Environmental problems are really social problems anyway. They begin with people as the cause and end with people as the victims — Edmund Hillary
Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today — Jacques Yves Cousteau
One of the major problems is what we do to the soil, the air, the water and everything, we take in our food. — Charlotte Gerson
Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever. — Leonardo DiCaprio
Environmental degradation, overpopulation, refugees, narcotics, terrorism, world crime movements, and organized crime are worldwide problems that don't stop at a nation's borders. — Warren Christopher
The most important issue of the 21st century will be the condition of the global environment. — Ian McHarg
The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture. — Gaylord Nelson
Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
The environmental crisis has deep spiritual, philosophical, and religious roots and causes. It is not merely the result of bad engineering. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Loads of chemicals and hazardous wastes have been introduced into the atmosphere that didn't even exist in 1948. The environmental condition of the planet is far worse than it was 42 years ago. — Gaylord Nelson
Environmental challenges have the power to deny equality of opportunity and hold back the progress of communities. — Lisa P. Jackson
Without environmental sustainability, economic stability and social cohesion cannot be achieved — Phil Harding
The environmental crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis. — Thomas Berry
Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We're not the brain, we are a cancer on nature. — David Foreman
Short Environmental Problems Quotes
A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmental damaging consumption patterns. — Maurice Strong
Where the quality of life goes down for the environment, the quality of life goes down for humans. — George Holland
Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
If the environment were a bank, it would have been saved by now — Bernie Sanders
There is an increasing sense of what can be called legal pollution. — Thomas Ehrlich
Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem.
Environmental Issues Quotes
Today, scientists sound the alarm on other environmental dangers. Vested interests still hire their own scientists to confuse the issue. But in the end, nature, will not be fooled. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
The fate of the living planet is the most important issue facing mankind. — Gaylord Nelson
People in Slow Food understand that food is an environmental issue. — Michael Pollan
The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to undrstand. We listen to reply.
When future generations judge those who came before them on environmental issues, they may conclude "they didn't know": let us not go down in history as the generations who knew, but didn't care — Mikhail Gorbachev
Do not listen to those who say there is nothing you can do to the very real and large social and environmental issues of our time. — Maude Barlow
When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment, it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands. — Margaret Thatcher
The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
You cannot achieve environmental security and human development without addressing the basic issues of health and nutrition. — Gro Harlem Brundtland
Real security, in other words, is inseparable from issues of energy policy; education; public health; preservation of soils, forests, and waters; and broadly based, sustainable prosperity. — David W. Orr
It is extremely important to me that the social and environmental issues associated with the production of fashion clothing are addressed. — Bonnie Wright
We've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. — Tim Wirth
Environmental Challenges Quotes
The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves. — Rachel Carson
As I became more interested in behavior from the standpoint of neurobiology, the stress-response became really interesting. What stress physiology is about is - when there is a new environmental challenge, how does an individual adapt? It seemed like a natural transition. — Robert M. Sapolsky
Just put one foot in front of the other. — Austin Peck
Be selective in your battles, don't make every problem a war.
Uncle Sam took up the challenge in the year of '33 For the farmer and the factory and all of you and me. He said, "Roll along Columbia. You can ramble to the sea, But river while you're ramblin' you can do some work for me." — Woody Guthrie
We have to understand the ubiquity of energy in everything we do. Energy is core to our economy and it brings with it environmental challenges, and it's core to our security challenges. — Ernest Moniz
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
Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved.
The good news is, we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need, more are being developed.... But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we must not wait. — Al Gore
We are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
A fascinating challenge facing today's environmental movement is how to best approach the reversal of past decisions that altered once-pristine environmental spaces for the sake of urgent man-made needs. — Matt Gonzalez
Environmental degradation is one of the biggest challenges we have. I think a question that we're not asking ourselves is: 'Isn't humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature?' — Pope Francis
World Environment Quotes
Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment — David Attenborough
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. — E. O. Wilson
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think. — Gregory Bateson
If it can be solved, theres no need to worry, and if it can't be solved, worry is of no use.
The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. — Lady Bird Johnson
Exercise, from a public health perspective, is an unmitigated failure. The world's longest-lived people live in environments that nudge them into more movement. They don't use power tools, they do their own yard work, they grow a garden. — Dan Buettner
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
Be grateful for small things, big things, and everything in between. Count your blessings, not your problems.
