Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nothing can be gained or lost and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced. Payment of this price cannot be avoided; it can only be delayed. The present environmental crisis is a warning that we have delayed nearly too long.

Despite the dazzling successes of modern technology and the unprecedented power of modern military systems, they suffer from a common and catastrophic fault. While providing us with a bountiful supply of food, with great industrial plants, with high-speed transportation, and with military weapons of unprecedented power, they threaten our very survival.

My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically - and destructively - demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.

In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.

The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.

By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.

Nothing ever dies, nothing ever goes away.