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Quotations about the Environment,
Pollution, Climate Change, Conservation,
Ecology, Ecocide, Environmentalism,
Quotes for Earth Day, etc.
If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness. ~Edward Abbey
Man changes the face of the earth much more rapidly than nature does... ~Joseph Wood Krutch, Grand Canyon, 1958
You think you can fix everything, change everything. But there will come a day when things cannot be fixed. And, you know what, it will be a day just like today. ~American Indian elder, quoted by Kent Nerburn, "Thoughts on the Dakota Access Pipeline," 2016
Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men. ~Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1935
...The bergs dismembered to the earth would fall,
And ruin's deadly blight come over all...
...whose lives had never known
Of any climate harsher than their own...
~Ellsworth R. Bathrick, Beauty on Ice: A Thrilling Tale of a Ruined Realm, 1899
I pledge allegiance to the Earth, and to the flora, fauna and human life that it supports, one planet, indivisible, with safe air, water and soil, economic justice, equal rights and peace for all. ~Women's Foreign Policy Council, "Pledge of Allegiance to the Family of Earth," 1989
The earth throbs; the hollyhocks faint away, opening their mouths for water; the sturdy oak flutters... and Dame Nature is gasping for breath like an old lady whose stays are too tight for dancing. ~"The Age of Monsters," George Cruikshank's Table-book, 1869, edited by Gilbert Abbott À Beckett [context: Monster Concert at the Surrey Zoological Gardens
While nature melted, superstition raved! ~Edward Young
Roses are infrared
Ultraviolets are blue
Why is climate changing?
Because of CO2.
~Gavin Schmidt, @climateofgavin, tweet, 2017
If the climate can change, then so can you. ~@thedeadauthor, tweet, 2015
The highest treason, the meanest treason, is to deny the holiness of this little blue planet on which we journey through the cold void of space. ~Edward Abbey
Man's notion of barrenness is commercial. I often thank God that there are wildernesses left, wild spots where profit has no dominion. ~Henry James Slack (1818–1896), The Ministry of the Beautiful, "Conversation III: The Oak-wood," 1850
God bless America. Let's save some of it. ~Edward Abbey
Recycling is sexy. ~Keith Wynn
Man has created some beautiful things — sculptures, paintings, vases and, occasionally, a building. But such beautiful things are few by comparison with the ugliness he is responsible for... ~Joseph Wood Krutch, Grand Canyon, 1958
the world we abuse
roasting us like marshmallows
in a fire we lit
~Terri Guillemets, "Inflame," 2023
The natural world is in deep decline due to the grossly unsustainable habits of humankind. This is no secret. You can find evidence everywhere, from global warming to rain forest destruction to mass extinctions, all of it done in the name of free enterprise and short term profit. Fortunately more and more people are waking up to these facts and working to find solutions on all scales. Let's just hope it is not too late. ~Heather Jo Flores, "Free Your Lawn (and the rest will follow)," Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community, 2006, foodnotlawns.com
The industrial corporation is the natural enemy of nature. ~Edward Abbey
Whenever you "control" one aspect of the natural balance, you find to your dismay that another has got out of hand. ~Joseph Wood Krutch, Grand Canyon, 1958
My troubles, although some arise from inside,
Are mostly from parasites perched on my hide,
Who squabble and bicker and kick up a din,
Or fire off their pop-guns and pepper my skin,
Or yelp at each other and threaten to fight;
My life very often has been far from bright,
But all things considered my chances are fair,
To see many happy returns of the year.
