John Ruskin an influential thinker who articulated the Romantic ideal of environmental protection and conservation.

Environmentalism is a concern for the preservation, restoration, or improvement of the natural environment, such as the conservation of natural resources, prevention of pollution, and certain land use actions.

Quotes

  • The one factor that you can’t find on a spreadsheet is the willingness of the people in government to lead change, And in Denmark every single one of them is engaged and willing to do whatever it takes to get Denmark to be a leader in electric vehicles.
  • Babies are the enemies of the human race. . . . Let's consider it this way: by the time the world doubles its population, the amount of energy we will be using will be increased sevenfold which means probably the amount of pollution that we are producing will also be increased sevenfold. If we are now threatened by pollution at the present rate, how will we be threatened with sevenfold pollution by, say, 2010 A.D., distributed among twice the population? We'll be having to grow twice the food out of soil that is being poisoned at seven times the rate.
    • Isaac Asimov on Overpopulation, as quoted in Isaac Asimov (Writers of the 21st Century), (1977), Joseph D. Olander (Author, Editor), Martin Harry Greenberg (Editor) Taplinger Pub. Co. ISBN 080084257X ISBN 9780800842574 p. 165.
  • All our efforts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated.
    • Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, "In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all", 2005 report for the United Nations sixtieth anniversary summit
  • Every American expects and deserves clean air, and then we act on that belief, then we will set an example for the rest of the world to follow.
    • George H. W. Bush, from "Remarks Announcing Proposed Legislation to Amend the Clean Air Act", June 12, 1989[specific citation needed]
  • In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.
    • Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, 1971
  • We're so self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I'm tired of this shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day. I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.
    The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn't going anywhere. WE are!
    We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
    The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?"
    "Plastic... asshole."
  • It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.
  • "The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."
  • I want to make it clear, if there is ever a conflict (between environmental quality and economic growth), I will go for beauty, clean air, water, and landscape.
    • Jimmy Carter, quoted in the New York Times, September 19, 1976
  • We will look upon the earth and her sister planets as being with us, not for us.
  • I've often thought that if our zoning boards could be put in charge of botanists, of zoologists and geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.
    • William O. Douglas, remarks at conference sponsored by the American Histadrut Cultural Exchange Institute, Harriman, New York (February 17–19, 1967); reported in Judd L. Teller, ed., Government and the Democratic Process; A Symposium by American and Israeli Experts (1969), p. 16.
  • The weight of our civilization has become so great, it now ranks as a global force and a significant wild card in the human future along with the Ice Ages and other vicissitudes of a volatile and changeable planetary system
    • Dianne Dumanoski, Rethinking Environmentalism, December 13, 1998
  • Humanity is on the march, earth itself is left behind.
    • David Ehrenfeld, The Arrogance of Humanism, 1978
  • Sanctimonious slogans have a way of lulling well-meaning people, and at the same time providing self-seekers with means to frustrate the very controls that are most needed. Take, for example, a report entitled, “The Engineer’s Responsibility in Environmental Pollution Control,” submitted in 1971 to the government’s Council of Environmental Quality by the National Industrial Pollution Control Council. The report is an amorphous collection of noble generalities. It conjures up a vision of a crusading army of engineers, thousands abreast, marching in unison. The banner of this army is “cooperation.” Its mission is to “coordinate,” “unify,” “interact,” “centralize efforts,” and “pool resources.” Its weapons are “shared objectives,” “common goals,” “interdisciplinary concepts and techniques.” The cloud of pieties serves, not to enlighten, but to obscure the real truth, which is that environmental pollution control can never be achieved by the worthy sentiments of industrial spokesmen, but only by government regulation.
    • Samuel Florman, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (1976), p. 27
  • When the well's dry, we know the worth of water.
  • Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.
  • And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
    • Genesis 1:28 KJV
  • While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.
    • Thomas Jefferson; quoted in the Des Moines Register, July 8, 1979[specific citation needed]
  • The creator is angry. Everyone is going to be sorry for what they have done. A day of reckoning is coming. And it's going to be for everyone on the planet. It will make no distinction for religion or creed. Something is going to happen.
    • Chief Al Lameman, Alberta Cree. He is commenting here on the effects of oil extraction from the opencast tar-sand mines of the forests of Alberta, Canada. From, 'Armageddon', an article in the Mail on Sunday magazine, June 10 2012. Report by Jonathan Green.
  • We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
  • The Environmental movement is, you might say, a movement of repressed Romantics.
    • Charles E. Little, A Town Is Saved, 1973
  • Our environment can best be preserved and enhanced by better protection of property rights in a free-market economy.
    Private individuals—not socialist governments—are the best stewards of the environment.
    China and the old Soviet bloc proved that point once and for all.
  • Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away.
    • Stephanie Mills ed., In Praise of Nature, 1990
  • Even when the pioneer didn't rape Nature, he divorced her a little too easily: he missed the great lesson that both ecology and medicine teach - that Man's great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.
    • Lewis Mumford, "California and the Human Prospect", Sierra Club Bulletin, vol. 47, no. 9, 1962, pp. 45-6.
  • We do not have to adapt to the environment. We will change the environment to suit us.
  • We still have too much air and water pollution and we still need to work to reduce it. But we also need to put the problem of pollution into a historical as well as scientific perspective...
    • Ronald Reagan, quoted in Charles D. Hobbs' Ronald Reagan's Call to Action
  • A very small event in the microbial community can have an enormous impact on the environment.
  • [Daniel Rothman]
  • We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
  • The Truly Healthy environment is not merely safe but stimulating.
  • Modern materialist thinking which is linear and which holds that everything is for man's use and manipulation is losing credit. Man is being forced to define his attitude towards elements like the earth, the waters, the air, the sky, the rivers. Are they dead? Or, living? Are they strangers? Or, close relatives - father, mother, brothers, sisters, and friends? Are the oceans, the atmosphere merely great sinks, huge waste-dumps? Are the minerals, the plants, the great animal sister-creation there just for human exploitation? Have they no life and rights of their own. Sanatana dharma takes the view that they have their own rights and we have duties towards them. It says that we should cherish them and live in togetherness. If we violate this law and continue to injure them, we create karmas that will strike back in ways we can hardly imagine.
    • Ram Swarup (2000). On Hinduism: Reviews and reflections. Ch. 1.
  • The Materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.
    • Daniel Webster, (1782-1852) remarks in the US Senate, March 12, 1838[specific citation needed]
  • It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)

