Be
a Hero for a Better World ... Every Act of Kindness Makes
a Difference!
ECOLOGY
The
environmental movement is one of the most successful
social change movements. Popularizing Earth Day celebrations
can be credited with bringing the movement to the
mainstream. Through grassroots efforts, festivals,
fairs, assemblies and concerts have helped popularize
concern for our environment in the public's mind.
Since so many people participate in Earth Day activities,
Earth Day is the perfect opportunity to get people
to tap-into the better world movement, so that they
can find the inspiration and encouragement to continue
activities for a more peaceful, just and sustainable
world all year long.
-- Robert
Alan Silverstein
It is
horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save
the environment.
~ Ansel Adams
*
Let us be good stewards of the Earth we inherited. All
of us have to share the Earth's fragile ecosystems and
precious resources, and each of us has a role to play
in preserving them. If we are to go on living together
on this earth, we must all be responsible for it.
~ Kofi
Annan
Nature
does nothing uselessly.
-- Aristotle
(384-322 BC)
*
In all things of nature, there is something of the
marvelous.
-- Aristotle
Waste
is a tax on the whole people.
~ Albert W. Atwood
*
"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the
world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from
his children."
~ John
James Audubon
The
American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse
is perhaps the most perfect symbol of the triumph of quantity
over quality.... Whole forests are being ground into pulp
daily to minister to our triviality.
~ Irving Babbitt
*
We are committed with our lives to building a different
model and a different future for humanity, the Earth,
and other species. We have envisaged a moral alternative
to economic globalization and we will not rest until
we see it realized.
-- Maude
Barlow
*
No piecemeal solution is going to prevent the collapse
of whole societies and ecosystems ... a radical re-thinking
of our values, priorities and political systems is
urgent.
-- Maude
Barlow
"The
problem of climate change is so large that it can't
be solved by voluntary individual responses. It requires
an economy-wide solution, i.e. one that limits the
total carbon intake of the economy."
~ Peter
Barnes
"The
major problems in the world are the result of the difference
between how nature works and the way people think."
~ Gregory Bateson
"This
is a deeply spiritual issue...Do we want to spend more time
trying to care for our fellow man or do we want to just
pursue more virtual reality? That's the issue before us..
and it's being played out in the world of the environment."
~ Ed
Begley, Jr.
"Kids
can help the environment by riding a bike. Always wear a
helmet of course and stay in the bike lane. Take public
transportation with your parents and your friends and see
if you like that. That’s a good way to get around. Start
a home garden, be energy efficient, turn off the lights
and the water. All of those things are very good for the
environment and good for your pocketbook. "
~ Ed
Begley, Jr.
"I
was a Boy Scout, and scouting gave me an appreciation for
nature and the outdoors that set the stage for my career
as an environmental activist. The other thing would be growing
up in Los Angeles-the smog capital of the world for quite
a while."
~ Ed
Begley, Jr.
The
two most abundant forms of power on earth are solar and
wind, and they're getting cheaper and cheaper…
~ Ed
Begley, Jr.
"I
can't imagine a right more basic than the right to
breathe clean air. We've debated for years how that
might be possible. Now that we know it is, will we
have the courage and the conviction to get there?"
~ Ed
Begley, Jr.
*
"Kids can help the environment by riding a bike. Always
wear a helmet of course and stay in the bike lane.
Take public transportation with your parents and your
friends and see if you like that. That’s a good way
to get around. Start a home garden, be energy efficient,
turn off the lights and the water. All of those things
are very good for the environment and good for your
pocketbook. "
~ Ed
Begley, Jr.
*
"The natural world is the larger sacred community
to which we belong. To be alienated from this community
is to become destitute in all that makes us human.
To damage this community is to diminish our own existence."
~ Thomas
Berry
If
the earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence,
it is primarily because we have lost our sense of
courtesy toward the earth and its inhabitants.
~ Thomas
Berry
*
"To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster
its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival."
~ Wendell
Berry
The
earth is what we all have in common.
~ Wendell
Berry
We do
need a 'new economy,' but one that is founded on thrift
and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste.
An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent,
and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable
economy."
~ Wendell
Berry
"The
most unhappy thing about conservation is that it is never
permanent. Save a priceless woodland or an irreplaceable
mountain today, and tomorrow it is threatened from another
quarter."
~ Hal Borland
*
We’re never going to have respectful and reverential
relationships with the planet- and sensible policies
about what we put in the air, the soil, the water
– if very young children don’t begin learning about
these things literally in their houses, backyards,
streets and schools. We need to have human beings
who are oriented that way from their earliest memories.”
-- Elise
Boulding
*
Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse
to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man?
~ Kenneth
E. Boulding
*
With laissez-faire and price atomic,
Ecology's Uneconomic,
But with another kind of logic
Economy's Unecologic.
~ Kenneth
E. Boulding
"Are
we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse
to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ... Does
man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent
balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species,
or even for the indefinite continuance of his race?
~ Kenneth
E. Boulding
"The
land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being.
The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land
away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies."
~ Mary Brave Bird
"If
we go on as we are, we will destroy in the next century
everything that the poets have been singing about for the
past two thousand years."
~ Fred Bodsworth
The
ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world
that it leaves to its children.”
-- Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
*
Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful
world from our parents and they from their parents.
It is in our hands whether our children and their
children inherit the same world. We must not be the
generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the
environment.
-- Richard
Branson
There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual
part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are
caretakers of this planet.
~ Brooke Medicine Eagle
We owe it to our children to be better stewards of
the environment.
-- Pierce
Brosnan
*
"The role of the market place is to be an instrument
of environmental change and policy making. We are
all consumers with a great potential for change. Environmental
protection begins at home."
~ Noel
Brown, Former Director of the UN Environmental
Program
Our
children may save us if they are taught to care properly
for the planet; but if not, it may be back to the Ice Age
or the caves from where we first emerged. Then we'll have
to view the universe above from a cold, dark place. No more
jet skis, nuclear weapons, plastic crap, broken pay phones,
drugs, cars, waffle irons, or television. Come to think
of it, that might not be a bad idea.
~ Jimmy Buffet
*
Grassroots groups challenge the "business-as-usual"
environmentalism that is generally practiced by the
more privileged wildlife-and conservation-oriented
groups. The focus of activists of color and their
constituents reflects their life experiences of social,
economic, and political disenfranchisement.
-- Robert
Bullard
“There
is no level playing field. Any time our society says that
a powerful chemical company has the same right as a low
income family that's living next door, that playing field
is not level, is not fair.”