~Kenneth Alfred Evelyn Alexander (c.1890–1953), "The Old Identity," in The New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1930 January 1st [says Old Father Earth
...the earth air was so heavy with the poison smoke of cities... ~George M. P. Baird, "The Theft of Thistledown: A Faery Interlude," 1915
The basic science is not physics or mathematics but biology — the study of life. We must learn to think both logically and
On some issues, I'm a staunch Conservative — like curtailing greenhouse gas emissions so that we can Conserve the environment. ~Neil deGrasse Tyson, @neiltyson, tweet, 2014
Imagine if the media reported on the climate crisis like it does on the coronavirus. ~Mohamad Safa, @mhdksafa, tweet, March 2020
Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste... But man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. The proportions and accommodations which insured the stability of existing arrangements are overthrown. Indigenous vegetable and animal species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of foreign origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new and reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes of animal life. ~George P. Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, 1864
...there is no such thing as infinity in any of the natural resources of the earth. ~Frank O. Lowden, 1925
...vast and gloomy cities vomit their poisonous breath. ~Edward Howard Griggs, "Time Sweeps On," 1898
But it is certain that man has done much to mould the form of the earth's surface, though we cannot always distinguish between the results of his action and the effects of purely geological causes; that the destruction of the forests, the drainage of lakes and marshes, and the operations of rural husbandry and industrial art have tended to produce great changes in the hygrometric, thermometric, electric, and chemical condition of the atmosphere... that the myriad forms of animal and vegetable life, which covered the earth when man first entered upon the theatre of a nature whose harmonies he was destined to derange, have been, through his action, greatly changed in numerical proportion, sometimes much modified in form and product, and sometimes entirely extirpated. ~George P. Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, 1864
The UN report was severe:
Mass species extinction is near.
“Ice is vanishing, yes,”
Remarked the US,
“But think of the profits we’ll clear.”
~@Limericking, tweet, 2019
Half the animal kingdom would be gone in a few decades. There was no question about these facts, no debate in the scientific community. The pattern was clear. The usual extinction rate for a stable ecosystem was one to five species each year. Animals were now dying out at a thousand times the rate they should be. Dozens of species went extinct every single day...
Most people... were not capable of understanding the plight of the animals. They were too sheltered to comprehend it. Too safe. Even if they knew the facts and figures, they could not imagine the full measure of that kind of devastation... That's how I used to be too, Tucker said. The tornado changed me. It had stripped away the facade of human civilization. It reminded him that he was an animal too. The scientific terms — loss of habitat, dead zone, on the brink — were not just words anymore. He knew what it felt like from the inside now. ~Abby Geni, The Wildlands, 2018
This much scientists agree on: Five times in the history of the earth, most life has winked out. Five times, one species after the next disappeared, the chain collapsed, grazers died as the plants they depended on were lost, and predators disappeared shortly after, life on earth reaching as close to zero as you'd ever care to get... These are the really big ones... endings you would be glad not to witness. But you may not have a choice, because we appear to be in one now. ~Craig Childs, Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Future of the Earth, 2012
We are living too fast—yea, we are consuming the blessings given us, at a rate that may leave future generations to sit out in the cold and freeze to death. ~W.A. Pryal, "Lumber for Hives: Some Interesting Data on the Way Lumber is being Cut and Exported from this Country; the Giant Trees; California Redwood," Gleanings in Bee Culture, 1904 August 1st [Or, bake to death in the heat.
Such a beautiful world God gave to us,
With its sunshine, its trees and flowers;
And fleecy white clouds and the skies of blue,
Its rainbows and April showers!
Such a beautiful world, a gift so rare,
That was given to us at birth;
But man has abused this great gift from God,
This wondrous, colorful earth!
He is so filled with his craving for power,
And earthly possessions, while here...
But some day he'll waken to what he's lost,
In his scramble for gold to keep;
His eyes will be opened and he'll be sad,
For as he has sowed he will reap!
