QUOTATIONS - ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES/SOLUTIONS

We shall weep over the fate of Brazil's manatee, Papua-Asia's forests, the Galapagos' hammerhead shark; we shall rush off to see 'Oceans' and 'Avatar.' But while we're looking elsewhere, the massacre continues here.
- Hervé Kempf, Le Monde, January 2010

The costs of industrializing the biologically rich California deserts will be measured in terms of species extinction, ecosystem degradation and the perpetuation of human self-deception.
- Bruce Pavlik, Mills College, comment on solar farm development, 2009

The next time someone tells you that population is at the root of our troubles, remind them that the average American uses more energy between the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve and dinner on January 2 than the average, say, Tanzanian consumes in a year. Population matters, but it really matters when you multiply it by proximity to Costco.
- Bill McKibben, Mother Jones, 2009

Nature never gets paid. The current economic crash is a global margin call on remaining natural resources, on nature herself (or what is left of her). We're going to default and nature will get left holding the bag. Too bad we forgot that we too are nature.
- Dryki, The Oil Drum, December 8, 2008

The fundamentally American notion [is] that there is no limit to what one can do, and that solutions will be found by going for more, or bigger, rather than doing less or smaller.
- Jerome à Paris, June 28, 2008

Living through the [Bosnian] war was really hard. It's a shocking experience when you (live) without energy, without water, without food. This is what can happen to people if you don't care about the planet.
- Ivona Vujica, quoted by Sheila M. Dabu, Toronto Star, May 23, 2007

The only possible and lasting solution to many of the world's environmental problems lies in reduced consumer demand.
- Michael Frome, Earth First!

No more can small beginnings, the incrementals of time, and the web of the world be ignored.
- Garrett Hardin, Exploring New Ethics for Survival

You can't do pretty much as you please on the earth, not for long, anyway, not unless you want the bubble to break and the blackness come pouring in like black rain down a cold rainspout.
- Lawrence Collins, Only A Little Planet

Pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth/That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
- William Shakespeare, Julius Ceasar

Leaving Nevada I thought about those dead lakes shining in the desert sun, the dead birds I had seen in Spokane, the hundreds and thousands of abandoned mines still leaking poisons into the West's water, the sprawling chemical filth of the flats below the Anaconda smelter stack, the blowouts that still corrupt rivers and water tables. At what ultimate cost, I finally wondered, have we held so fiercely to this antique law, dreaming the long dream of treasure that I once saluted with such enthusiasm.
- T.H. Watkins, Hard Rock Legacy, National Geographic, March 2000

What people don't understand is that another road is not going to relieve congestion; it's going to cause it. You cannot build your way out of traffic.
- Jim Baca, Mayor of Albuquerque

Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.
- Stewart Lee Udall, Secretary of the Interior 1961-1969

Ultimately it is human population growth and increasing consumption that drives every aspect of environmental degradation.
- George McGavin, Endangered: Wildlife on the Brink of Extinction

The American way of life is non-negotiable.
- Vice President Dick Cheney

If you don't want to negotiate your way of life, you automatically get a new negotiating partner, named reality.
- Escape from Suburbia: Beyond the American Dream, Director Gregory Greene, December 2006

THE BOOK	The American West At Risk summarizes the dominant human-generated environmental challenges in the 11 contiguous arid western United States - America's legendary, even mythical, frontier. It now faces depletion of many of these resources, and potentially serious threats to its few "renewable" resources. read more... Purchase Here at Oxford Press				ABOUT THE AUTHORS