responsibility in shifting our own behavior, we can trigger the type of change that is necessary to achieve sustainability for our race or this planet. We change our planet, our environment, our humanity every day, every year, every decade, and every millennia. — Yehuda Berg

One buzzphrase that arose was 'sustainable development', which was used in two very different senses by opposing groups, because it left vague by what metric sustainability might be measured. Environmental groups meant by 'sustainability' a holistic approach by which life as we know it might be sustained. Scientists talked about 'sustainable cities' to mean cities that would not be destroyed by flooding in the wake of global warming. But to others, 'sustainable' meant a financial approach by which the oil industry as we know it might be sustained: sustainability was the minimum amount of environmental care that was affordable by those whose activities harmed the environment. — Steven Poole

Sustainability is an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations. It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule for the restorative economy: Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do. — Paul Hawken

Recycling is better--I won't write "good"--for the environment. But without economics--without supply and demand of raw materials--recycling is nothing more than a meaningless exercise in glorifying garbage. No doubt it's better than throwing something into an incinerator, and worse than fixing something that can be refurbished. It's what you do if you can't bear to see something landfilled. Placing a box or a can or a bottle in a recycling bin doesn't mean you've recycled anything, and it doesn't make you a better, greener person: it just means you've outsourced your problem. Sometimes that outsourcing is near home; and sometimes it's overseas. But wherever it goes, the global market and demand for raw materials is the ultimate arbiter.

Fortunately, if that realization leaves you feeling bad, there's always the alternative: stop buying so much crap in the first place. (269) — Adam Minter

The only technology that helps to create a plethora of business and employment opportunity while promoting the green environment, is serving good for the society and, therefore, the sustainability. — Anuj

People 'over-produce' pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it. — Ha-Joon Chang

Sustainability is treating ourselves and our environment as if we are to live on this earth forever. — Arron Wood

Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment. — Craig Venter

In terms of sustainability and what we eat and what its footprint is on the environment and the consequences of eating one thing versus another, obviously it makes a lot of sense to be eating insects. They're incredibly plentiful. They've got a very short turnover rate. You could be eating termites. — Mary Roach

The idea of sustainability can imply there is one perfect, unchanging future, if only we could work out how to get there. Resilience might be more useful, in that it assumes a dynamic environment and that perfection is impossible. You need to design systems to accommodate failure rather than eliminate it. By trying to be perfect, many visions of sustainability are quite brittle — Jamais Cascio

Genomic science, as the newest frontier in scholarly research, is throwing open the door to a revolutionary way of approaching our health, the health and welfare of animals, and the sustainability of our environment. — John Sharp

I think that when you start your own business you have to be very clear on what you're passionate about and what your values are. I was very passionate about travel and I wanted to inspire other people. At the same time, I knew if I was going to start my own business, it was going to have to mirror my values, and I knew I was passionate about the environment and about sustainability. — Omar Samra

Sustainability: It's the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do, it's the profitable thing to do. — Hunter Lovins

If you can't reuse or repair an item, do you ever really own it? Do you ever really own it? Do you ever develop the sense of pride and proprietorship that comes from maintaining an object in fine working order?
We invest something of ourselves in our material world, which in turn reflects who we are. In the era of disposability that plastic has helped us foster, we have increasingly invested ourselves in objects that have no real meaning in our lives. We think of disposable lighters as conveniences
which they indisputably are; ask any smoker or backyard-barbecue chef
and yet we don't think much about the tradeoffs that that convenience entails. — Susan Freinkel

We are such spendthrifts with our lives, the trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I'm not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out. — Paul Newman

Everything we think about regarding sustainability - from energy to agriculture to manufacturing to population - has a water footprint. Almost all of the water on Earth is salt water, and the remaining freshwater supplies are split between agricultural use and human use - as well as maintaining the existing natural environment. — Jamais Cascio

From a business perspective, the question related to cities and sustainability is clear and compelling: can you have a healthy company in an unhealthy city? Arguably, no. Companies need healthy cities to provide reliable infrastructure, an educated and vital workforce, a vibrant economy, and a safe and secure environment to survive and thrive. Business executives have a lot to learn from cities, and a lot to contribute, and this book shows the way, chronicling the successes and the lessons learned about what it takes to make a city healthy, in every sense of the word. — Joel Makower

To achieve true sustainability, we must reduce our "garbage index" - that which we permanently throw away into the environment that will not be naturally recycled for reuse - to near zero. Productive activities must be organized as closed systems. Minerals and other nonbiodegradable resources, once taken from the ground, must become a part of society's permanent capital stock and be recycled in perpetuity. Organic materials may be disposed into the natural ecosystems, but only in ways that assure that they are absorbed back into the natural production system. — David Korten

The idea of unlimited growth... needs to be seriously questioned on at least two counts: the availability of basic resources and... the capacity of the environment to cope with the degree of interference implied. - E.F. Schumacher — Wayne Ellwood

You maybe able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere. — Donella H. Meadows

Placing economic activity in the context of the whole earth requires attention to the question of scale. Bigger is obviously not better, so the optimum scale of human economy in relation to the total economy becomes basically a question of sustainability. When the effects of the economy on the environment undercut the possibility of its own continuance, the scale is too large. — John B. Cobb

In life there are many thing's you may not like or want but is necessary for stability and sustainability for life and its environment. GOOD - BAD, BAD - GOOD = GOOD = BAD. — Anonymouse

Nature is inexhaustibly sustainable if we care for it. It is our universal responsibility to pass a healthy earth onto future generations. — Sylvia Dolson

This heated (environmental) debate is fundamentally about numbers. How much energy could each source deliver, at what economic and social cost, and with what risks? But actual numbers are rarely mentioned. In public debates, people just say "Nuclear is a money pit" or "We have a huge amount of wave and wind." The trouble with this sort of language is that it's not sufficient to know that something is huge: we need to know how the one "huge" compares with another "huge," namely our huge energy consumption. To make this comparison, we need numbers, not adjectives. — David Mackay

I used to think that my job didn't have anything to do with the environment. Then I realized that my job, as well as everyone else's job, impacts the environment in some way. And now advocating for sustainability has become my No. 1 responsibility. — Ray Anderson

Sara Scherr and Jeff McNeely have given us a thoughtful, sensible book about a topic of great importance to the world. There is no food security, no poverty reduction, no environmental sustainability without transforming our agricultural practices. The book ?presents well documented cases of best practices from all over the world. It should be required reading for all concerned with agriculture, the environment, food security or just the future of our children. — Ismail Serageldin

After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital. — Maurice Strong

To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I
or does anyone else
have to destroy them.
At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world? — Derrick Jensen

There can be no question about whether we should or should not transform our society in the direction of sustainability. — Alan AtKisson

I live in one of the best places, bar none, to appreciate the wild natural environment. I also live in one of the most politically difficult places to work on its behalf: Alaska. — Kate Troll