Places change over time with or without oil spills, but humans are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher – and humans, as well as the corals, fish and other creatures, are suffering the consequences.
SYLVIA EARLEForty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It’s agriculture. It’s golf courses. It’s domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
-
-
Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.
SYLVIA EARLE -
The Arctic is a place that historically, during all preceding human history, has largely been an icy realm with an impact on ocean currents.
SYLVIA EARLE -
You don’t stand around arguing about who’s responsible, or who’s going to pay.
SYLVIA EARLE -
When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.
SYLVIA EARLE -
There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet.
SYLVIA EARLE -
There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There’s still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Take away the ice and snow, increase the temperature by even a little, and the realm that makes their lives possible literally melts away.
SYLVIA EARLE -
To lose it means that we will dismember the vital systems that make the Arctic work. It’s not just a cost to the people who live there. It’s a cost to all people everywhere.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Health to the ocean means health for us.
SYLVIA EARLE -
What we once used as weapons of war, we now use as weapons against fish.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Large areas of the Gulf have escaped being scraped by trawls, crushed by more than 40,000 miles of pipelines, or displaced by one of 50,000 oil and gas wells drilled since the middle of the 20th century. Some places have been deliberately protected.
SYLVIA EARLE -
America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.
SYLVIA EARLE -
I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Meat reared on land matures relatively quickly, and it takes only a few pounds of plants to produce a pound of meat.
SYLVIA EARLE -
No water, no life. No blue, no green.
SYLVIA EARLE