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham (1880–1971), "Such a Beautiful World"
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own Government to save our environment. ~Ansel Adams, interview with David Sheff, published March 1983
It is essential that we should form a clear idea of the dominating characteristics of the African system of land tenure... [N]ot only is there a real system of African tenure, but it is an infinitely better, sounder and healthier system than that which the British people tolerate and suffer from in their own country. To most Englishmen this statement will appear absurd. It is, however, strictly accurate, and it is not too much to say that if the African system of land tenure existed in England, the English people would be a happier people and... a more prosperous people... "I conceive that land belongs to a vast family, of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are yet unborn." That picturesque phrase, which fell from the lips of a dignified African ruler, examined by the West African Lands Committee, symbolises the entire philosophy of African social life, political, economic and spiritual. The fundamental conception underlying native tenure all over Africa (with a few reputed exceptions) where the white man has not undermined or destroyed it, is that land, like air and water, is God-given; that every individual within the community has a right to share in its bounties provided he carries out his social and political obligations to the community of which he forms part; that in the community as a whole is vested the ownership of the land, and that consequently the individual member of the community cannot permanently alienate the land he occupies and uses... ~E. D. Morel, "Administrative Problems and the Land," The Black Man's Burden, 1920
the wilderness died
of a broken heart—
from bad decisions and
evil battles of grown men
~Terri Guillemets, "Killing nature," 2019, blackout poetry created from Rafe Martin, Birdwing, 2005, pages 47–49
Humanity is on the march, earth itself is left behind. Great changes will occur. Although we cannot yet forecast them all, we know at least that Lady Luck and Mother Nature, the twin governesses of humanity's infancy, no longer will call the tune... Our destiny is in our own hands. ~David Ehrenfeld, "Myth," The Arrogance of Humanism, 1978
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow-mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go... ~John Muir, 1869, My First Summer in the Sierra
Take Nothing But Pictures
Leave Nothing But Footprints
Kill Nothing But Time
~National Speleological Society, caves.org
When the soil disappears, the soul disappears. ~Terri Guillemets
If then the air can so easily become vitiated, what must its condition be in such places, especially in towns, where so many causes combine to corrupt it! That is why town's people like so much to go into the country, there to breathe a purer and healthier air whereby better blood and in general better humours are formed. ~Sebastian Kneipp, Thus Shalt Thou Live: Hints and Advice for the Healthy and the Sick on a Simple and Rational Mode of Life and a Natural Method of Cure, 1889, translated from the 19th German edition
Air.— In the country an emanation from the pure sky, perfumed by the flowery earth; in London a noxious compound of fog, smoke, putridity, and villainous exhalations. ~"Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary, For the use of those who wish to understand the meaning of things as well as words," The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, 1824
WILD
is beautiful
wild is free —
wilderness is not
an empty canvas
for Man to do
what he will —
wilderness is
an already full canvas
painted by God
~Terri Guillemets, "WILD’ness," 2019
I don't agree with you in saying that in all human minds there is poetry. Man as he came from the hand of his Maker was poetic in both mind and body, but the gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual. ~John Muir, letter to John B. McChesney, 1871 September 19th, from Yosemite (University of the Pacific Library Holt-Atherton Special Collections, © 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust)
The Three Great Sins to which our Woes are traced
Are Cruelty and Laziness and Waste.
~Arthur Guiterman, "Of Reproof," A Poet's Proverbs, 1924
like wild animals, I am happy hiding
the artificial frightens my being —
but it is time to fight for the earth
~Terri Guillemets, "Fight for our lives," 2019, scrambled blackout poetry created from Rafe Martin, Birdwing, 2005, pages 150–151
The indictment is long, too long. You could spend a lifetime discovering and enumerating man's ecological mistakes and still have only scratched the surface of the problem. There are detrimental practices going on now whose effects won't be known for generations. By the same token, the results of some reforms instituted now will not be known for generations.
It is human nature to get tired of working for something when you don't see any results. So along with learning to conserve we will have to learn patience. It won't be easy... But there is one reason to believe concerted efforts to save the earth will succeed. Man's consumptive genius is matched only by his instinct for self-preservation. ~Ken Sekaquaptewa and Candy St. Jacques,
Oh, I'm all for rockets
And worlds cold or hot,
But I'm wild in love
With the planet we've got!
