Quotes About Sustainability

The destiny of humans cannot be separated from the destiny of earth.

We might summarize our present human situation by the simple statement: that in the 20th century, the glory of the human has become the desolation of the Earth and now the desolation of the Earth is becoming the destiny of the human. From here on, the primary judgment of all human institutions, professions, programs and activities will be determined by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore, or foster a mutually-enhancing human/Earth relationship.

A degraded habitat will produce degraded humans. If there is to be any true progress, then the entire life community must progress.

O]ur human economy is derivative from the Earth economy. To glory in a rising Gross Domestic Product with an irreversibly declining Earth Product is an economic absurdity.

The Earth is so integral in the unity of its functioning that every aspect of the Earth is affected by what happens to any component member of the community. Because of its organic quality, Earth cannot survive in fragments….The integral functioning of the planet must be preserved.

Until technologists learn reverence for the earth, there will be no possibility of bringing a healing or a new creative age to the earth.

Because people vary and because averages matter, there may be no sustainable critical mass; and the unravelling behavior, or initial failure to get the activity going at all, has much the appearance of a critical mass that is almost but not quite achieved. This is therefore a kindred but separate family of models.

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture. --The Fruit Hunters

I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.

Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.

The earth belongs always to the living generations.

I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.

The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder, it pains me to an unspeakable degree.

the need to develop a mutually enhancing mode of human presence to the natural world will be a central concern in every phase of human activity.

And what we've always been is. . .? Is living on borrowed time. Getting away cheap. Never caring about who's paying for it, who's starving somewhere else all jammed together so we can have cheap food, a house, a yard in the burbs. . .planetwide, more every day, the payback keeps gathering...

Where recyling takes place only in response to political pressures and exhortations, it need not meet the test of being incrementally worth its incremental costs. Accordingly, studies of government-imposed recycling programs in the United States have shown that what they salvage is usually worth less than the cost of salvaging it.

Electric cars may be fun at amusement parks, where they don't have to go very far or very fast. But if the consuming public wanted electric cars for regular use, Detroit would be manufacturing them by the millions. Only people infatuated with their own wonderful specialness would think that their job is to coerce both the manufacturers and the consuming public into something that neither of them wants.

A 1972 study showed that the amount of pollution per mile traveled by horse was a hundred times the amount of pollution per mile traveled by automobile.27 Since the cars produced in later years have had reduced pollution levels, the disparity today would be even greater. It should also be noted that the replacement of horses by automobiles made it possible to "restore more than 80 million acres of forestlands that had once been cleared for horse pasture."28

To all users of technology who are willing to take a chance, make a choice, and try a new way of doing things so that we can nurture and enjoy a happy, healthy planet.—K.M.

You could cut off my hand, and I would still live. You could take out my eyes, and I would still live. Cut off my ears, my nose, cut off my legs, and I could still live. But take away the air, and I die. Take away the sun, and I die. Take away the plants and the animals, and I die. So why would I think my body is more a part of me than the sun and the earth?

We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy Earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank, but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it "gross domestic product.