-- Robert
Bullard
An environmental
revolution is taking shape in the United States. This revolution
has touched communities of color from New York to California
and from Florida to Alaska -- anywhere where African Americans,
Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans
live and comprise a majority of the population. Collectively,
these Americans represent the fastest growing segment of
the population in the United States. They are also the groups
most at risk from environmental problems.
-- Robert
Bullard
*
"We can use our scientific knowledge to improve and
beautify the earth, or we can use it to ...poison
the air, corrupt the waters, blacken the face of the
country, and harass our souls with loud and discordant
noises, [or]...we can use it to mitigate or abolish
all these things."
~
John
Burroughs
I go
to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses
put in order.
~ John
Burroughs
Nature
teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in
stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than
a moral.
~ John
Burroughs
To find
the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water
exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening
saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated
over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are
some of the rewards of the simple life.
~ John
Burroughs
How
beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color
are their last days.
~ John
Burroughs
The
World we all share is given to us in trust. Every choice
we make regarding the earth, air, and water around us should
be made with the objective of preserving it for all generations
to come.
-- August A. Bush III
Oh
Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain, For strip-mined
mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain. America, America,
man sheds his waste on thee, And hides the pines with billboard
signs, from sea to oily sea.
~ George Carlin
*
Those
who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves
of strengths that will endure as life lasts
~ Rachel
Carson
*
The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment
is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea
with dangerous and even lethal materials.
~ Rachel
Carson
The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world
are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone
who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea
and sky and their amazing life.
~ Rachel
Carson
For the first time in the history of the world, every human
being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals,
from the moment of conception until death.
~ Rachel
Carson
The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment
is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with
dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for
the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates
not only in the world that must support life but in living
tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal
contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister
and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing
the very nature of the world--the very nature of its life.
~ Rachel
Carson
"The
more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and
realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have
for destruction."
~ Rachel
Carson
*
Like
music and art, love of nature is a common language
that can transcend political or social boundaries.
~
Jimmy
Carter
*
"I want to make it clear,if there is ever a conflict
(between environmental quality and economic growth),
I will go for beauty, clean air, water, and landscape."
~ Jimmy
Carter
Energy
will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this
Nation, and it can also be the standard around which we
rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation
a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our
common destiny.
~ Jimmy
Carter
Acknowledging
the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal
future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these
realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can
meet the resource problems of the world -- water, food,
minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution
-- if we tackle them with courage and foresight.
~ Jimmy
Carter
*
Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks
in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more
than what is in books, for they speak with the voice
of God.
~ George
Washington Carver
Look
about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Let them
talk to you. You learn to talk to them.
~ George
Washington Carver
Nothing
is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before
sunrise.
~ George
Washington Carver
Man
has been endowed with reason, with the power to create,
so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now
he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep
disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct,
the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier
every day.
~ Anton Chekhov
*
"I have never believed we had to choose between either
a clean and safe environment or a growing economy.
Protecting the health and safety of all Americans
doesn’t have to come at the expense of our economy’s
bottom line. And creating thriving companies and new
jobs doesn’t have to come at the expense of the air
we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, or
the natural landscape in which we live. We can, and
indeed must, have both."
~ Bill
Clinton
"Most
of us have become Ecozombies, desensitized, environmental
deadheads. On average, society conditions us to spend over
95% of our time and 99.9% of our thinking disconnected from
nature. Nature's extreme absence in our lives leaves us
abandoned and wanting. We feel we never have enough. We
greedily, destructively, consume and, can't stop. Nature's
loss in our psyche produces a hurt, hungering, void within
us that bullies us into our dilemmas."
~ Michael J. Cohen
As we gain satisfaction from artificial substitutes for
nature we forget that there is no known substitute for Nature,
the real thing and its eons of intelligent, life supportive,
experience. Each substitute we create falls short of nature's
balanced perfection, thus producing our pollution, garbage
and relationship conflicts."
~ Michael J. Cohen
"Everything
is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere.
Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
If you don't put something in the ecology, it's not there."
~ Barry Commoner
"The
air, the water and the ground are free gifts to man and
no one has the power to portion them out in parcels. Man
must drink and breathe and walk and therefore each man has
a right to his share of each."
~ James Fennimore Cooper
"
There
are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United
States, no Soviet Union, no China, no Taiwan.... Rivers
flow unimpeded across the swaths of continents. The
persistent tides -- the pulse of the sea -- do not
discriminate; they push against all the varied shores
on Earth."
~ Jacques
Cousteau
*
Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all
life depends, have become global garbage cans.
-- Jacques
Cousteau
*
"Is it too late to prevent us from self-destructing?
No, for we have the capacity to design our own future,
to take a lesson from living things around us and
bring our values and actions in line with ecological
necessity. But we must first realize that ecological
and social and economic issues are all deeply intertwined.
There can be no solution to one without a solution
to the others."
~ Jean-Michel
Cousteau
Only
after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last
river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been
caught, only then will you find that money can not be eaten.
~ Cree Indian Prophecy
"We
go to sanctuaries to remember the things we hold most dear,
the things we cherish and love. And then--the great challenge--we
return home seeking to enact this wisdom as best we can
in our daily lives."
~ William Cronon
*
I feel we are so blessed to live in a country where
we enjoy so many rights that other countries cannot
even begin to imagine. However, it terrifies me that
we seem to have lost touch with our connection to the
earth. I am concerned that we have risen to such heights
of arrogance in our refusal to acknowledge that our
earth is rapidly changing in ways that might affect
us catastrophically but instead, we hold steadfast to
our belief that nothing can happen to us as a people.
--
Sheryl
Crow
*
"It
is our collective and individual responsibility to
protect and nurture the global family, to support
its weaker members and to preserve and tend to the
environment in which we all live."
~ Dalai
Lama
*
"There is something fundamentally wrong with treating
the earth as if it were a business in liquidation."
~ Herman
Daly
*
"...we
all have an obligation as citizens of this earth to
leave the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place
for our children and future generations.”
~ Blythe
Danner
“Can
we really be so uncaring as a country to refuse to accept
our responsibility for global warming when the United States
is the largest contributor to this problem? It breaks my
heart to read everyday of another environmental law that
is being chipped away, eroded by this Administration, and
we’re not being provided with incentives by Bush to cut
back on our shameful waste of energy. My husband, Bruce,
wrote in one PSA that during World War II the government
asked everyone to make sacrifices for the common good. We
must demand this of our Administration today for we all
have an obligation as citizens of this earth to leave the
world a healthier, cleaner, and better place for our children
and future generations.”
