Biosphere Quotes - Page 2

• Like most problems with technology, pollution is a problem of scale. The biosphere might have been able to tolerate our dirty old friends coal and oil if we burned them gradually, but how long can it withstand a blaze of consumption so frenzied that the dark size of this planet glows like a fanned ember in the night of space.

  Ronald Wright

  Dirty, Dark, Night

  Ronald Wright (2010). “A Short History Of Progress”, p.7, Canongate Books

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Above all, we should question the consumer ethic, which uses up non-renewable resources, creates inequality and injustice, generates pollution, destroys other species and upsets the balance of nature. The consumer ethic not only defiles the environment by creating undesirable change in the biosphere but also corrupts the mind and body by defining pleasure in terms of ownership and absorption. Waste itself is a human concept; everything in nature is eventually used. If human beings carry on in their present ways, they will one day be recycled along with the dinosaurs.

  Peter Marshall

  Inspiring, Creating, Upset

  35 Copy quote

• One of the biggest things that needs to change is the educational system. Universities are still teaching a system to students that destroys the biosphere.

  Ray Anderson

  Teacher, Educational, Teaching

  19 Copy quote

• We need a change in consciousness to go with this technology platform. We need a new narrative: we need to shift from geopolitics to biosphere consciousness in one generation. The biosphere is understood here as what goes from the biosphere to the depths of the ocean 40 miles where all living beings interact with all chemicals to create a very complex choreography that we call "life on earth". That is biosphere that is our indivisible community.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Ocean, Technology, Community

  4 Copy quote

• Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six days, or to believe that the biosphere came into being on its own, with no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so stunning, so worthy of awe and respect, that I am happy to accept this natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of 'God.'

  Stuart Kauffman

  Believe, Creativity, Six

  8 Copy quote

• If the human species, or indeed any part of the biosphere, is to continue to survive, it must eventually leave the Earth and colonize space. For the simple fact of the matter is, the planet Earth is doomed... Let us follow many environmentalists and regard the Earth as Gaia, the mother of all life (which indeed she is). Gaia, like all mothers, is not immortal. She is going to die. But her line of descent might be immortal. . . . Gaia's children might never die out-provided they move into space. The Earth should be regarded as the womb of life-but one cannot remain in the womb forever.

  Frank J. Tipler

  Mother, Children, Moving

  9 Copy quote

• The ability of human beings to be creative depends fundamentally on the health and well-being of our biosphere, the few kilometres of air, water, and soil that surround our planet like the skin of an apple. Quite simply, they are the physical and spiritual bases of our lives, and the only source of materials and tools.

  Freeman Patterson

  Spiritual, Air, Apples

  8 Copy quote

• And somehow mother nature manages to create this incredible biosphere, to create this incredibly rich environment of animals and plants with this amazingly small amount of data.

  Freeman Dyson

  Mother, Animal, Data

  4 Copy quote

• The underlying reason for convergence seems to be that all organisms are under constant scrutiny of natural selection and are also subject to the constraints of the physical and chemical factors that severely limit the action of all inhabitants of the biosphere. Put simply, convergence shows that in a real world not all things are possible.

  Simon Conway Morris

  Real, World, Limits

  "The Crucible of Creation". Book by Simon Conway Morris, 1998.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vegas is purposefully constructed as a self-enclosed and isolated biosphere, sort of what a recreational colony built on the moon might be like.

  Marc Cooper

  Moon, Vegas, Self

  7 Copy quote

• We would do well to ask why governments seem to find it so easy to raise the money required to wreck the biosphere, and so difficult to raise the money required to save it.

  George Monbiot

  Government, Wrecks, Easy

  George Monbiot (2007). “Heat: how to stop the planet from burning”, South End Pr

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are seeking another basic outlook: the world as an organization. This would profoundly change categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as a whole with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive inter-dependencies.