~Frances Frost, "Valentine for Earth," The Little Naturalist, 1959
[I]t is but recently that... public attention has been half awakened to the necessity of restoring the disturbed harmonies of nature... and.. not abusing it. ~George P. Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, 1864
Where man has conquered nature dies;
We shift some slender-growing pine
From out her own familiar skies
Where-under forests fall and rise,
To pots and gardens, then repine
That where man conquers nature dies.
The atmosphere that round her lies
Bears not the light that used to shine
From out her own familiar skies,
She is a stranger. So our eyes
Run o'er the world and seek a sign!
If where man conquers nature dies
What is our earthly paradise?
Will nature there withhold the wine
That from her own familiar skies
She used to pour? Do we devise
A garden earth and say, in fine,
Where man has conquered nature dies
From out her own familiar skies?
~Philip Henry Savage (1868–1899)
The once modest little homes tucked into wild, scruffy lots here are mostly gone, replaced by giant houses in sterile yards ruthlessly landscaped to the very edge. ~Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, 2023, margaretrenkl.com
The vast forests of the United States and Canada cannot long resist the improvident habits of the backwoodsman and the increased demand for lumber... It is a great misfortune to the American Union that the State Governments have so generally disposed of their original domain to private citizens. It is true that public property is not sufficiently respected in the United States... Under such circumstances, it is difficult to protect the forest... For the prevention of plunder and damage, the American people must look to enlightened self interest. ~George P. Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, 1864
Nature and wildlife
are gradually vanishing
like in the photograph
from Back to the Future —
our future is vanishing too
but we have no hundred
and thirty horsepower
gas-fired time machine
to go back and fix it.
~Terri Guillemets, "Flux capacity," 2023
The end of days is an event I believe we're actually going to create for ourselves... The earth itself won't be destroyed. There's not a meteor shower out there with our name on it... From ancient civilizations to today's experts, we've been warned over and over and over again: if we don't take care of this sacred home we've been given, it won't be able to provide us with shelter, food, and comfort any longer, just as surely as a house we abuse and neglect will be condemned as unfit for human habitation sooner or later... Sometimes you'd think that we're all a bunch of teenagers, left unsupervised in the house while our parents are away. ~Sylvia Browne, End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies about the End of the World, 2008
All disaster movies start with the government ignoring a scientist. ~Protest sign, Brussels climate crisis demonstration, 2019
In those days the water was clear and clean, and I could drink it without fear of being poisoned by industrial fallout and agricultural spray. ~R. D. Lawrence, "Matilda," A Shriek in the Forest Night: Wilderness Encounters, 1996
One day you will read
in the National Geographic
of a faraway land
with no smelly bad traffic.
In those green-pastured mountains
of Fotta-fa-Zee
everybody feels fine
at a hundred and three
’cause the air that they breathe
is potassium-free
and because they chew nuts
from the Tutt-a-Tutt Tree.
This gives strength to their teeth,
it gives length to their hair,
and they live without doctors,
with nary a care...
~Dr. Seuss, You're Only Old Once!, 1986
Mother Earth is very near to man. From her we get food; upon her we lie down. We live and walk on her. We could not exist without Mother Earth. ~"Pawnee Beliefs," Myths and Legends of the Great Plains, selected and edited by Katharine Berry Judson," 1913
It is Progress, so they say, with ax in hand
Who wanders up and down the city streets;
He holds with nothing sacred in the land,
All things created are his drink and meat;
A tree that God took years to grow; that sings
Creation's majesty, in one short hour
Is felled. No more shall dryads in the spring
Be cradled in its wind-tossed, graceful bower.
Yet Progress and his brother, Speed, still roam
The earth. Like monstrous dinosaurs they crawl
And where they go we hear dear Beauty's moans;
With head bowed low in stricken grief she falls.
Stop now, ye vandals: Beauty is at your feet;
Shall all who love her stand silently and weep?