~ Blythe
Danner
*
I PLEDGE to live, work and act in a loving, respectful
way towards this Earth that I call home, and towards
all who live upon it, every insect, animal, fish,
bird, plant, human and tree....
~ Guy
Dauncey
*
I PLEDGE to live, work and act in a loving, respectful
way towards this Earth that I call home, and towards
all who live upon it, every insect, animal, fish, bird,
plant, human and tree....
~ Guy
Dauncey
Today's world is one in which the age-old risks of humankind
- the drought, floods, communicable diseases - are less
of a problem than ever before. They have been replaced by
risks of humanity's own making - the unintended side-effects
of beneficial technologies and the intended effects of the
technologies of war. Society must hope that the world's
ability to assess and manage risks will keep pace with its
ability to create them.
~ J. Clarence Davies
Children
have become disengaged from nature and we need to reintroduce
them to the pleasure that it brings. If we do that they
will care for it. Through the simple act of planting a tree
we can open their eyes to nature's beauty.
-- Dame Judi Dench
"Love
the earth as you would love yourself."
~ John
Denver
*
"No
one person has to do it all but if each one of us
follow our heart and our own inclinations we will
find the small things that we can do to create a sustainable
future and a healthy environment."
~ John
Denver
*
We must set an example now and move environmentalism
from being the philosophy of a passionate minority
... to a way of life that automatically integrates
ecology into governmental policy and normal living
standards.
~ Leonardo
DiCaprio
We've
been given this gift, our planet, and we've found no other
place in the universe that we can inhabit. I want to do
something to create radical change to help save it. It's
our responsibility.
~ Leonardo
DiCaprio
As we
progress into the twenty-first century, anyone who considers
themselves a realist will have to make the environment a
top priority.
~ Leonardo
DiCaprio
Our
planet's alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and
take action!
~ Leonardo
DiCaprio
Our
oil-based society depends on non-renewable resources. It
requires relentless probing into vast reaches of pristine
land, sacrificing vital bioregions, and irreplaceable cultures.
The possibility of catastrophic climate change is substantially
increased by the 40 million barrels of oil burned every
day by vehicles. We must all move shoulder to shoulder in
a unified front to show this administration that the true
majority of people are willing to vote for a cleaner environment
and won't back down.
~ Leonardo
DiCaprio
I urge
individuals around the world to stand up, and ask local
leaders, if they haven't already, to pledge to purchase
cleaner cars, build green facilities, and buy green power
like wind or solar energy. Our actions may determine if
we become a casualty in the war for a habitable planet for
generations to come.
~ Leonardo
DiCaprio
When
I was very young, biology, the diversity of life, was one
of my main interests. I know there's this image people have
that I'm this spoiled, cocky punk of an actor. Honestly,
that's not who I am. I really care that so many species
have been wiped out, like genocide of entire races. I believe
in the divine right of all species to survive on this planet.
So I decided I want to be active as an environmentalist.
I learned. I asked experts. I got active.
~ Leonardo
DiCaprio
"The
use of plant oil as fuel may seem insignificant today.
But such products can in time become just as important
as kerosene and these coal-tar-products of today."
~ Rudolf
Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, which originally
ran on peanut oil.
"In
the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only
what we understand. We will understand only what we are
taught."
~ Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet
"The
most unhappy thing about conservation is that it is never
permanent. If we save a priceless woodland today, it is
threatened from another quarter tomorrow."
~ Marjory Stoneman Douglas
"I
hope to be remembered as someone who made the earth
a little more beautiful."
~ Justice
William O. Douglas
I realized
that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all
living things. Man was a form of life that in another reincarnation
might possibly be a horsefly or a bird of paradise or a
deer. So a man of such a faith, looking at animals, might
be looking at old friends or ancestors. In the East the
wilderness has no evil connotation; it is thought of as
an expression of the unity and harmony of the universe.
~ Justice
William O. Douglas
"The
concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive ...
the values it represents are spiritual as well as physical,
aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of
the legislature to determine that the community should be
beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean,
well balanced as well as carefully patroled."
~ Justice
William O. Douglas
"Man
shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment."
~ René
Dubos
*
"The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve
on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human
conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is
almost universal."
~ René
Dubos
It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy
but the quality of human life.
~ René
Dubos
Humanity,
let us say, is like people packed in a automobile which
is traveling downhill without lights at a terrific speed
and driven by a four-year-old child. The signposts along
the way are all marked "progress."
~ Lord Dunsany
"The
great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million
complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture.
Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even,
after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires,
and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady
undermining of its fabric by the activities of man."
~ Gerald Durrell
“If
we have a hope of really understanding our place in nature
and of carving out a place for ourselves that is sustainable,
it’s primarily because of the new level of communication.
It used to be, ‘What you don’t have in your mind, you have
on your shelf.’ But now we have the Web.”
~ Sylvia
Earle
*
We are all together in this, we are all together in
this single living ecosystem called planet earth.
As we learn how we fit into the greater scheme of
things, and begin to understand how the system works,
we can plan ahead, we can use the resources responsibly,
to show some respect for this inheritance that goes
back 4.6 billion years.
~ Sylvia
Earle
*
We are all together in this, we are all together in
this single living ecosystem called planet earth.
~ Sylvia
Earle
We
are in trouble now, unless we deliberately take actions
to take care of the sea, and make sure these systems continue
to operate as they have for millions of years.
~ Sylvia
Earle
"I'd
put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source
of power! I hope we don't have to wait 'til oil and coal
run out before we tackle that."
~ Thomas Edison (1847–1931)
Each person we add now disproportionately impacts
on the environment and life-support systems of the
planet."
-- Paul
Ehrlich
"Since
natural resources are finite, increased consumption
must inevitably lead to depletion and scarcity."
-- Paul
Ehrlich
"If
you look at it historically, the rise of environmental consciousness
has been extremely rapid. We're only 40 years into it. The
trouble is, the environment has been going downhill far
faster."
-- Paul
Ehrlich
A
human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe,"
a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself,
his thoughts and feelings as something separated from
the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting
us to our personal desires and to affection for a
few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free
ourselves from this prison by widening our circle
of compassion to embrace all living creatures and
the whole [of] nature in its beauty.
~ Albert
Einstein
Our
task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle
of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature and its beauty.
-- Albert
Einstein
"The
use of sea and air is common to all; neither can a title
to the ocean belong to any people or private persons, forasmuch
as neither nature nor public use and custom permit any possession
therof."
~ Elizabeth I of England
"To
speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most
persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very
superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye
of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the
child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and
outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other;
who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the
era of manhood."
~ Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"In
the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the
man, in spite of real sorrows."
~ Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"The
earth will continue to regenerate its life sources only
as long as we and all the peoples of the world do our part
to conserve its natural resources. It is a responsibility
which every human being shares. Through voluntary action,
each of us can join in building a productive land in harmony
with nature."
~ Gerald Ford
*
"When we protect the places where the processes of
life can flourish, we strengthen not only the future
of medicine, agriculture and industry, but also the
essential conditions for peace and prosperity."
~ Harrison
Ford
"Our
health relies entirely on the vitality of our fellow species
on Earth."
~ Harrison
Ford
Zoos
are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures -
of how animals once were in their natural habitat.
If the right policies toward nature were pursued,
we would need no zoos at all.
~Michael
J. Fox
Explore
YOUR family tree
and Find YOUR Roots & Connections
*
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not
harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've
been ignorant of their value.
~ R.
Buckminster Fuller
*
We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship
Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see
it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It
has to be everybody or nobody.
~ R.
Buckminster Fuller
Our
connection to nature grounds us, it makes us more spiritually
aware. We must keep the legacy of nature materially alive
for future generations.
-- Nelly Furtado
*
There's
enough on this planet for everyone's needs but not
for everyone's greed.
~ Mohandas
Gandhi
*
There's
enough on this planet for everyone's needs but not
for everyone's greed.
~ Mohandas
Gandhi
"The
main lesson to be learned from the Love Canal crisis
is that in order to protect public health from chemical
contamination, there needs to be a massive outcry--a
choir of voices--by the American people demanding
change."
~ Lois
Gibbs
"The
citizens of Love Canal provided an example of how a blue-collar
community with few resources can win against great odds
(a multi-billion-dollar international corporation and an
unresponsive government), using the power of the people
in our democratic system."
~ Lois
Gibbs
"It
will take a massive effort to move society from corporate
domination, in which industry's rights to pollute and damage
health and the environment supersede the public's right
to live, work, and play in safety. This is a political fight.
The science is already there, showing that people's health
is at risk. To win, we will need to keep building the movement,
networking with one another, planning, strategizing, and
moving forward. Our children's futures, and those of their
unborn children, are at stake."
~ Lois
Gibbs
*
If we talk about the environment, for example, we
have to talk about environmental racism - about the
fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a
third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.
-- Danny
Glover
*
You cannot get through a single day without having
an impact on the world around you. What you do makes
a difference, and you have to decide what kind of
difference you want to make.
~ Jane
Goodall
There
would be very little point in my exhausting myself
and other conservationist themselves in trying to
protect animals and habitats if we weren’t at the
same time raising young people to be better stewards.
~ Jane
Goodall
*
"We
need a new environmental consciousness on a global
basis. To do this, we need to educate people."
~ Mikhail
Gorbachev
*
"The key.. will be a new public awareness of how serious
is the threat to the global environment. Those who
have a vested interest in the status quo will probably
continue to be able to stifle any meaningful change
until enough citizens.. are willing to speak out."
~ Al
Gore
The
struggle to save the global environment is in one way much
more difficult than the struggle to vanquish Hitler, for
this time the war is with ourselves. We are the enemy, just
as we have only ourselves as allies.
~ Al
Gore
"We
cannot win this battle to save species and environments
without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and
nature as well - for we will not fight to save what we do
not love."
~ Stephen Jay Gould
*
We
are eternally linked not just to each other but our
environment.
-- Herbie
Hancock
*
"People have to know that there are options available
to us today. There is another way, and it is practical
and applicable now."
-- Daryl
Hannah
*
It's really important to me to show the interconnectedness
of things. I always try to illustrate how environmentalism,
humanitarianism, animal rights -- all those things
-- are one and the same.
-- Daryl
Hannah
*
It's
really important to me to show the interconnectedness
of things. I always try to illustrate how environmentalism,
humanitarianism, animal rights -- all those things --
are one and the same.
-- Daryl
Hannah
"I never
had come up with a really profound and strong gesture --
nothing like Julia Butterfly's. So I figured the best thing
I could do was live by my beliefs. That's probably the most
profound thing that anybody can do."
-- Daryl
Hannah
Anything
you do sustainably feels so good that you're a full-on addict
as soon as you try it. If you eat only vegetables and fruits
that you grow yourself from your garden, or organic food,
it tastes so much better and is so much better for you,
you can't really go back."
-- Daryl
Hannah
*
"The future belongs to those who understand that
doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous,
and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competitive."
~ Paul
Hawken
*
If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it
will have to come from the grass roots up, not from
the top down.
~ Paul
Hawken
*
"I feel more confident than ever that the power to
save the planet rests with the individual consumer."
~ Denis
Hayes
*
"The sunshine that strikes American roads each year contains
more energy than all the fossil fuels used by the entire
world."
~ Denis
Hayes
"An
acre of windy prairie could produce between $4,000 and 10,000
worth of electricity per year – which is far more than the
value of the land’s crop of corn or wheat."
~ Denis
Hayes
"America
has the technology and resources to meet all its energy
needs while safeguarding the earth's climate. The urgent
question now is, 'Do we have the will?' At least one city
does, and I'm proud to live in it."
~ Denis
Hayes
"Listen
up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough
electricity to run a television for three hours."
~ Denis
Hayes
*
We can dream together a dream of a better world, an
ever-renewing, organic-based earth-community. I believe
we can achieve a large part of it in our lifetime.
~ Randy
Hayes
*
Economic policy turns out to be the most important
environmental policy.
~ Randy
Hayes
I
think our main foreign policy is economic policy but
to think that economic policy is not environmental
policy is to sort of, miss the point. You know you
can't have economic development without impact on
the biosphere.
~
Randy
Hayes
*
"I wake up in the morning asking myself what can I
do today, how can I help the world today."
-- Julia
Butterfly Hill
"Where
the quality of life goes down for the environment, the quality
of life goes down for humans."
~ George Holland
"The ecological crisis is doing what no other crisis
in history has ever done - challenging us to a realization
of a new humanity."
--
Jean
Houston
*
"Modern man no longer regards Nature as in any
sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward
her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant."
~ Aldous
Huxley
"While
the farmer holds the title to the land, actually,
it belongs to all the people because civilization
itself rests upon the soil."
~ Thomas
Jefferson
"The
American people have a right to air that they and their
children can breathe without fear."
~ Lyndon Johnson
If future generations are to remember us with gratitude
rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles
of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world
as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through
with it."