  Ludwig von Bertalanffy

  Attitude, Thinking, Organization

  "Robots, Men and Minds". Book by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, p. 57, 1967.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have to be in abundance and recognize that we're just a small piece of this big thing that's moving along the biosphere, earth, evolution and consciousness and we'd better humble ourselves and start loving each other.

  Peter Buffett

  Moving, Humble, Pieces

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Using less of the Earth’s resources more efficiently and productively in a circular economy and making the transition from carbon-based fuels to renewable energies are defining features of the emerging economic paradigm. In the new era, we each become a node in the nervous system of the biosphere.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Energy, Transition, Fuel

  Jeremy Rifkin (2014). “The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism”, p.14, Palgrave Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Early ecologists soon realised that, since humans are organisms, ecology should include the study of the relationship between humans and the rest of the biosphere. ... We don't often tend to think about the social sciences (history, economics and politics) as subcategories of ecology. But since people are organisms, it is apparent that we must first understand the principles of ecology if we are to make sense of the events in the human world.

  Richard Heinberg

  Thinking, People, Environmental

  4 Copy quote

• Most of us have lost that sense of unity of biosphere and humanity which would bind and reassure us all with an affirmation of beauty. Most of us do not today believe that whatever the ups and down of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.

  Gregory Bateson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Believe

  32 Copy quote

• Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?

  George Monbiot

  Easy, Hard

  "Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?" by George Monbiot, www.theguardian.com. December 16, 2011.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.

  Martin Rees

  Loss, Action, Global Warming

  "Dark materials". Essay by Martin Rees, www.theguardian.com. June 09, 2006.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In our time we have come to the stage where the real work of humanity begins. It is the time where we partner Creation in the creation of ourselves, in the restoration of the biosphere, the regenesis of society and in the assuming of a new type of culture; the culture of Kindness. Herein, we live daily life reconnected and recharged by the Source, so as to become liberated and engaged in the world and in our tasks.

  Jean Houston

  Kindness, Real, Humanity

  29 Copy quote

• The theory that the biosphere was created without evolution, a few thousand years ago, is ruled out by overwhelming scientific evidence. To claim that there are 'alternative (always better) Biblical explanations of the same data', which make creationism a reasonable alternative to our best theories of biology and physics, is appalling intellectual dishonesty.

  David Deutsch

  Biblical, Years, Data

  8 Copy quote

• The only truly dependable production technologies are those that are sustainable over the long term. By that very definition, they must avoid erosion, pollution, environmental degradation, and resource waste. Any rational food-production system will emphasize the well-being of the soil-air-water biosphere, the creatures which inhabit it, and the human beings who depend upon it.

  Eliot Coleman

  Technology, Garden, Erosion

  64 Copy quote

• Development requires modification and transformation of the environment... the planet's capacity to support its people us being irreversibly reduced by the destruction and degradation of the biosphere and the need to understand the problem and take corrective action is becoming urgent.

  Malcolm Fraser

  People, Support, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• Keep an eye on the weather, which is changing faster than predicted, and on the new diseases escaping or being made, even as we speak. It's a race between new tech and biosphere bankruptcy, I'd say.

  Margaret Atwood

  Eye, Race, Escaping

  Source: www.macleans.ca

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, years and years ago, I started to ask myself three very simple questions, which dominated my life for many years. One of them was, "Why are organizations everywhere, whether commercial, social, or religious, increasingly unable to manage their affairs?" The second question was, "Why are individuals throughout the world increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they're a part?" And the third was, "Why are society and the biosphere increasingly in disarray?"

  Dee Hock

  Religious, Business, Simple

  9 Copy quote

• What makes the IoT a disruptive technology in the way we organize economic life is that it helps humanity reintegrate itself into the complex choreography of the biosphere, and by doing so, dramatically increases productivity without compromising the ecological relationships that govern the planet.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Technology, Humanity, Way

  Jeremy Rifkin (2014). “The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism”, p.19, Palgrave Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source