Elizabeth Kolbert Quotes

Quotes about:

• It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh-water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion. The losses are occurring all over: in the South Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in the Arctic and the Sahel, in lakes and on islands, on mountaintops and in valleys.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Loss, Sharks, Lakes

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2014). “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, p.15, Bloomsbury Publishing

  28 Copy quote

• It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the processnof doing.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Essence, Climate, May

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2012). “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Climate Change - Is Time Running Out?”, p.130, Bloomsbury Publishing

  27 Copy quote

• People tend to focus on the here and now. The problem is that, once global warming is something that most people can feel in the course of their daily lives, it will be too late to prevent much larger, potentially catastrophic changes.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Motivational, People, Focus

  "A Planetary Problem". Interview with Amy Davidson, www.newyorker.com. April 25, 2005.

  34 Copy quote

• It doesn’t much matter whether people care or don’t care. What matters is that people change the world.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  What Matters, People, World

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2014). “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, p.164, Bloomsbury Publishing

  28 Copy quote

• Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Nice, Men, Might

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2014). “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, p.141, Bloomsbury Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• Somewhere in our DNA must lie the key mutation (or, more probably, mutations) that set us apart—the mutations that make us the sort of creature that could wipe out its nearest relative, then dig up its bones and reassemble its genome.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Lying, Keys, Dna

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2014). “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, p.145, Bloomsbury Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• As soon as you acknowledge that we're changing the planet on this scale, that it has very potentially massive repercussions and very damaging repercussions, then the next question is okay, what are we going to do about it?

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Next, Scales, Planets

  Source: www.pbs.org

  21 Copy quote

• If in your lifetime you watch a species go extinct, or plummet almost to the point of extinction, that is a sign that something really serious is going on.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Watches, Extinction, Serious

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  15 Copy quote

• Zalasiewicz is convinced that even a moderately competent stratigrapher will, at the distance of a hundred million years or so, be able to tell that something extraordinary happened at the moment in time that counts for us as today. This is the case even though a hundred million years from now, all that we consider to be the great works of man—the sculptures and the libraries, the monuments and the museums, the cities and the factories—will be compressed into a layer of sediment not much thicker than a cigarette paper.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Distance, Men, Museums

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2014). “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, p.64, Bloomsbury Publishing

  3 Copy quote

• When you drive to the grocery store, your intention is not to change the world, it just happens to have that impact. So we've done a lot of things without even realizing it, and yes, just being unusual, as you say, does not put you above, in a sense, any of the other organisms with whom we share this planet.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Impact, Doe, Done

  Source: www.pbs.org

  15 Copy quote

• Humans will eventually become extinct. People treat that as a radical thing to say. But the fossil record shows us that everything eventually becomes extinct.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  People, Records, Fossils

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  10 Copy quote

• As best as can be determined, the world is now warmer than it has been at any point in the last two millennia, and, if current trends continue, by the end of the century it will likely be hotter than at any point in the last two million years.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Years, Two, World

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2012). “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Climate Change - Is Time Running Out?”, p.10, Bloomsbury Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• There are a lot of things that we could do to minimize what we're doing, but we're not getting back those frogs that I saw that no longer exist.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Frogs, Saws

  Source: www.pbs.org

  6 Copy quote

• Humans will eventually become extinct. People treat that as a radical thing to say. But the fossil record shows us that everything eventually becomes extinct. It depends what "eventually" means. But the idea that were going to be around for the rest of global history...I don't think there's any scientist who would suggest that is true. It could be millions of years from now. We may leave descendants that are humanlike.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Mean, Thinking, People

  "Pulitzer Winner Elizabeth Kolbert on Mass Extinctions - and Our Own Eventual One". Interview With Benjy Hansen-Bundy, www.motherjones.com. February 4, 2014.

  3 Copy quote

• The Earth is big. There are huge natural forces that have worked over geological time. But it turns out, when you look carefully at the geological time, you can't find anything like us.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Looks, Earth, Natural

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  5 Copy quote

• For a long time, science has gone in the direction of sort of putting people in their place. We learned that the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth, the Earth revolves around the sun; we learned that we're just another species, evolved, like all other species, so we're just another animal, really.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Animal, Long, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

  3 Copy quote

• People sometimes say we need to be really almost on a wartime footing if you want to change. Our whole economy is based on burning fossil fuels, which is taking CO2 out of the ground and putting it up into the air.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Air, People, Needs

  Source: www.pbs.org

  3 Copy quote

• Of the many species that have existed on earth - estimates run as high as fifty billion - more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. In the light of this, it is sometimes joked that all of life today amounts to little more than a rounding error.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Running, Errors, Light

  "The Sixth Extinction?" by Elizabeth Kolbert, www.newyorker.com. May 25, 2009.

  3 Copy quote

• No matter what Donald Trump says, it's clear that global warming is rapidly changing conditions on our planet.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Matter, Global Warming, Trump

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  7 Copy quote

• There's this idea of shifting baselines. It was coined by a guy named Jeremy Jackson. It's the idea that every generation takes what it sees, and says, "Okay, well, that's the norm."

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Ideas, Guy, Generations

  "Pulitzer Winner Elizabeth Kolbert on Mass Extinctions - and Our Own Eventual One". Interview with Benjy Hansen-Bundy, www.motherjones.com. February 4, 2014.

  7 Copy quote

• If you're a conservation biologist in many fields, you're seeing your study subject disappear. People are in the position where they're chronicling radical decline, and that is not a position that conservation biologists want to be in.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  People, Want, Fields

  3 Copy quote

• Most of us live in parts of the world where we don't expect to see much, and we wouldn't necessarily notice things that are crashing.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  World

  "Pulitzer Winner Elizabeth Kolbert on Mass Extinctions - and Our Own Eventual One". Interview with Benjy Hansen-Bundy, www.motherjones.com. February 4, 2014.

  8 Copy quote

• You're an animal that needs to move across the landscape, you can't anymore, and that's another way we're just changing the surface of the Earth in very dramatic ways.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Moving, Animal, Earth

  Source: www.pbs.org

  5 Copy quote

• Neanderthals were pretty smart, and if we actively killed them off, then probably we did so in the same way that humans kill each other.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Smart, Neanderthals, Way

  "Ask the Author Live: Elizabeth Kolbert on Neanderthals". The New Yorker interview, www.newyorker.com. August 12, 2011.

  12 Copy quote

• Increasingly developing countries are asking for aid to help deal with the consequences of climate change, which we don't want to give.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Country, Giving, Climate

  Source: www.pbs.org

  3 Copy quote

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