~ President Lyndon B. Johnson
"No
one has the right to use America's rivers and America's
Waterways, that belong to all the people. as a sewer. The
banks of a river may belong to one man or one industry or
one State, but the waters which flow between the banks should
belong to all the people."
~ Lyndon B. Johnson
We
must not be forced to explore the universe in search of
a new home because we have made the Earth inhospitable,
even uninhabitable. For if we do not solve the environmental
and related social problems that beset us on Earth - pollution,
toxic contamination, resource depletion, prejudice, poverty,
hunger - those problems will surely accompany us to other
worlds.
~ Donald G. Kaufman and Cecilia M. Franz
"With
our technologies--ones of incalcuable power: earth-restoring,
planet preserving--we can rediscover an intimacy, a mutuality
with the natural world, that is not primitive (though based
in part on fear), but knowing. It might even be possible
to relearn a life of awe. And inhabit the landscape without
violation. With the least violation."
~ Janet Kauffman
"Solar
is cost effective right now. When you consider the cost
to our health from air pollution, solar is just as competitive
as any other energy source."
~ Thomas P. Kay
*
"The
supreme reality of our time is...the vulnerability
of our planet"
~ John
F. Kennedy
"It
is our task in our time and in our generation, to
hand down undiminished to those who come after us,
as was handed down to us by those who went before,
the natural wealth and beauty which is ours."
~
John
F. Kennedy
"We
in Government have begun to recognize the critical
work which must be done at all levels—local, State
and Federal—in ending the pollution of our waters."
~ Robert
F. Kennedy
*
"We
protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own
sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities..."
~ Robert
Kennedy, Jr.
*
"the
most patriotic thing you can do is to take care of
the environment and try to live sustainably."
~ Robert
F. Kennedy, Jr.
*
"Listen, the environmental movement is not about protecting
the fishes and the birds so much as recognizing that nature
is the infrastructure of our communities ... If you're saying
the values that drive the environmental movement are uncool
and antithetical to America, then I would argue just the
opposite. If you think being patriotic is not cool, I'd
say that's not true either. I'd say the most patriotic thing
you can do is to take care of the environment and try to
live sustainably."
~ Robert
F. Kennedy
"What
we are fighting for is not just the fishes and the birds.
We protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own
sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities,
and if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization
and our culture which are to create communities for our
children that provide them with the same opportunities for
dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents
gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure;
the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes
that enrich us. We're not protecting nature for nature's
sake. We're protecting it because it enriches us, yes, it
enriches our economy and we ignore that at our peril. But
it is also enriching us aesthetically, recreationally, culturally,
historically and spiritually. Human beings have other appetites
besides money. And if we don't feed them, we're not going
to grow up…we're not going to become the kind of beings
that our creator intended us to become."
~ Robert
Kennedy, Jr.
The
environment is the most important, the most fundamental,
civil-rights issue.... Four out of every five toxic-waste
dumps in America is in a black neighborhood.
~ Robert
Kennedy, Jr.
I don't
even consider myself an environmentalist anymore. I'm a
free-marketer. I go out into the marketplace and I catch
the polluters who are cheating the free market...
~ Robert
Kennedy, Jr.
*
We
are living in a science-fiction nightmare where children
are gasping for breath on bad-air days because somebody
gave money to a politician. And my children and the kids
of millions of other Americans can no longer go fishing
and eat their catch because somebody gave money to a politician.
~ Robert
Kennedy, Jr.
Waste not the smallest thing created, for grains of sand
make mountains, and atomies infinity.
~ E. Knight
"If
people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they
are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable
made by God, they are called developers."
~ Joseph Wood Krutch
"In
the area of species protection, we should concern
ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might
be easier, or popular in the short term."
~ Richard
Leakey
*
Green
is a label for a certain attitude to life, a certain
kind of respect that one might have for the very source
of things that we take for granted. --
Annie
Lennox
*
That
land is a community is the basic concept of ecology,
but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension
of ethics.
~ Aldo
Leopold
"Having
to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has
the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture
to keep warm."
~ Aldo
Leopold
"Conservation
is a state of harmony between men and land."
~ Aldo
Leopold
"We
abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging
to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong,
we may begin to use it with love and respect."
~ Aldo
Leopold
"Like
winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until
progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question
whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its
cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority,
the opportunity to see geese is more important than television,
and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable
as free speech."
~ Aldo
Leopold
"All
ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the
individual is a member of a community of interdependent
parts. . . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries
of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals,
or collectively: the land."
~ Aldo
Leopold
We have always had reluctance to see a tract of land which
is empty of men as anything but a void. The "waste howling
wilderness" of Deuteronomy is typical. The Oxford Dictionary
defines wilderness as wild or uncultivated land which is
occupied "only" by wild animals. Places not used by us are
"wastes." Areas not occupied by us are "desolate." Could
the desolation be in the soul of man?
~ John A. Livingston
"Rely
on renewable energy flows that are always there whether
we use them or not, such as, sun, wind and vegetation: on
energy income, not depletable energy capital."
~ Amory Lovins
"The
environment isn't over here. The environment isn't over
there. You are the environment."
~ Chief
Oren Lyons
"If
you have a clean environment, you will have a healthy atmosphere.
This will make you happy and your happiness will bring joy
to your parents and it will affect the community, too. Then
there will be peace of mind to one and all."
~ Chief
Oren Lyons
*
We
can still alter our course. It is NOT too late. We still
have options. We need the courage to change our values to
the regeneration of our families, the life that surrounds
us.
~ Chief
Oren Lyons
*
"The
young generation can influence their elders and can
make them understand the environmental problems that
are faced by us today. The youth can make them see that
our environment is deteriorating day by day."
~ Chief
Oren Lyons
Explore
YOUR family tree
and Find YOUR Roots & Connections
"If the world is to be healed through human efforts,
I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people
whose love for this life is even greater than their
fear. People who can open to the web of life that
called us into being".
--
Joanna
Macy
*
"Every
one of us can make a contribution. And quite often we
are looking for the big things and forget that, wherever
we are, we can make a contribution. Sometimes I tell
myself, I may only be planting a tree here, but just
imagine what's happening if there are billions of people
out there doing something. Just imagine the power of
what we can do."
~ Wangari
Maathai
"It
is wrong to suppose the world was created primarily to serve
mankind's purposes and pleasures. A conviction about having
dominion over land and water and living things breeds ideas
of unwarranted self importance. It is a sobering thought
that man's place in Nature's scheme is, after all, a small
one."
~ J. Grant MacEwan
*
"Out
of all those millions and millions of planets floating
around there in space, this is our planet, this is
our little one, so we just got to be aware of it and
take care of it."
