Environmental Quotes

1. "When it is good, this is a city of fantastic strength, sophistication and beauty. It is like no other city in time or place. Visitors and even natives rarely use the words urban character or environmental style, but that is what they are reacting to with awe in the presence of massed, concentrated, steel, stone, power and life."
Author: Ada Louise Huxtable

2. "Global markets must be balanced by global values such as respect for human rights and international law, democracy, security and sustainable economic and environmental development."
Author: Anna Lindh

3. "What is new is that environmentalism intensely illuminates the need to confront the corporate domain at its most powerful and guarded point - the exclusive right to govern the systems of production."
Author: Barry Commoner

4. "Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it."
Author: Barry Commoner

5. "American capitalism is derided for its superficial banality, yet it has unleashed profound, convulsive social change. Condemned as mindless materialism, it has burst loose a flood tide of spiritual yearning. The civil rights movement and the sexual revolution, environmentalism and feminism, the fitness and health-care boom and the opening of the gay closet, the withering of censorship and the rise of a "creative class" of "knowledge workers" – all are the progeny of widespread prosperity."
Author: Brink Lindsey

6. "I try and direct environmentally, so that people don't feel like everything is going to depend on what happens when someone says, 'action,' so that they can literally be swimming in the warm water, and at some point the race begins, and at some point the race ends, but it is about being free to swim."
Author: Cameron Crowe

7. "You can cruise the world's millions of omega-3 Web sites without encountering any reflections about where these prized fatty acids are coming from and at what social or environmental cost. For some people, what goes into their bodies has become an overriding obsession. Perhaps we are witnessing a successor to the Me Generation--namely, the Don't Care About the Rest of the World as Long as I Have a Spa and Some Omega-3 Fatty Acids Generation. Let's call it the Omega-3 Generation for short. Or is that thought just too depressing?"
Author: Charles Clover

8. "Your lifestyle may expose you to environmental estrogens that can disrupt your body's natural balance or interfere with proper therapy. Here are some tips from Dr. LaValle to reduce your exposure: 1. Limit drinking out of plastic containers, and when you do, drink only from containers that are free of bisphenol A, better known as BPA. 2. Do not microwave food in plastic containers or covered in plastic. 3. Avoid using personal care items such as face creams, cosmetics, shampoos, tampons, and toiletries that contain environmental estrogens and particularly phthalates. Phthalates are synthetic substances found in many plastics. They have estrogenic properties and are banned as a toxic substance in Europe."
Author: Daniel G. Amen

9. "While the climate crisis gathers front-page attention on a regular basis, people - even those who profess great environmental consciousness - continue to eat fish as if it were a sustainable practice."
Author: Daniel Pauly

10. "Eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee."
Author: Daniel Pauly

11. "If your DNA profile puts you at a higher risk of developing obesity, that doesn't mean it's your fate. You can take control of the environmental side of the equation and reduce your overall lifetime risk by a lot."
Author: David Agus

12. "There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table."
Author: Ed Rendell

13. "Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view."
Author: Edward O. Wilson

14. "Around the world–even in some of the countries most troubled by poverty or civil war or pollution–many thoughtful people are making a deep, concerted search for a way to live in harmony with each other and the earth. Their efforts, which rarely reach the headlines, are among the most important events occurring today. Sometimes these people call themselves peace workers, at other times environmentalists, but most of the time they work in humble anonymity. They are simply quiet people changing the world by changing themselves."
Author: Eknath Easwaran

15. "The only truly dependable production technologies are those that are sustainable over the long term. By that very definition, they must avoid erosion, pollution, environmental degradation, and resource waste. Any rational food-production system will emphasize the well-being of the soil-air-water biosphere, the creatures which inhabit it, and the human beings who depend upon it."
Author: Eliot Coleman

