By 1975 - and continuing to today - all Americans came to believe that they had a "right" to a safe, clean, healthy environment. When I grew up, no one seriously criticized the steel mills and paper mills for the deadly stench they produced - that was the smell of prosperity. In the modern society, no one would tolerate such conditions in an American city.
Denis HayesI would love to see a fundamental re-thinking of whether we truly want to be the world's largest debtor nation, feeding an insatiable desire for mall-crawling with cheaply made crap from all over the world.
Denis HayesBuild high-speed, electrified trains over the most-traveled corridors. It'sreally hard to power carbon-free airplanes, but electrified trains are much easier. We'll be a half century behind the Japanese, but better late than never.
Denis HayesAs a student of conservation biology, I believe that characteristics with survival value will ultimately prevail. There is no survival value in pessimism. If you think failure is inevitable, that view will probably become self-fulfilling.
Denis HayesI feel more confident than ever that the power to save the planet rests with the individual consumer.
Denis HayesMake Earth Day Every Day.โ While we might not always live up to this ideal, I try to keep this quote from Denis Hayes, founder of the Earth Day Network and president of Seattleโs Bullitt Foundation, in mind when I need a little extra motivation to be a better environmentalist: โListen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours.
Denis Hayes