~ Paul
McCartney
*
"Let
us pledge our lives and fortunes to aid the great
task of Earth's rejuvenation, and with confidence
and faith, each do our part as a trustee of Earth
to take charge and take care of our planet."
~ John
McConnell,
the Founder of Earth Day
"There
are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew."
~ Marshall McLuhan
*
EARTH DAY reminds the people of the world of the need
for continuing care which is vital to Earth’s safety.
~
Margaret
Mead
*
"We
won't have a society if we destroy the environment"
~ Margaret
Mead
"EARTH
DAY uses one of humanity’s great discoveries, the discovery
of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings
have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories,
their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration
and re-dedication another year, another decade, another
century, another eon. EARTH DAY reminds the people of the
world of the need for continuing care which is vital to
Earth’s safety. …EARTH DAY draws on astronomical phenomena
in a new way; using the vernal equinox, the time when the
Sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length
in all parts of theEarth. To this point in the annual calendar,
EARTH DAY attaches no local or divisive set of symbols,
no statement of the truth or superiority of one way of life
over another. But the selection of the March equinox makes
planetary observance of a shared event possible. The vernal
equinox calls on all mankind to recognize and respect Earth’s
beautiful systems of balance, between the presence of animals
on land, the fish in the sea, birds in the air, mankind,
water, air, and land. Most importantly there must always
be awareness of the actions by people that can disturb this
precious balance."
~ Margaret
Mead
*
“As the ongoing industrial crusade to turn all earthly
life to commercial purpose relentlessly impoverishes
the biosphere and human culture, our living images
of graceful possibility dwindle.”
~ Stephanie
Mills
What
little wilderness remains displays the patterns we must
return to, if our species and as many others as now remain
are to persist here a while. Ideally this would call for
a broad cultural rapprochment with the wild, a long overdue
armistice in civilization’s war upon it.
~ Stephanie
Mills
We
cannot learn freedom and responsibility within the confines
of our own species. We cannot understand life and death
and what they are for in exclusively human terms. Without
that which is wild, the world becomes a cell block.
~ Stephanie
Mills
*
Basically
we should stop doing those things that are destructive
to the environment, other creatures, and ourselves
and figure out new ways of existing.
-- Moby
Arbor
Day is not like other holidays. Each of those reposes on
the past, while Arbor Day proposes for the future."
~ J.
Sterling Morton, Founder of Arbor Day
"The
cultivation of trees is the cultivation of the good, the
beautiful, and the ennobling in man, and for one, I wish
to see it become universal."
~ J.
Sterling Morton, Founder of Arbor Day
*
"Each
generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to
bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards
as we have exhausted and consumed."
~ J.
Sterling Morton, Founder of Arbor Day
*
When
one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it
attached to the rest of the world.
~ John
Muir
*
"The
battle we have fought, and are still fighting for
the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between
right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end
of it ... So we must count on watching and striving
for these trees, and should always be glad to find
anything so surely good and noble to strive for."
~ John
Muir
*
These
temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem
to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting
their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the
Almighty Dollar.
~ John
Muir
Thousands
of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning
to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that
wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations
are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating
rivers, but as fountains of life.
~ John
Muir
"...Unfortunately,
MAN is in the woods, and waste and pure destruction are
making rapid headway. If the importance of forests were
at all understood, even from an economic standpoint, their
preservation would call forth the most watchful attention
of government."
~ John
Muir
In every
walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
~ John
Muir
The
clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
~ John
Muir
Tug
on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything
else in the universe.
~ John
Muir
The
use of solar energy has not been opened up because
the oil industry does not own the sun.
~ Ralph
Nader
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow
it from our children.
~ Native American Proverb
"Treat
the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit
the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
~ Native American Proverb
*
"The fate of the living planet
is the most important issue facing mankind."
~ Gaylord
Nelson
Sleeping
in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts,
her pockets full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before,
a stone on the riverbed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my
thoughts,
and they floated light as moths among the branches of the
perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me,
the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with
a luminous doom.
By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something
better.
--
Mary Oliver
When
we heal the earth, we heal ourselves.
~ David Orr
"Modern
Society will find no solution to the ecological problem
unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyles."
~ Pope John Paul II (Polish Pope. 1920-2005)
The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty.
The activist is the man who cleans up the river.
~ Ross Perot
*
The environmental movement has led some of the most
successful global campaigns in terms of raising public
and political consciousness about the relationship
of environment and development and offering alternatives
for better governance at all levels from community
to the international arena.
~ Michele
Perrault
The
philosophy that I have worked under most of my life
is that the serious study of natural history is an
activity which has far-reaching effects in every aspect
of a person’s life. It ultimately makes people protective
of the environment in a very committed way. It is
my opinion that the study of natural history should
be the primary avenue for creating environmentalists.
~ Roger
Tory Peterson
Birds
are indicators of the environment. If they are in
trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.
~ Roger
Tory Peterson
*
Not all is doom and gloom. We are beginning to understand
the natural world and are gaining a reverence for
life - all life.
~ Roger
Tory Peterson
Racial
injustice, war, urban blight, and environmental rape have
a common denominator in our exploitative economic system.
~ Channing E. Phillips
"The
purpose of conservation: The greatest good to the greatest
number of people for the longest time."
~ Gifford Pinchot, first Director of the U.S. Forest Service
"What
may be possible for a minority of humankind, albeit at great
cost, simply cannot work for the humankind. Our kind of
progress depends on lacerating the Earth, on gouging out
its riches, on stripping is life-sustaining skin of soil
and forest, on poisoning its pure air, on defecating copiously
in its pure water... the single most important indicator
of environmental decline is the extent to which the damage
done is reversible. The most heinous ecological crime of
all is for any one generation so seriously to assault the
web of life that the damage done is literally irreversible
for every generation that follows."
~ Jonathon Porritt
I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing
the sun's energy.... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we
would have had solar energy centuries ago.
~ Sir George Porter
*
"For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet,
and we think little about it beyond this point of
contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild
river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for
the intricate web of life that water supports."
~ Sandra
Postel
*
"Water is finite and we have not done a great
job of managing it in the past."
~
Sandra
Postel
"We
must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren
and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests
for those who can't speak for themselves such as the birds,
animals, fish and trees."
-- Qwatsinas (Hereditary Chief Edward Moody), Nuxalk Nation
It's
incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists
getting together to stop the corporate mentality that
destroys both jobs and the environment.