~Carolyn Wheeler Avery, "To a Felled Tree," in Arizona Highways, July 1954
The environment will take its toll on our immune systems, there’s no doubt about it. It's karmic, really, the earth’s way of paying us back for all the abuse and neglect — still another reason we’ve got to start treasuring and nurturing this planet if we ever expect it to do the same for us again. There will be dramatic increases in fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, sterility and infertility, and countless, virtually untraceable allergies. It’s probably also a form of payback that we’ll be more vulnerable than ever to diseases carried by unhealthy animals... These illnesses and plagues will hit hard and very suddenly, much more quickly than scientists and researchers can keep up with them, let alone conquer them. ~Sylvia Browne, “The End of Days Through My Eyes,” End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies about the End of the World, 2008
Nature, left undisturbed, so fashions her territory as to give it almost unchanging permanence of form, outline, and proportion, except when shattered by geological convulsions; and in these comparatively rare cases of derangement, she sets herself at once to repair the superficial damage, and to restore, as nearly as practicable, the former aspect of her dominion... The fact is that, of all organic beings, man alone is to be regarded as essentially a destructive power... Man pursues his victims with reckless destructiveness; and, while the sacrifice of life by the lower animals is limited by the cravings of appetite, he unsparingly persecutes, even to extirpation, thousands of organic forms which he cannot consume. ~George P. Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, 1864
Consider us, Creation!
Though you took patient eras beyond counting to create us,
Somehow we are enough detached from you, and from your purpose,
To look back, and laugh...
Consider how your bad children get around you…
We put our fingers to our noses and wiggle them at you...
We tear our Earth up...
You think to darken us with the night, so we light lamps...
Are we not cynical, uproarious, obscene and impudent?
Do we not proclaim ourselves the top-notch of the world?...
Already the wizened stars must be worried, dumb-founded,
To catch that raucous cackle and chortle from the worthless Earth...
That noise of relatives eating ham sandwiches after the funeral is over...
~James Oppenheim, "Laughter," War and Laughter, 1916
"The Cheyenne revere the land and all that grows upon it," he told her seriously. "We are of the land and must do nothing to harm it. We take only what we need to survive, and waste nothing. Unlike the white man, we do not carve open the breast of Mother Earth with iron plows or cut down her trees to make fields and forts. We take what she offers, and it is sufficient for our needs.
Never would we scar the land with roads as your people do, yet now they wish to deface our land with tracks for their iron horses. They bring soldiers and build more forts and drive the buffalo from the best grazing grounds. They seek the yellow rocks in our hills, and defile our burial grounds in their lust for these stones.
...This we cannot allow. They tell us they will pay us for the land, and it will then be theirs, but how can a man sell his heart?" ~Catherine Hart, Night Flame, 1989
...your gas-guzzling, exhaust-belching car... ~Bob Holmes, "Life Is...?," 1998
We do not inherit the Earth from our fathers, we are borrowing it from our children. ~David R. Brower (1912–2000), browercenter.org, foe.org [Per Brower, this is from an interview he did in a noisy North Carolina bar, while on his third martini. In his 1995 book Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth he wrote that the words were too conservative for him. "We're not borrowing from our children, we're stealing from them — and it's not even considered to be a crime. Let that be my epitaph, when I need it." Garson O'Toole, The Quote Investigator, has done great research on this quotation to find similar previous statements by Oscar Wilde, 1882, and Wendell Berry, 1971. See: quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/22/
In the years since the Industrial Revolution, we humans have been partying pretty hard. We've ransacked most of the Earth for resources... We are living off the natural capital of the planet, the principal, and not the interest. The soil, the seas, the forests, the river, and the protective atmospheric cover — all are being depleted. It was a grand binge, but the hangover is now upon us, and it will soon be throbbing.