16. "Capitalism seems to have failed and is now stigmatized as greed. A reaction against individual excess is driving the world back to collective values. Fear of terror overrides rights; fear of slumps subverts free markets. Consumption levels and urbanization are simply unsustainable at recent rates in the face of environmental change. The throwaway society is headed for the trash heap. People who sense that "modernity" is ending proclaim a "postmodern age."
Author: Felipe Fernández Armesto

17. "These days, most nature photographers are deeply committed to the environmental message."
Author: Galen Rowell

18. "A variety of factors contribute to the price of gasoline in the United States. These factors include worldwide supply, demand and competition for crude oil, taxes, regional differences in access to gasoline supplies and environmental regulations."
Author: Gary Miller

19. "Right now in this world, a child is dying from an ailment because its family cannot afford to buy charcoal for boiling water.Right now in this world, a girl is striving to find firewood from trees that no more exist, and water from sources that are poisonous.Right now in this world, a boy is out fishing in a lake rich with inedible species.Right now in this world, a mother is drowning in heavy rainfall, to save her belongings.Right now in this world, a man has lost his dignity because all his eff orts to save have been wiped away to poverty by unforeseen calamities.Right now in this world, a family is starving because drought has invaded their once fertile land.Right now in this world, a nation is planning for refugee status due to adverse climate conditions.Right now in this world, you have a choice to help alleviate environmental problems caused by humankind."
Author: Gloria D. Gonsalves

20. "Whether fuel cell system development in central Oregon, wind power generation along the Columbia Gorge, or geothermal energy in southern Oregon, investing in new energy sources makes America more energy independent while creating good paying, environmentally friendly jobs."
Author: Greg Walden

21. "I think environmentalists do no service to their cause by taking fundamentalist stances. I am not defending corporate India's track record, but for many environmental problems, there are technological solutions."
Author: Jairam Ramesh

22. "The totalitarian greens, sometimes called ecofascists, would like to see most other humans eliminated in genocide and so leave a perfect Earth for them alone. At the other end of the spectrum are those who would like to see universal human welfare and rights, and somehow hope that luck, Gaia or sustainable development will allow this dream to come true. Greens could be defined as those who have sensed the deterioration of the natural world and would like to do something about it. They share a common environmentalism but differ greatly in the means for its achievement."
Author: James E. Lovelock

23. "I hope that in future Congresses there will reemerge a recognition that climate change is a reality, that our policies to meet our energy needs must also deal responsibly with environmental issues, including the damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions."
Author: Jeff Bingaman

24. "Have we failed to slow global warming pollution in part because climate and environmental activists have been too polite and well behaved?"
Author: Jeff Goodell

25. "I find the parallels between how some investors refuse to recognise the trends and our reaction to some of our environmental challenges very powerful. There is an unwillingness to process unpleasant data."
Author: Jeremy Grantham

26. "Businesses can lead with their values and make money, too. You don't have to simply be purely profit-driven. You can integrate social and environmental concerns into a business, be a caring business, be a generous business and still do very well financially."
Author: Jerry Greenfield

27. "Look at your business and the activities that you undertake. Then, start to think about not just your economic concerns, but about social and environmental impacts that businesses have."
Author: Jerry Greenfield

28. "But reducing harmful emissions, abating our dependence on foreign oil and developing alternative renewable energy sources have benefits that go beyond environmental health, they improve personal health, enhance national security and encourage our nation's economic viability."
Author: Jim Clyburn

29. "I love Earth Day, when once each year people of different backgrounds and faiths gather together to bury an environmentalist alive."
Author: John Alejandro King

30. "But my point is that you design something in the end that precludes any unhealthy trading practices that are not going to serve your environmental or your economic objectives but now is not the time to do it."
Author: John Anderson

31. "I have been impressed by the realization that a few men have virtually 'decided' what experiences count and even exist in the world. The language of Western science--the reigning construct of male hegemony--precludes the ability to express the experiential realities it talks about. Virtually all the actual experiences of this world, expressed through the manifest and mysterious characteristics of all the different beings, are unrepresented in the stainless steel edicts of experts. Where is the voice of the voiceless in the scientific literature, including the literature of environmental ethics?"
Author: Karen Davis