To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are. — Marshall Berman
But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy...One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy any more. — Ottmar Edenhofer
Factory farming is terrible for the environment—not to mention that it's gross. The best thing you can do, if you think about it, is to become a vegetarian and just spread the word. The world would change for the better for animals, humans, and the planet if everyone took that step. — Christofer Drew
Environmental Pollution Quotes
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children — Chief Seattle
We never know the worth of water till the well is dry. — Thomas Fuller
We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All these tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life. To say we do not care is to say in the most literal sense that "we choose death." — Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth
Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you. — Wendell Berry
We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of 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. — Albert Einstein
Despite Arizona's remarkable growth in recent years, we have met the current federal health standards for ozone pollution and the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved our dust control plan. — Jane D. Hull
Anyone can run away, it's super easy. Facing problems and working through them, that's what makes you strong.
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religous values, and all other human endeavors would change radically. — Amit Goswami
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us. — Henrik Tikkanen
We've polluted the stratosphere with these chlorine and bromine compounds, and because it's now colder, and because we have this change in the climate, we're getting more ozone loss than we would have gotten in a normal year. — Paul Newman
The sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away. — Stephanie Mills
Environment Protection Quotes
You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them. — Wangari Maathai
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. — Wallace Stegner
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed. — Mahatma Gandhi
Running from your problems is just adding another one to the list.
We have to strike a balance of responsibility between our duty to update other sources of energy, protecting the environment, protecting our environment and ensuring a proper legacy for the next generations. — Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan
There is much the government can do and should do to improve the environment. But even more important is the individual who plants a tree or cleans a corner of neglect. For it is the individual who himself benefits, and also protects a heritage of beauty for his children and future generations. — Lady Bird Johnson
We're a part of nature. As we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. It's a selfish thing to want to protect nature. — Yvon Chouinard
If you only focus on your problems, that's all you'll ever see.
Simple, easy actions can protect the health of our water resources and help save drinking water supplies. There is not one individual who cannot help to make a difference to the health of the environment — Ian Kiernan
Why has it seemed that the only way to protect the environment is with heavy-handed government regulation? — Gale Norton
We do not face a choice between protecting our environment or protecting our economy. We face a choice between protecting our economy by protecting our environment - or allowing environmental havoc to create economic havoc. — Robert Rubin
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man's heart away from nature becomes hard. — Luther Standing Bear
Environmental Crisis Quotes
When the well is dry, we know the worth of water. — Benjamin Franklin
The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences. — Al Gore
It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life. — Rene Dubos
Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution,
The environmental crisis arises from a fundamental fault: our systems of production - in industry, agriculture, energy and transportation - essential as they are, make people sick and die. — Barry Commoner
It is essential that we take steps to prevent chemical substances from becoming environmental hazards. Unless we develop better methods to assure adequate testing of chemicals, we will be inviting the environmental crisis of the future. — Richard M. Nixon
Today, we live in a world of incredible wealth and technology, alongside the most horrendous conditions of poverty, war and environmental crisis. This is result of capitalism, a system based on prioritizing profits not human need where the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a capitalist elite. — Kshama Sawant
The threat of environmental crisis is the 'international disaster key' to unlock the New World Order. — Mikhail Gorbachev
I think there is a danger that an environmental crisis can be used in precisely the same way as the terrorist threat can be used in terms of giving up freedom. — Naomi Klein
If people see how we're all interconnected and connected with Nature, we wouldn't have an environmental crisis, we wouldn't have two dozen wars all over the world. — Stanley Krippner
Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom - and lakes die. — Gil Scott-Heron
At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rain forest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity — Chico Mendes
While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment. — Barry Goldwater
The best friend on earth of man is the tree: When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources of the earth. — Frank Lloyd Wright
Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it's common sense. — Ronald Reagan
When you defile the pleasant streams,
And the wild bird's abiding place,
You massacre a million dreams,
And cast your spittle in God's face — John Drinkwater
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops. — Paul Brooks
