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

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.

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.

The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.

In certain ways, I’m not very different than I was when I was a teenager.

As the earth spins through space, a view from above the North Pole would encompass most of the wealth of the world – most of its food, productive machines, doctors, engineers and teachers. A view from the opposite pole would encompass most of the world’s poor.

My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically – and destructively – demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline – which prevented it from entering the environment.

Since problems spill across borders, security anywhere depends on sustainable development everywhere.

We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice. Now we must add a new fight – the fight for electoral justice.

What they [Jim deMint and the oil lobby] do care about is the precedent. If they open up ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), they’ll think they can do anything to the environment – anything at all. Drilling in Yosemite? In the Grand Canyon? What’s next?

These days, most nature photographers are deeply committed to the environmental message

If man has not found ways to deal with environmental problems such as water and air pollution by 1998, it will be too late. The future is not determined and it lies in our own hands.

A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.

Not since Ancient Greece have cities been thought of as the ideal living environment for humans. And that was so long ago it predates the invention of trousers.