Quotes About Sustainability

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail for replacement in as many decades

Such prosperity as we have known up to the present is the consequence of rapidly spending the planet's irreplaceable capital.

Today's water arguments reflect a growing unease about how to proceed when old certainties are being pushed aside and new options seem limited or unappealing. But the stark warnings implicit in Wisconsin's poisoned wells, the intersex and dying fish of Chesapeake Bay, Lake Mead's recored-low waterline, the decay of levees across the country, and the resource war in Alaska's Bristol Bay, cannot be ignored.

Kids born today will see us navigate past the first greatest test of humanity, which is: can we actually be smart enough to live on a planet without destroying it?

You cannot build a sustainable local economy on the back of people's suffering.

They call this place a farm — but no farmer could possibly make a living from it these days, no matter how hard he worked.

I don't always buy organic food. It is more expensive.

Unless everyone grasps the importance of having only two children per couple, wars won't be over just oil anymore, they will be over water and food.

I had never been able to get a car that said how much I cared about the environment until I drove electric.

For me, going vegan was an ethical and environmental decision. I'm doing the right thing by the animals.

Not only is that all we can do; it's what we have to keep doing, no matter how many of those meals end up in the garbage can.

Once learn how Nature gardens for herself, and you will be able to spare yourself a good deal of trouble.

Every generation has an obligation to leave its children in a better position than it inherited. Our representatives in Washington are breaking faith with that covenant. America must reduce its federal spending and accumulation of debt for the sake of generations to come.

Given the right information to help them decide, people will opt for conditions that benefit our creaturely neighbours, even where they have no particular interest in larks or cuckoo wasps - because those conditions benefit us.

We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.

Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain.

Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.

My obsession is plastic packaging. It makes me sick, all the waste. Everything about it disappoints me.

Obviously, waste disposal is an enormous and fantastic industry.