The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures.

Nuclear energy people perceive the greenhouse effect as a fresh wind blowing at their back.

For those who want to understand the issues of the environmental crisis, Encounters with the Archdruid is a superb book. McPhee reveals more nuances of the value revolution that dominates the new age of ecology than most writers could pack into a volume twice as long. I marvel at his capacity to listen intently and extract the essence of a man and his philosophy in the fewest possible words.

A land ethic for tomorrow should...stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life.

So many people of my generation who served in the government were prisoners of the Cold War culture, still are.

America today stands poised on a pinnacle of wealth and power, yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space, and of an over-all environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight.

Nixon was a good president on the environment. Gerald Ford was good.