Environmental Quotes - Page 32

We can't just tack on environmental balance to a fundamentally imbalanced system.

The language of commerce has been engineered to describe the overt purpose of a thing, but cannot encompass fringe benefits or peripheral pleasures. It weighs the obvious against what in its terms are incomprehensible. When I drive from here to there, speed, privacy, control, and safety are easy to claim. When I walk, what happens is more vague, more ambiguous-and in many circumstances much richer. I am out in the world. It's exercise, though not so quantifiably as on a treadmill in a gym with a digital readout.

The climate crowd did a lousy job communicating. Several reports have itemized the fact that over a billion dollars was spent on climate by the environmental side over the past decade. There is simply no excuse for the failure to communicate.

I think the environmental movement is now so large and diverse that it's hard to talk of it as a single entity.

Indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month a new ornament.

The most profound and serious indication of the moral implications underlying the ecological problem is the lack of respect for life evident in many of the patterns of environmental pollution.

While in some cases the damage already done may well be irreversible, in many other cases it can still be halted. It is necessary, however, that the entire human community - individuals, States and international bodies - take seriously the responsibility that is theirs.

Technology that pollutes can also cleanse, production that amasses can also distribute justly, on condition that the ethic of respect for life and human dignity, for the rights of today's generations and those to come, prevails.

The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet's capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world ... we need to reflect on our accountability before those who will have to endure the dire consequences.

The 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

We certainly would resolve the problems of the charities that are working in areas where they can do the most good. So if you consider that the U.S. foreign aid budget is 30 billion, yes, we could make a major contribution to reducing global poverty, start to deal much better with some of the other big environmental problems that the world faces. So I think we could solve a lot of problems.

Putting the AR movement directly in opposition to the environmental movement, which should be our natural allies in fighting human arrogance and domination of the planet.

Usually the way I think someone is radicalized is through a personal experience. The thing about environmental activism is that we are all having a personal experience with our environment, whether we open our eyes or not.

In my opinion, if most urban meat-eaters were to visit an industrial broiler house, to se how the birds are raised, and could see the birds being "harvested" and then being "processed" in a poultry processing plant, they would not be impressed and some, perhaps many of them would swear off eating chicken and perhaps all meat.

Musicians have made incredible contributions to the conservation and environmental movement and continue to do so, more than ever.

As Joanna Macy reminds us, "Information by itself can increase resistance [to engagement], deepening the sense of apathy and powerlessness." Stories about particular individuals and specific situations usually have the opposite effect. By giving unwieldy problems a human face, they also bring them down to a human-and thus manageable-scale.

While progress should never come to a halt, there are many places it should never come to at all.

We have reached a point where the value we do add to our economy is now being outweighed by the value we are removing, not only from future generations in terms of diminished resources, but from ourselves in terms of unlivable cities, deadening jobs, deteriorating health, and rising crime. In biological terms, we have become a parasite and are devouring our host.

Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been especially aggressive in pursuing regulations that specifically target coal power plants. These regulations have already put hundreds of Pennsylvanians out of work and will continue to cause economic distress while yielding negligible benefits for our environment.

There is no one subsists by himself alone.

Regulate the banks, get money out of elections; raise the minimum wage, environmental issues. They're all very important and the Occupy movement made a difference. It shifted not only the discourse but to some extent, action on these issues.

There are all the activist groups on every imaginable topic - solidarity groups, environmental and feminist groups - sectors of these movements do very valuable work.

Bolivia is in the lead internationally in talking about the threat of environmental catastrophe. It's generally true where there are indigenous populations, there are important things happening; where the indigenous populations have been marginalized or exterminated, things go to a disaster. This is true worldwide, and Bolivia is striking because it's a majority population and in the lead.

I do not see how we can rationally oppose high speed rail because of the environmental and other costs without considering the social and human consequences of the radical elimination of transportation that this entails.

My feeling is that a human being or any complex organism has a system of cognitive structures that develop much in the way the physical organs of the body develop. That is, in their fundamental character they are innate; their basic form is determined by the genetic structure of the organism. Of course, they grow under particular environmental conditions, assuming a specific form that admits of some variation. Much of what is distinctive among human beings is a specific manner in which a variety of shared cognitive structures develop.