-- Bonnie
Raitt
Explore
YOUR family tree
and Find YOUR Roots & Connections
*
I
think the environment should be put in the category
of our national security. Defense of our resources
is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise
what is there to defend?
~ Robert
Redford
"We’ve
poisoned the air, the water, and the land. In our passion
to control nature, things have gone out of control. Progress
from now on has to mean something different. We’re running
out of resources and we are running out of time."
~ Robert
Redford
"If
we want energy security, then we have to reduce our appetite
for fossil fuels. There's no other way. Other issues may
crowd the headlines, but this is our fundamental challenge.
Big challenges require bold action and leadership. To get
the United States off fossil fuels in this uneasy national
climate of terrorism and conflict in the Persian Gulf, we
must treat the issue with the urgence and persistance it
deserves. The measure of our success will be the condition
on which we leave the world for the next generation.
~ Robert
Redford
"To
secure our environmental legacy for future generations,
we must find ways to reconcile humanity more satisfactorily
with the natural systems upon which all human life and civilizations
depend. We must recognize that the natural systems of which
we are part have an intrinsic worth transcending narrow
utilitarian values. They must be preserved for their own
sake. No philosopher or religious thinker has been more
sensitive to this intimate relationship between humanity
and nature than St. Francis of Assisi. The powerful contemporary
environmental tradition of preservation, of reverence for
wilderness and protection for all living things - the ideal
that sees, as John Muir said, ‘in God’s wildness... the
hope of the world’ - virtually began with St. Francis."
-- William K. Reilly, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
We're finally going to get the bill for the Industrial Age.
If the projections are right, it's going to be a big one:
the ecological collapse of the planet.
~ Jeremy Rifkin
"I
used to think of the environment as trees and blue sky.
Then I learned that for some people, the environment is
gangs and concrete. All the issues that we face are connected.
Worldwide, ecosystems are being destroyed, and indigenous
peoples are losing their homelands and their entire way
of life. Three out of every five African-Americans and Latinos
in the US lives in a community with a toxic waste site.
As long as pollution is being produced, it's going to go
somewhere, and as long as there are marginalized communities
where land is cheaper and the people don't have the time
or the money to fight back, polluters will have a place
to deposit toxins. As long as people and the planet are
being exploited, and billions of dollars are being made
precisely because laborers and the environment are being
abused and used up, there will be children going hungry
and ecological destruction. As long as war and violence
are in our hearts and our streets as well as in our nations,
as long as corporate greed and unsustainable consumption
are at the forefront of our economies, no child will be
born into a truly safe, peaceful or loving world."
~ Ocean
Robbins
*
As long as people and the planet are being exploited,
and billions of dollars are being made precisely because
laborers and the environment are being abused and
used up, there will be children going hungry and ecological
destruction.
~
Ocean
Robbins
*
If we think systematically, we will stop asking, "How
much is nature worth?" We will know that we are a
piece of nature ourselves.
~ Karl-Henrik
Robčrt
*
“It’s
very important that we expand our use of clean energy
and make a long-term commitment to it.
-- Julia
Roberts
“It’s
very important that we expand our use of clean energy
and make a long-term commitment to it. Biodiesel
and ethanol are better for the environment and for
the air we breathe.The use of biodiesel is a positive
step toward minimizing pollutive emissions and greenhouse
gases. By focusing on school buses, we can affect
the health and wellbeing of the people most susceptible
to that pollution – our children – today.”
-- Julia
Roberts
*
...conservation
of land and conservation of people frequently go
hand in hand.
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt
*
"A nation that destroys it's soils destroys itself.
Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air
and giving fresh strength to our people."
~ Franklin
D. Roosevelt
There
is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery
and wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the
parks is native. The parks stand as the outward symbol of
this great human principle.
~ Franklin
D. Roosevelt
The
throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws
out of balance also the lives of men.
~ Franklin
D. Roosevelt
"Leave
it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and
man can only mar it."
~ Theodore
Roosevelt, 1903
*
"The
nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources
as assets which it must turn over to the next generation
increased, and not impaired in value."
~ Theodore
Roosevelt
To
waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust
the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness,
will result in undermining in the days of our children the
very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to
them amplified and developed.
~ Theodore
Roosevelt
"I
feel most emphatically that we should not turn into shingles
a tree which was old when the first Egyptian conqueror penetrated
to the valley of the Euphrates."
~ Theodore
Roosevelt
"I
recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop
and use our natural resources, but I do not recognize the
right to waste them, or to rob by wasteful use, the generations
that come after us."
~ Theodore
Roosevelt
The
function of our Government is to insure to all its citizens,
now and hereafter, their rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. If we of this generation destroy the
resources from which our children would otherwise derive
their livelihood, we reduce the capacity of our land to
support a population, and so either degrade the standard
of living or deprive the coming generations of their fight
to life on this continent.
If
there is any one duty which more than another we owe it
to our children and our children's children to perform at
once, it is to save the forests of this country, for they
constitute the first and most important element in the conservation
of the natural resources of this country.
~ Theodore
Roosevelt
You
forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs
to no one.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
*
Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control
our appetites.
~ William
Ruckelshaus, 1st EPA Administrator
You go into a community and they will vote 80 percent to
20 percent in favor of a tougher Clean Air Act, but if you
ask them to devote 20 minutes a year to having their car
emissions inspected, they will vote 80 to 20 against it.
We are a long way in this country from taking individual
responsibility for the environmental problem.
~ William
Ruckelshaus, 1st EPA Administrator
"I
am drawn to the wild not because it is wild but because
it is sensible, logical, ordered, stable, resilient. Wild
nature is everything we're struggling to regain."
~ Carl Safina
The
only durable community is the one that embraces the whole
planet, wild and tame . . .
-- Scott Russel Sanders, Voyagers
"A
Healthy Ecology is the Basis for a Healthy Economy."
~ Claudine Schneider, U.S. Representative
*
"Man
talks of a battle with Nature, forgetting that if
he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing
side."
~ E.
F. Schumacher
*
"We
still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only
with our fellow men but also with nature..."
~ E.F.
Schumacher
The
system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing,
self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.
~ E.F.
Schumacher
By
means of trees, wildlife could be conserved, pollution decreased
and the beauty of our landscapes enhanced. This is the way,
or at least one of the ways, to spiritual, moral, and cultural
regeneration.
~ E.F.
Schumacher
"We
still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with
our fellow men but also with nature and, above all, with
those Higher Powers which have made nature and have made
us; for, assuredly, we have not come about by accident and
certainly have not made ourselves"
~ E.F.
Schumacher
*
"Until mankind can extend the circle of his compassion
to include all living things, he will never, himself,
know peace."