Once destroyed, nature's beauty cannot be repurchased at any price — Ansel Adams
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
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them — Aldo Leopold
Destroying The Environment Quotes
Look closely at nature. Every species is a masterpiece, exquisitely adapted to the particular environment in which it has survived. Who are we to destroy or even diminish biodiversity? — E. O. Wilson
The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations. — Pope John Paul II
Capitalism and the thirst for profit without limits of the capitalist system are destroying the planet...Climate change has placed all humankind before a great choice: to continue in the ways of capitalism and death, or to start down the path of harmony with nature and respect for life. — Evo Morales
When the forest is destroyed, when the river is dammed, when the biodiversity is stolen, when fields are waterlogged or turned saline because of economic activities, it is a question of survival for these people. So our environmental movements have been justice movements. — Vandana Shiva
Eventually we'll realize that if we destroy the ecosystem, we destroy ourselves. — Jonas Salk
We won't have a society if we destroy the environment. — Margaret Mead
My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first. — Ursula K. Le Guin
Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race or people, barbaric or civilized — Hugh Hammond Bennett
How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us? — Paulo Coelho
I can see now a vision emerging how Canada is going to profit in the future from our Arctic resources without destroying the environment on which it is all based. — Brian Mulroney
Environmental Protection Quotes
Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the worlds resources will be negotiated. — Ottmar Edenhofer
There can be no lasting prosperity for our people if we do not protect our planet. — Rishi Sunak
The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment. — Ralph Nader
The Long Island Sound is an environmentally unique estuary that needs to be protected. — Tim Bishop
We learned that economic growth and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand. — Christopher Dodd
I believe in a sound, strong environmental policy that protects the health of our people and a wise stewardship of our nation's natural resources. — Ronald Reagan
What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another. — Mahatma Gandhi
I've always been a strong supporter of environmental protection and initiatives in that area. But I'm willing to set priorities. If we have to make reductions in one place, we'll have to-in order to increase another place, I'm willing to do that. — Judd Gregg
But, as environment minister, I am very interested in a thriving German automobile industry, because I can only pay for the rising costs of environmental protection at home and abroad if there are people in Germany with jobs and who pay taxes. — Sigmar Gabriel
Environmental Degradation Quotes
There can be no peace as long as there is grinding poverty, social injustice, inequality, oppression, environmental degradation, and as long as the weak and small continue to be trodden by the mighty and powerful. — Dalai Lama
Environmental degradation is an iatrogenic disease induced by economic physicians who treat the basic malady of unlimited wants by prescribing unlimited growth.... Yet one certainly does not cure a treatment-induced disease by increasing the treatment dosage. — Herman E. Daly
It's clear that agriculture, done right, is the best means the world has today to simultaneously tackle food security, poverty and environmental degradation. — Irene Rosenfeld
The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter. — Wangari Maathai
The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human (and nonhuman) impoverishment. — Derrick Jensen
Unprecedented technological capabilities combined with unlimited human creativity have given us tremendous power to take on intractable problems like poverty, unemployment, disease, and environmental degradation. Our challenge is to translate this extraordinary potential into meaningful change. — Muhammad Yunus
All our efforts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated. — Kofi Annan
Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation. — Sherwood Boehlert
Instead, we have found ourselves gasping for air in a sea of corruption, dysfunction, environmental degradation, waste, disenchantment and inequality—and the harder we compete, the more unequal we become. — Margaret Heffernan
Wealth and vegetation go together, and that exacerbates environmental injustice. The poor bear the burden of degraded environments. — Natalie Jeremijenko
We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
There are nuclear weapons in China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan. It wouldn't take much to send a couple of warheads off on this planet somewhere that would cause a lot of environmental damage, then if you have got someone who wants to retaliate you have real problems. — Edward James Olmos
The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth - social and environmental. — Ingrid Newkirk
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. — Oren Lyons
Global warming is not only the number one environmental challenge we face today, but one of the most important issues facing all of humanity... We all have to do our part to raise awareness about global warming and the problems we as a people face in promoting a sustainable environmental future for our planet. — Leonardo DiCaprio
Most Americans don't know about environmental problems, because we have in our country a negligent and indolent press. The biggest lie that the right wing holds in our country is that there is such a thing as a liberal media. Americans are getting their news from the right-wing media. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems — Cyril Connolly
Smog is affecting larger parts of China, and environmental pollution has become a major problem, which is natures red-light warning against the model of inefficient and blind development. — Li Keqiang
