Quotes About Environment

The irony of it all is that we in the developed world are the prime polluters, the most destructive of people on the planet, yet although we have the money and the means to prevent the Earth crossing the deadly threshold that will make global change irreversible, we are hampered by fear.

the IPCC now spoke comfortably of consensus and endorsed those mysterious concepts of sustainability and energy that renewed itself. We even thought that this way somehow we could save the planet and grow richer as well, a more pleasing outcome than the uncomfortable truth.

We know now that the Earth really does regulate itself, but because of the time it took to gather the evidence we discovered too late that the regulation was failing and the Earth system was fast approaching the critical state that puts all life on it in danger.

it would take the Earth more than a thousand years to recover from the damage we have already done,

We know that in the depth of the last glaciation carbon dioxide fell to 180 ppm, rose to 280 ppm after the ice age ended, and has risen now to 380 ppm as a result of our pollution.

the health of the Earth, not the health of people, in mind. This is why it is much too late for sustainable development; what we need is a sustainable retreat.

six billion hungry and greedy individuals,

The Search for the Real Self is also about those with an impaired real self who are unable to accomplish the task of finding a fit with their environment, and are compelled to resort to self-destructive behavior patterns—evidence of a false self—that protect them from feeling "bad" at the cost of a meaningful and fulfilling life.

By having disconnected ourselves emotionally from the Earth and plants we have lost our understanding of those links and mutual relationships," writes Stephen Harold Buhner.4

It is no accident of history that the first Earth Day, in April 1970, came so soon after color photographs of the whole Earth from space were made by astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission to the moon in December 1968.

In our research, we tried to provide an environment that would maximize those characteristics that tend to improve functioning, while minimizing those that might hinder any improvement.

There's no longer any surprise in noting that China has grave environmental problems.

Environmental disaster is the gravest threat to China's continued development. That's according to me, but it is not some wacko view.

The woods are but the ears of the Almighty, the air is his breath, and the light of the sun is little more than a glance of his eye.

Intelligence normally entails two interrelated but somewhat different components. The first involves effective adaptation to an environment.

They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.

Evolution itself embodies an ongoing exchange of information between organism and environment .... The gene has its cultural analog, too: the meme. In cultural evolution, a meme is a replicator and propagator — an idea, a fashion, a chain letter, or a conspiracy theory. On a bad day, a meme is a virus.

In the end, despite the large volume of bad news, we can conclude with an affirmation. We can say with Wallace Stevens that 'after the final no there comes a yes.' Yes, we can save what is left. Yes, we can repair and make amends. We can reclaim nature and restore ourselves. There is a bridge at the end of the world.

The economy is now consuming the planet's available resources on a scale that rivals their supply while releasing its waste products back into the environment on a scale that greatly affects the major biogeophysical cycles of the planet.

Enlightened policies in the management of fossil fuels and forests can delay or avoid these changes, but the time for implementing the policies is fast passing.

the working majority that actually makes current decisions, and not even to the whole of the living population, but to those who came before us, who provided our traditions and our physical patrimony as nations, and to those who will come after us, and who will inherit what we leave behind. Decisions in the environmental arena often touch on this broader sense of public responsibility, and we cannot afford to lose it among the numbers.

Racism. . . . fuelled by bitter assertions that no immigrant ever has the least respect for the environment in his adopted country because he never really believes it's his.

Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now [with climate change], yet we dither.

Consider the perverse effect cap and trade has on altruistic actions. Say you decide to buy a small, high-efficiency car. That reduces your emissions, but not your country's. Instead it allows somebody else to buy a bigger S.U.V. - because the total emissions are set by the cap.