To our unborn children, it will seem that we did, indeed, burn books to get light, burn furniture to run air-conditioning, and burn arbors to warm ourselves... The solution is simple: We must go back to the world's ravaged places and bind up the wounds we've inflicted. We must do our best to restore the natural world to something like it was 200 years ago, before we monkeywrenched nature. We must redesign our cities at the same time. Otherwise, we are out of here.
I believe this to be the most important challenge we face on Earth. Old, tired,
Somebody told me how frightening it was how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared. ~Jack Handey, Deepest Thoughts: So Deep They Squeak, 1994, deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com
Every Day Is Earth Day for Geologists. As geologists who daily carry out our responsibilities in the subject defined as "the science of the earth," we were particularly pleased that our Nation finally saw fit to observe an Earth Day. It was long overdue that recognition and consideration be extended to the small sphere which is our home, our source of life and nourishment. My concern is that Earth Day should not have been a once and only occasion, nor a once a year affair which, like Mother's Day, is so conveniently disregarded the rest of the year by so many. We sincerely hope that Earth Day 1970 will have marked the formal beginning of a great public awakening to the problems and needs of wise use and effective management of our lithosphere, our hydrosphere, and our atmosphere — better known as our land, our water, and our air.
For the most part the Earth Day meetings and pronouncements highlighted the pollution of our earth environments. Very properly it was pointed out that humanity faces calamity if the present rate of air and water pollution continue... [A]side from cleaning up, a determined program must be initiated which will prevent new pollution to our environment. This will require new equipment, new procedures, new regulations, and money to pay for it all. The extra cost will not be pleasant — extra costs never are — but the importance is so great and the stakes so high that the costs must be accepted. It is hoped that Earth Day may have helped to recognize and accept such responsibility. ~Arthur A. Socolow (1921–2013), "From the Desk of the State Geologist," Pennsylvania Geology, June 1970
We are trapped by our conditioning in a world of steel and plastic, asphalt and concrete. We are removed from the earth and getting farther and farther from it daily. ~Tom Brown, Jr.
Scientists have come together to name the next geologic epoch, a change we are very much part of... Many say the Holocene has ended and we are entering a new age. It is a time of widespread extinctions and unraveling climates, superstorms, and inundated cities... We call it Anthropocene. It means New Man, the time of humans. I prefer Hubriscene.
I'm a fan of the Holocene, the time we're in, or at least have been since the close of the Ice Age... Am I sentimental to hold on to our familiar age? Who is not in love with these blue skies pillared with clouds, and the many species around us, the way more oxygen comes out of the ocean than methane, the deep breathing of the forests and grasslands? I do not want this party to end, yet another one seems to be starting, pushed onstage with zeal. ~Craig Childs, Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America, 2018
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ~E. B. White, 1956
Many circumstances conspire to invest with great present interest the questions: how far man can permanently modify and ameliorate those physical conditions of terrestrial surface and climate on which his material welfare depends; how far he can compensate, arrest, or retard the deterioration which many of his agricultural and industrial processes tend to produce; and how far he can restore fertility and salubrity to soils which his follies or his crimes have made barren or pestilential. ~George P. Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, 1864
Nature is gasping
for breath
under Humans
the stranglers
~Terri Guillemets
Perhaps the secret of the wilderness lies in that man has ever been a part of it. This is our birthright, the vast womb of eternity out of which all things and all men have come. Once, miraculously, there emerged a spark of consciously-motivated vitality from out of the darkness of a primeval swamp. It grew, this writhing, sluggish thing, and changed, and sought, never pursuing the middle course of safety, but reaching farther and farther, guided by Creation, rising from plane to plane until at last it walked upright and it was called man.
Then this ape-like creature with the often-changing body reached fullness of physical development and only one avenue of growth was left to it: the mind-road. And man turned to it and perfected his brain and his great powers of thought and he became the master of all things. And somewhere along this last, tortuous journey, he began to lose his early ties with Creation. They receded into lost places in the mind, these mysterious senses, and while the brain continued to develop conscious thought, they sank deeper and deeper into the abyss that opened when culture advanced and became almost a fine science. And so man paid his price for civilization...
