“The environmental crisis is a sign that the ecosphere is now so heavily strained that its continued stability is threatened. It is a warning that we must discover the source of this suicidal drive and master it before it destroys the environment-and ourselves.”

Finally, since human beings are uniquely capable of producing materials not found in nature, environmental degradation may be due to the resultant intrusion into an ecosystem of a substance wholly foreign to it.

In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.

Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements-the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern city itself-are, in the environment, failures.

Science is triumphant with far-ranging success, but its triumph is somehow clouded by growing difficulties in providing for the simple necessities of human life on earth.

The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.

If you ask what you are going to do about global warming, the only rational answer is to change the way in which we do transportation, energy production, agriculture and a good deal of manufacturing. The problem originates in human activity in the form of the production of goods.

I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It’s irrational.

When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.

Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.

Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.

Recycling is a good thing to do. It makes people feel good to do it. The thing I want to emphasize is the vast difference between recycling for the purpose of feeling good and recycling for the purpose of solving the trash problem.

The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.

Everything is connected to everything else.

In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.

By adopting the control strategy, the nation’s environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.

World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.

If we continue to think of ourselves mostly as consumers, it’s going to be very hard to bring our environmental troubles under control. But it’s also going to be very hard to live the rounded and joyful lives that could be ours. This is a subversive volume in all the best ways!

I think one of the great things about a football season is that you see teams play in all types of environments, and if you can’t handle one of them, you probably don’t deserve to win anyway.

The latest computer modeling I’ve seen indicates that at mid-century, there might be 150 million people classified as “environmental refugees.”

I believe very strongly that corporations could and should be a major force for resolving social and environmental concerns in the twenty-first century.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

Feeling that morality has nothing to do with the way you use the resources of the world is an idea that can’t persist much longer. If it does, then we won’t.

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.

I’m such an advocate for animal rights and environmental rights.