Quotes About Ecology

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.

My greatest hope is that we transcend the most fearful thing, which is that we are rapidly degrading the ecological systems on this planet that support everything we are doing and all life on it.

Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.

The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don't need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change…. But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months.

Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself. No one wished it so, but we are the first species to become a geophysical force, altering Earth's climate, a role previously reserved for tectonics, sun flares, and glacial cycles.

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

I will argue that every scrap of biological diversity is priceless, to be learned and cherished, and never to be surrendered without a struggle.

It is not enough to understand the natural world. The point is to defend and preserve it.

I am not an atheist but an earthiest.

Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.

When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in.

I think it is far more important to save one square mile of wilderness, anywhere, by any means, than to produce another book on the subject.

This sweet virginal primitive land will metaphorically breathe a sigh of relief --like a whisper of wind--when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of man.

Beyond atheism, nontheism. I am not an atheist but an earthiest. Be true to the earth.

I discovered that I was not opposed to mankind but only to man-centeredness, anthropocentricity, the opinion that the world exists solely for the sake of man; not to science, which means simply knowledge, but to science misapplied, to the worship of technique and technology, and to that perversion of science properly called scientism; and not to civilization but to culture.

My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving.

Hayduke thought. Finally the idea arrived. He said, 'My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving. That's simple, right?

No one know precisely how sentient is a pinyon pine, for example, or to what degree such woody organisms can feel pain or fear, and in any case the road builders had more important things to worry about, but this much is clearly established as scientific face: a living tree, once uprooted, takes many days to wholly die.

We always used to think it didn't matter, that when you mined out one area, or farmed it out, or overgrazed it, you could move to new country beyond the hills, keep moving West. But there are no new places to go anymore. The land is full. We have to stay where we are, take care of what we have. There isn't going to be anything else.

There are no vacant lots in nature.

There is no lack of water here, unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.