Is there a message, a warning, in the bosom of nature telling man to have a care, else his great achievement, his fine powers of thought, will turn upon him and destroy him? ~R. D. Lawrence, The Place in the Forest, 1967
Till now, Man has been up against Nature; from now on he will be up against his own nature. ~Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future, 1963
There is a plug point in the sky,
Which is beaming electricity 24/7.
Yet we drill holes into the earth,
To suck oil and power our concrete heaven...
~Abhijit Naskar, from "Sonnet of Renewable Energy," Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth, 2021
...global warming... how dare any of us ignore it or trivialize it, when it's literally the difference between life and death for humankind. ~Sylvia Browne, End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies about the End of the World, 2008
The land is everyone's and no one's. ~Tom Brown, Jr.
For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
...earth was shocked...
...wreck and death, and chaos all about...
~Ellsworth R. Bathrick, Beauty on Ice: A Thrilling Tale of a Ruined Realm, 1899
Why are we destroying the land instead of taking care of it? It takes care of us. ~Terri Guillemets
In the sixties, you could always insult a guy by calling him "plastic." It meant he was phony or superficial. The opposite of plastic was "real." ~Elizabeth Royte, Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, 2005
Vinyl is Satan's resin. ~Mark Gorrell
Three Æons spent themselves to store with Power
The Coal that keeps you warm a Single Hour.
~Arthur Guiterman, "Of Thrift," A Poet's Proverbs, 1924
Climates are healthy to man so long as the forests in and around them remain, but become very insalubrious when the woods are felled. ~George P. Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, 1864
I... was beginning to understand how fragile the natural world really is, the world that had always felt like my sturdiest home. ~Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, 2023, margaretrenkl.com
Primeval forests! virgin sod!
That Saxon has not ravish'd yet,
Lo! peak on peak in stairways set—
In stepping stairs that reach to God!
Here we are free as sea or wind,
For here are set Time's snowy tents
In everlasting battlements
Against the march of Saxon mind.
~Joaquin Miller, "Isles of the Amazons," 1872
Did you ever stop to think that maybe the weed killers and the pest killers and the germ killers are also killing you? ~Terri Guillemets, "Omnicide," 2005
Loyd: "It has to do with keeping things in balance. It's like the spirits have made a deal with us. We're on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: We know how nice you're being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests."
Codi: "Like a note you'd send somebody after you'd stayed in their house?"
Loyd: "Exactly like that. 'Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry, I hope it wasn't your favorite one.'"
~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
To people who think of themselves as God's houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
Energy crisis? America could power itself entirely if it could harness the energy of all those dead presidents spinning in their graves. ~A joke of unknown origin that's been around for years, even before Dresden Codak (authors spinning converting "posthumous indignity into clean energy," 2010) and Zach Weinersmith (founding fathers spinning and powering the country "every time a right is violated or an illegal war is started or an unfair tax is levied," 2011); this particular wording is a 2016 November 13th tweet by Colm Tobin
Man, with his metal beaver-teeth
chops down the world's trees
saws, whines, grinds — loudly
without a care but human “needs”
~Terri Guillemets
Make our planet great again. ~Emmanuel Macron, @EmmanuelMacron, tweet, 2017
...hubris has given us all a burning planet... ~Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, 2023, margaretrenkl.com
Our house is on fire... According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we are less than twelve years away from not being able to undo our mistakes. In that time, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place, including a reduction of our CO2 emissions by at least 50%...
At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge that we have failed. All political movements in their present form have done so and the media has failed to create broad public awareness. But Homo sapiens has not yet failed.
Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands. But unless we recognize the overall failures of our current systems, we most probably don't stand a chance...
We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly. Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens has ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. And either we do that or we don't.
You say nothing in life is black or white, but that is a lie. A very dangerous lie. Either we prevent a
Now we all have a choice. We can create transformational action that will safeguard the future living conditions for humankind. Or, we can continue with our business as usual and fail. That is up to you and me.
