Popular quotes about Environmental! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 7
Environmental justice [means that] no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.
Majora CarterIf I had to catalog all the moronic plot turns in The Day After Tomorrow, we'd be here until the next ice age. It's just so very bad. You can have a pretty good time snickering at it-unless, like me, you think there's something to this global warming thing, and you shudder at the irony of a movie meant to warn people about a dangerous environmental trend that completely discredits it. Is it possible that the film is a plot to make environmental activists look as wacko as anti-environmentalists always claim they are?
David EdelsteinBy adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.
Barry CommonerThe environmental movement can only survive if it becomes a justice movement. As a pure environmental movement, it will either die, or it will survive as a corporate 'greenwash'. Anyone who's a sincere environmentalist can't stand that role.
Vandana ShivaWe have endorsements of our plan from key leaders within the environmental movement. That doesn't mean that it includes the whole environmental movement.
Rachel NotleyWe try to invest in companies that are putting together environmental programs and working to improve their overall social and environmental self.
Bob WalkerThere's a worldwide linking of environmental activists, developmental experts and human rights advocates. And they're using the two frameworks, in particular environmental standards and human rights.
Mary RobinsonWe must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.
Jacques Yves CousteauThe 'environmental crisis' has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of 'raw materials,' and that we may safely possess those materials by taking them.... And so we will be wrong if we attempt to correct what we perceive as 'environmental' problems without correcting the economic oversimplification that caused them.
Wendell Berry... the first thing his education demands is the provision of an environment in which he can develop the powers given him by nature. This does not mean just to amuse him and let him do what he likes. But it does mean that we have to adjust our minds to doing a work of collaboration with nature, to being obedient to one of her laws, the law which decrees that development comes from environmental experience.
Maria MontessoriEnvironmental science is telling us a lot about our future and what it could look like, whether we're talking about global warming (the current poster child for the environment) or a loss of genetic diversity in our food supplies, or the effects of low-dose chemicals on human development.
Paolo BacigalupiLetting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the reasons we have a coal-dependent infrastructure, with the resulting environmental impact that all of us can see. I suspect environmentalists, through their opposition of nuclear power, have caused more coal plants to be built than anybody. And those coal plants have emitted more radioactive material from the coal than any nuclear accident would have.
Vinod KhoslaI think we should be prepared, given environmental and political change for large-scale migration. If sea levels rise and 200 million people in Bangladesh and 300 million people in Indonesia need to move, and the entire Chinese seaboard, New York City - that's going to be huge.
Mohsin HamidI was in a store in Halifax, Nova Scotia that I love, sort of like an environmental friendly sort of store. But they had a great book section. So I went in there all the time. The woman who worked there - which I feel so bad; I've forgotten her name - she handed me the book and she said, "Hey, you should read this. I think it would make a good movie." I remember reading the back of it and I was like, "Huh." Then I just devoured the book and I was so moved by it and said, "Why don't we start developing this into a film?" So that's how it ['Into the Forest'] all started.
Ellen PageWhat we can do is to shape how that process of global integration proceeds, so that it's increasing opportunity for ordinary people, so that it's creating better jobs, so that we are strengthening protections for workers, so that we are addressing some of the environmental challenges that come with rapid growth.
Barack ObamaInstant-doomsday hyperbole caused the world's attention to focus on the hypothetical threat of global warming to the exclusion of environmental menaces that are real, palpable, and awful right now.
Gregg EasterbrookI'm very sceptical about the prospects for 'big' environmental causes - 'saving the planet', halving the world's population, ending the exploitation of animals, and so on - but a person can ask him- or herself how he or she personally may exercise compassion or humility towards animals, vegetal life and so on.
David E. CooperOther ways of looking at the environmental or climate change stuff is to frame it in the context that it is simultaneously a public health issue. One out of eight premature deaths worldwide happens because of air pollution. The worst power plant in America kills 278 people a year and causes 445 heart attacks. So, when we improve air quality we improve our lives, and at the same time we improve the climate as well. We must see climate policy from this perspective and not as an abstract threat that may threaten our survival in 100 years.
Michael BloombergAll living beings, not just animals, but plants and microorganisms, perceive. To survive, an organic being must perceive - it must seek, or at least recognize, food and avoid environmental danger.
Lynn MargulisThere's very good evidence that the average cat in Europe has a larger environmental footprint in its lifetime than the average African.
Jason W ClayI took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Al GoreMany people who live in big countries like ours thought that we had resources that would work for us for many, many years, but that was a mistake. Our natural wealth corrupted us. In this country, you were among the first to raise environmental issues. In Russia, despite all of its problems today, people are concerned about the environment, and it's become a central issue on the agenda.
