the most compelling reason for reforming our system is that the system is in no one's interest. It is a suicide machine.

Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.

Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world by trial and error. Unlike other creatures we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes.

Like most problems with technology, pollution is a problem of scale. The biosphere might have been able to tolerate our dirty old friends coal and oil if we burned them gradually, but how long can it withstand a blaze of consumption so frenzied that the dark size of this planet glows like a fanned ember in the night of space.

America seemed a virgin land waiting for civilization. But Europe had made the wilderness it found; America was not a virgin, she was a widow.

If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature.

Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.