Some say that we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?...
And since the climate crisis is a crisis that has never once been treated as a crisis, people are simply not aware of the full consequences of our everyday life. People are not aware that there is such a thing as a carbon budget, and just how incredibly small that remaining carbon budget is. And that needs to change today. No other current challenge can match the importance of establishing a wide, public awareness and understanding of our rapidly disappearing carbon budget that should and must become our new global currency and the very heart of future and present economics.
We are now at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilization and the entire biosphere must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be. We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint is, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility.
Adults keep saying: we owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I don't want your hope. I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire. Because it is. ~Greta Thunberg, speech, January 2019
Around this narrow sea and teeming land,
A wall of crystal ice, on every hand,
Arises, till it seems to tip the sky;
Awe to the mind, and dazzling to the eye.
High o'er the sea, the icebergs grandly rise,
And sweeping widely where the green shore lies,
Encircle all in their majestic swing—
Inclosing all, in one unbroken ring,
While from their glassy tops, in ardent beams,
The sunshine, mellowed and refracted, gleams.
From peak to peak, the darting rays are thrown,
Until to focus drawn, and warmer grown,—
Like to a mighty sun-glass held by God,—
They urge the plants and flowers from the sod.
Where then, the chilling snowflakes would descend,
And desolation to the region lend,
This berg-born focus, warms the frost touched air,
And spreads instead, the gracious raindrops there.
And even in the cooling hours of night,
When o'er the bend of ocean speeds the light,
This mild and fragrant air is left behind;
The days are blessèd and the nights are kind.
Ah! me, there is—'twere better said, "there was,"
If truth be courted in this thoughtful pause—
There was a sea,— a land which nature kissed
With lips of evening dew and morning mist,
And straightaway loved, and searched the universe,
For its most precious gifts, rare and diverse.
The rarest flowers; the brilliant plumaged bird;
The sweetest warblers that a grove e'er heard;
The fruits best flavored, and the mildest air,
And the best things of all, from everywhere.
But that fair realm, which should be "is," is "was,"
And I... I... I am the cause...!
~John Erb (E. R. Bathrick, 1863–1917), Beauty on Ice: A Thrilling Tale of a Ruined Realm, 1899 [story context: extreme weather and climate changes in the dream of a shipwrecked man
Swelling Tides, rushing Waves, warring Winds—
The trembling Peasants see their Country round
Cover'd with Tempests, and in Oceans drown'd.
~Joseph Addison, The Campaign, 1704
This... will shake the world, both physically and politically... not immediately, for nature works slowly and surely, and mother earth and her sons and daughters will have to pass through throes of pain and terrific convulsions... Its effects on mankind will be astounding, issuing in, as it were... a new era. It will pave the way for the grossest superstition and priestcraft... and... the basest materialism... The mind of the... government will be harassed by a succession of untoward occurrences. Death will deal a heavy blow... the outbreak of a maximum of virulent epidemic diseases... unheard-of crimes, wars, earthquakes, and the desolation of whole tracks of land. These are what we may expect... ~"Dire Predictions: Two Famous Astrologers — Zadkiel and Raphael — Cast the World's Horoscope and Point to the Coming of a New Era," The Flaming Sword, December 1899
our apocalypse
once in ultra slow motion
now on fast forward
~Terri Guillemets, "Accelerant," 2023
The world was on fire... Terror spread among the... peoples... overcome by... the scorching heat... "The world is coming to an end!... O my poor children!" were the last words.
Only a few glowing embers in a mound of ashes were left to tell where the world had been. Alone in the silence, Destiny stood and gazed upon the ruin. "'Tis done!" quoth he. ~Stanton Davis Kirkham, "The End of the World," Half-True Stories, 1916
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published 1998 Mar 18
revised 2020 Dec 28
last saved 2025 Jan 5
www.quotegarden.com/environment.html