32. "American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc."
Author: Katherine Dunn

33. "I wanted to help raise awareness, so I created an environmental foundation called Just Within Reach."
Author: Kevin Richardson

34. "We obviously want to produce things that people want. We are going to continue to do that in an environmentally responsible way, while still being aware of the physical, scientific, and practical issues that we have to deal with."
Author: Lee R. Raymond

35. "Barge traffic on the Mississippi River represents the most efficient, most cost-effective, most environmentally sound means of transporting commodity goods from this region of the country to market."
Author: Leonard Boswell

36. "Not to say that corporations are perfect today, but even grand corporations like Dupont have made immense progress in translating some of their past environmentally damaging practices into new profit opportunities."
Author: Maurice Strong

37. "The final standards do a good job of setting the bar for a more environmentally responsible kind of farming but, as perhaps was inevitable as soon as bureaucratic and industrial thinking was brought to bear, many of the philosophical values embodied in the word "organic" - the sorts of values expressed by Albert Howard - did not survive the federal rule making process."
Author: Michael Pollan

38. "Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: We're producers of one thing at work, consumers of a great many things all the rest of the time, and then, once a year or so, we take on the temporary role of citizen and cast a vote. Virtually all our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another - our meals to the food industry, our health to the medical profession, entertainment to Hollywood and the media, mental health to the therapist or the drug company, caring for nature to the environmentalist, political action to the politician, and on and on it goes. Before long it becomes hard to imagine doing much of anything for ourselves - anything, that is, except the work we do "to make a living." For everything else, we feel like we've lost the skills, or that there's someone who can do it better... it seems as though we can no longer imagine anyone but a professional or an institution or a product supplying our daily needs or solving our problems."
Author: Michael Pollan

39. "There's been progress toward seeing that nature and culture are not opposing terms, and that wilderness is not the only kind of landscape for environmentalists to concern themselves with."
Author: Michael Pollan

40. "Unless we realize that the present market society, structured around the brutally competitive imperative of "grow or die," is a thoroughly impersonal, self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology as such or population growth as such for environmental problems. We will ignore their root causes, such as trade for profit, industrial expansion, and the identification of "progress" with corporate self-interest. In short, we will tend to focus on the symptoms of a grim social pathology rather than on the pathology itself, and our efforts will be directed toward limited goals whose attainment is more cosmetic than curative."
Author: Murray Bookchin

41. "The result was, when Congress convened in January 1971, everyone was now an environmentalist. They had seen a new force, college students, who favored the environment."
Author: Pete McCloskey

42. "Of the 55 refineries closed in America in the last 10 years, they were all closed for economic reasons, mostly oil company mergers. Not a single one was closed for environmental purposes or objections."
Author: Peter DeFazio

43. "Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature."
Author: Richard Louv

44. "Until recently, most environmental organizations offered only token attention to children. Perhaps their lack of zeal stems from an unconscious ambivalence about children, who symbolize or represent overpopulation. So goes the unspoken mantra: We have met the enemy and it is our progeny."
Author: Richard Louv

45. "Is is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver-lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves - socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the US government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religion dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."
Author: Sam Harris

46. "Let me start by emphasizing that I am open to efforts to expedite environmental procedures for true emergencies or in other clear cases where current laws are needlessly burdensome."
Author: Sherwood Boehlert

47. "This is where the will to grapple with our hard and pressing environmental problems begins: in relationship to something other that you love beyond any utility, beyond any logic."
Author: Susan Freinkel

48. "Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term."
Author: Ted Danson

49. "We 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."
Author: Ted Danson

50. "A crowd whose discontent has risen no higher than the level of slogans is only a crowd. But a crowd that understands the reasons for its discontent and knows the remedies is a vital community, and it will have to be reckoned with. I would rather go before the government with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied.But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living."
Author: Wendell Berry

Environmental Quotes Pictures