  • You could cover the whole world with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through.
    • Attributed to Ilya Ehrenburg; reported in The New York Times Book Review (October 22, 1967), p. 1. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). Patricia Blake, author of the book review, obtained this quotation from the late Max Hayward, who may have gotten it directly from Ehrenburg.
  • We have come tardily to the tremendous task of cleaning up our environment. We should have moved with similar zeal at least a decade ago. But no purpose is served by post-mortems. With visionary zeal but the greatest realism, we must now address ourselves to the vast problems that confront us.
    • Gerald R. Ford, Earth Day address, Grand Rapids, Michigan (April 22, 1970); in Michael V. Doyle, ed., Gerald R. Ford, Selected Speeches (1973), p. 84.
  • In the last few decades entire new categories of waste have come to plague and menace the American scene…. Pollution is growing at a rapid rate…. Pollution destroys beauty and menaces health. It cuts down on efficiency, reduces property values and raises taxes…. Almost all these wastes and pollutions are the result of activities carried on for the benefit of man. A prime national goal must be an environment that is pleasing to the senses and healthy to live in. Our Government is already doing much in this field. We have made significant progress. But more must be done.
    • Lyndon B. Johnson, special message to the Congress on conservation and restoration of natural beauty, February 8, 1965. The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, book 1, p. 161–62.
  • Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world—or to make it the last.
    • John F. Kennedy, address before the General Assembly of the United Nations, New York City, September 20, 1963. The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963, p. 696.
  • The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.

See also

Wikibooks
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