If we want to address global warming, along with the other environmental problems associated with our continued rush to burn our precious fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we must learn to use our resources more wisely, kick our addiction, and quickly start turning to sources of energy that have fewer negative impacts. — David Suzuki
Complexity is one of the great problems in environmental design. — Christopher Alexander
The greatest problem we face is the growing number of people living in poverty. The related sense of hopelessness has to be impacting on every part of environmental management. — Richard Leakey
We are altering the most basic forces of the planet's surface - the content of the sunlight, the temperature and aridity - and that brings out the most powerful questions about who is in charge. If you wanted to give a name to this theological problem, I think you could say that we are engaged in decreation. — Bill McKibben
Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational. — James Lovelock
As I travel around the world, people think the only place where there is potential conflict [over] water is the Middle East, but they are completely wrong. We have the problem all over the world. — Kofi Annan
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
The basic building block of peace and security for all peoples is economic and social security, anchored in sustainable development. It is a key to all problems. Why? Because it allows us to address all the great issues-poverty, climate, environment and political stability-as parts of the whole. — Ban Ki-moon
The destruction of aquatic ecosystem health, and the increasing water scarcity, are in my opinion the most pressing environmental problems facing human kind. — Maude Barlow
People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem! — Jared Diamond
We still have too much air and water pollution and we still need to work to reduce it. But we also need to put the problem of pollution into a historical as well as scientific perspective. — Ronald Reagan
Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental. — David Foreman
Today when the public thinks of the products of science it is likely to think about environmental problems, an unproductive armament industry, careless or dishonest 'scientific' reports, Livermore cheers for 'nukes forever' and a huge amount of self-serving noise on every subject from global warming to 'the face of God'. — Leo Kadanoff
Overconsumption is the mother of all environmental problems. For the first time in the history of capitalism, consumption itself has become controversial. — Kalle Lasn
For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference. — Jared Diamond
The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature. We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters... and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
Like most problems with technology, pollution is a problem of scale. The biosphere might have been able to tolerate our dirty old friends coal and oil if we burned them gradually, but how long can it withstand a blaze of consumption so frenzied that the dark size of this planet glows like a fanned ember in the night of space. — Ronald Wright
The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one-third of the world's resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people's lands. That's what's going on. — Winona LaDuke
A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes the power of the Earth to sustain it and piles up ever more insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can only be called violent. — E. F. Schumacher
The problem of numbers can only be dealt with by recognizing that people have a fundamental right to economic security. If you provide them with economic and environmental security, the population will stabilize itself. — Vandana Shiva
I always thought we had an environmental problem, but I hadn't realized how urgent it was. James Lovelock writes that by the end of this century there will be one billion people left. — Vivienne Westwood
The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it. — Barry Commoner
All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people. — David Attenborough
Humans build their societies around consumption of fossil water long buried in the earth, and these societies, being based on temporary resources, face the problem of being temporary themselves. — Charles Bowden
Reliable and affordable energy is essential for meeting basic human needs and fueling economic growth, but many of the most difficult and dangerous environmental problems at every level of economic development arise from the harvesting, transport, processing, and conversion of energy — John Holdren
There are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems – including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity – than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents. — Preston Manning
Practically every environmental problem we have can be traced to our addiction to fossil fuels, primarily oil. — Dennis Weaver
I am on the board of corporations who contribute both to environmental problems and their solutions. And I am on the NGO side: the Earth Council and other organizations. — Maurice Strong
We're talking about should we increase taxes? Why not put a tax on carbon emissions. It would raise a lot of money, it would reduce the environmental damages in the future, it would solve so many problems, and it would be a much more constructive thing to do than to think about raising the income tax. — Robert F. Engle
And no matter how serious an environmental problem the automobile poses in today's big city, the horse was dirtier, smelled worse, killed and maimed more people, and congested the streets just as much. — Peter Drucker
The oceans are in trouble. There are some serious problems out there that I believe are not clear to many people. My hope is to continually find new ways of creating images and stories that both celebrate the sea yet also highlight environmental problems. Photography can be a powerful instrument for change. — Brian Skerry
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