Mikhail GorbachevWhile it's good that we maintain high standards for companies seeking to claim environmental leadership, I can't help but ponder the hypocrisy of it all: how much more we expect of companies than of ourselves.
Joel MakowerPlasticity is an intrinsic property of the human brain and represents evolution's invention to enable the nervous system to escape the restrictions of its own genome and thus adapt to environmental pressures, physiologic changes, and experiences.
Philippa PerryEveryone, rich or poor, deserves a shelter for the soul, architects should lead in procuring social and environmental change.
Samuel MockbeeHad today's technophobic zealots [environmental activists] been in charge in previous centuries, we would have to roll human progress back to the Middle Ages - and beyond, since even fire, the wheel and organic farming pose risks, and none would have passed the "absolute safety" test the zealots demand. Putting them in charge now would mean an end to progress, and perpetual deprivation for inhabitants of developing nations.
Paul DriessenIn a flat choice between smoke and jobs, we're for jobs... But just keep me out of trouble on environmental issues.
Richard M. NixonFailing to curb the impact of climate change could damage the global economy on the scale of the Great Depression or the world wars by spawning environmental devastation that could cost 5 to 20 percent of the world's annual gross domestic product.
Nicholas SternCan we disregard the growing phenomenon of "environmental refugees", people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it - and often their possessions as well - in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement? Can we remain impassive in the face of actual and potential conflicts involving access to natural resources? All these are issues with a profound impact on the exercise of human rights, such as the right to life, food, health and development.
Pope Benedict XVIEconomists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.
Vivienne WestwoodThe problem of numbers can only be dealt with by recognizing that people have a fundamental right to economic security. If you provide them with economic and environmental security, the population will stabilize itself.
Vandana ShivaBy seeing the otherness in that which is most unfamiliar, we can learn to see it too in that which at first seemed merely ordinary. If wilderness can do this - if it can help us perceive and respect a nature we had forgotten to recognize as natural - then it will become part of the solution to our environmental dilemmas rather than part of the problem.
William CrononFrom year to year, environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives, but from evolutionary or geological perspectives, what is happening is explosive change.
David SuzukiWe have a project with Unocal here in Los Angeles, where we as an environmental organization, the oil company, and the state all get together to promote the recycling of used motor oil.
Ted DansonNature's patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It's nature's version of nature versus nurture.
Brian GreeneEconomic dynamism can be combined with environmental and social responsibility. High financial returns can go hand in hand with respect for human rights, and the preservation of the planet's natural resources
David MilibandAmerican culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc.
Katherine DunnDo you realize we've got 250 million years of coal? But coal has got environmental hazards to it, but there's-I'm convinced, and I know that we-technology can be developed so we can have zero-emissions coal-fired electricity plants.
George W. BushUnderstanding what is going on in the world today inspires me in a negative sense because there's so much about it that I don't like - political stupidity, environmental degradation, etc. And that makes me want to change it, to make a difference in the world.
Theodora GossWe are always talking about how we can get more environmental and humanitarian education. It is about listening to the voice of young people - how they feel, and what would be most meaningful for them.
Jane GoodallIf China is helping its domestic industries charge an artificially low price for solar panels and other environmental goods, then China is violating international trade rules that it agreed to when it became a member of the World Trade Organization.
Ron WydenMark Ruffalo, aka the Incredible Hulk, is the natural gas industry's worst nightmare: a serious, committed activist who is determined to use his star power as a superhero in the hottest movie of the moment to draw attention the environmental and public health risks of fracking.
Jeff GoodellEnvironmental historians . . . insist that we have got to go . . . down to the earth itself as an agent and presence in history. Here we will discover even more fundamental forces at work over time. And to appreciate those forces we must now and then get out of parliamentary chambers, out of birthing rooms and factories, get out of doors altogether, and ramble into fields, woods, and the open air. It is time we bought a good set of walking shoes, and we cannot avoid getting some mud on them.
Donald WorsterThe UK still has time to accelerate the take-up of renewable energy and put the nation on a path towards clean energy that is cheaper, stable and more sustainable. We have a stark choice: We can stay stuck in the last century's boom and bust approach to our economy in the way we consume energy and resources, or create a sustainable, stable and renewable energy infrastructure with the long term environmental and employment benefits that ensue
Phil HardingEnvironmental degradation is an iatrogenic disease induced by economic physicians who treat the basic malady of unlimited wants by prescribing unlimited growth.... Yet one certainly does not cure a treatment-induced disease by increasing the treatment dosage.
Herman E. DalyIn the auto industry, there's one thing you can always count on: if a new environmental or safety rule is proposed, executives will prophesy disaster.
James Surowiecki