~ Albert
Schweitzer
"Man
has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall.
He will end by destroying the earth."
~ Albert
Schweitzer
"The
conservationist's most Important task, if we are to save
the earth, is to educate."
~ Peter Scott, founder chairman of the World Wildlife Federation
*
All things are connected like the blood that unites
us, We did not weave the web of life. We are merely
a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to
ourselves.
~ Chief
Seattle
"Whatever
befalls the earth, befalls the people of the earth."
~ Chief Seattle
Humankind
has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within
it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things
are bound together. All things connect.
~ Chief
Seattle, 1855
*
I
feel that our planet is in peril and that creating
a sustainable planet for my children and my children’s
children is the most important thing I can do in this
lifetime.
-- Kyra
Sedgwick
Ever
since I had my first child I have been passionate
in my commitment to preserve our precious resources
for my children and their children’s children. This
is the obligation of all of us visiting this planet
for a limited time.
-- Kyra
Sedgwick
*
Just as with other great words, the word environment
means different things. You might say that a cave
woman twenty thousand years ago sweeping out the cave
was improving the environment. Many people improving
the environment think only in terms of the air they
breathe in their hometown and the water in the aquifer
under their hometown. My guess is very few are thinking
centuries ahead or thousand of years ahead, but that’s
what we have to do.
~ Pete
Seeger
So bleak is the picture... that the bulldozer and not the
atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention
of the 20th century.
~ Philip Shabecoff
Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment;
unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to
themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the
efforts of unreasonable men.
-- George
Bernard Shaw
*
"The primary threat to nature and people today comes
from centralising and monopolising power and control.
Not until diversity is made the logic of production
will there be a chance for sustainability, justice
and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is
no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative."
~ Vandana
Shiva
"America's
last wild places are everyone's good dream--our national
commons--the enclaves we set aside for solice and renewal."
~ Annick Smith
"Our
moral and ethical responsibility is to protect other species
in the spirit of husbandry rather than destroy them in and
attitude of conquest."
~ Charles Southwick
*
"The cleanup costs of polluting a river, injecting pesticides
into the ground water, or putting noxious gases into
the air have not been figured into the cost of the manufacturing
or agribusiness that put them there in the first place.
Historically, the economic incentive has been to pollute."
-- Gloria
Steinem
"Wildness
can be a way of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures,
a part of the geography of hope."
~ Wallace Stenger
The
Truly Healthy environment is not merely safe but stimulating."
~ William H. Stewart
*
The Earth Charter is important as an expression of
the commitment of people throughout the Earth to evoke
their own deepest moral, spiritual and ethical principles
in the task of ensuring a sustainable future for those
who inhabit the Earth now and those who will follow
us on the Earth.
-- Maurice
Strong
Nothing
less than the fate of the planet is at stake... No
place on the planet can remain an island of affluence
in a sea of misery.
-- Maurice
Strong
We're
either going to save the world or no one will be saved.
-- Maurice
Strong
*
“Our
personal consumer choices have ecological, social,
and spiritual consequences. It is time to re-examine
some of our deeply held notions that underlie our
lifestyles.”
-- David
Suzuki
It's
time we stopped ignoring the environment. Let's not
let another election go by without making this a high
priority.
-- David
Suzuki
"...I
only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people
throwing away things we could use."
~ Mother
Teresa
Any
progress achieved in addressing the goals of poverty and
hunger eradication, improved health, and environmental protection
is unlikely to be sustained if most of the ecosystem services
on which humanity relies continues to be degraded.
-- UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
*
As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening,
through the smog across the poisoned waters of our
native earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether
we really wish some future universal historian on
another planet to say about us: "With all their genius
and with all their skill, they ran out of foresight
and air and food and water and ideas," or, "They went
on playing politics until their world collapsed around
them."
~ U
Thant
*
"What's
the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable
planet to put it on?"
~
Henry
David Thoreau
Every
creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine
trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve
its life than destroy it.
~ Henry
David Thoreau
*
"We must go through a natural revolution if we are
to survive on earth. We need to change people's perceptions.
If there's no environment, there's no human race.
We are in a state of global denial."
~ Ted
Turner
*
"Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife
are in fact plans to protect man."
~ Stewart
Udall
"A
land ethic for tomorrow should be as honest as Thoreau's
Walden, and as comprehensive as the sensitive science
of ecology. It should stress the oneness of our resources
and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain
of life."
~ Stewart
Udall
The
packaging for a microwavable "microwave" dinner is programmed
for a shelf life of maybe six months, a cook time of two
minutes and a landfill dead-time of centuries.
~ David Wann
"We
have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly
on the earth as its other creatures do."
~ Barbara Ward
"Our
only choice, whatever our dogma, is to protect the Earth.
This is our common progress or our common ruin. There is
nothing in between"
~ Barbra Ward, Special Advisor of the UN Development Program
"You
didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a
wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here."
~ Alan Watts
*
"When we realize we can make a buck cleaning up the
environment, it will be done!"
-- Dennis
Weaver
"To
halt the decline of an ecosystem, it is necessary to think
like an ecosystem."
~ Douglas P. Wheeler
*
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future
for man if he spent less time proving that he can
outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness
and respecting her seniority.
~ E.
B. White
"I
awake each morning torn between a desire to save the world
and a desire to savour the world. This makes it hard to
plan my day."
~ E.
B. White
"I
am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious
for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into
submission. We would stand a better change of survival if
we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively
instead of skeptically and dictatorially."
~ E.
B. White
We shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until
we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason
for existence save to serve man.
~ Lynn White, Jr.
*
"This is what you should do;
love the Earth and sun and the animals...
~ Walt
Whitman
After
you have exhausted what there is in business, politics,
conviviality, and so on - have found that none of
these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what
remains? Nature remains.
~ Walt
Whitman
"Now
I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is
to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."
~ Walt
Whitman
"This
is what you should do;
love the Earth and sun and the animals,
despite riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labour to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence towards the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown
or to any many or number of men...
re-examine all you have been told at school
or church or in any book,
dismiss what insults your soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem."
~ Walt
Whitman
In its broadest ecological context, economic development
is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting
the natural environment.
~ Richard Wilkinson
To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what
it means to be human, what we are connected to rather
than what we are separate from."
~ Terry
Tempest Williams
*
"Energy Policy will be and should be driven by environmental
policy in the future."
~ Timothy
Wirth
"If
we do not permit the Earth to produce beauty and joy, it
will in the end not produce food either."
~ Joseph Woodkrutch
