Ecological Quotes - Page 6

• To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.

  Murray Bookchin

  Nature, Warrior, Breathing

  "Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future". Book by Murray Bookchin, 1990.

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• The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche.

  David Deutsch

  Niche, Evolution, Problem

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• Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.

  Rowan Williams

  Religious, Thinking, Long

  Rowan Williams (2007). “Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief”, p.50, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• We see a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great deal of talk about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer a different vision. What if humans designed products and systems that celebrate an abundance of human creativity, culture, and productivity? That are so intelligent and safe, our species leaves an ecological footprint to delight in, not lament?

  William McDonough

  Creativity, Intelligent, Vision

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• In the global marketplace of the future the price of every product will tell the ecological truth.

  Kalle Lasn

  Marketplace, Products

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• I think buildings should imitate ecological systems.

  Ken Yeang

  Thinking, Architecture, Building

  "CNN" Interview, edition.cnn.com. July 20, 2007.

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• There is no ecological architecture, no intelligent architecture and no sustainable architecture - there is only good architecture. There are always problems we must not neglect. For example, energy, resources, costs, social aspects - one must always pay attention to all these.

  Eduardo Souto de Moura

  Intelligent, Energy, Example

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• Let’s start with the most prominent ecological crisis of our time: global warming. When you look seriously at the numbers, you find that switching from a meat-based to a plant-based diet would do more to curb and reverse global warming than any other initiative.

  T. Colin Campbell

  Numbers, Meat, Looks

  T. Colin Campbell, Howard Jacobson (2013). “Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition”, p.167, BenBella Books

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• I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.

  Carl Sagan

  Encouragement, Children, Powerful

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• You may ask what kind of a republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a humane republic which serves the individual and which therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic of well-rounded people, because without such it is impossible to solve any of our problems, human, economic, ecological, social, or political.

  Vaclav Havel

  Dream, Independent, People

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• My personal background is actually very unusual for the kind of career I chose. I didn’t meet anyone who had ever done physics in my life. I grew up in the Himalayan forests. My father was a forest conservator, which meant that if I wasn’t in school I was in the forests with him. That has been very largely responsible for my ecological inclinations.

  Vandana Shiva

  Father, School, Careers

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• Ecofeminism is a good term for distinguishing a feminism that is ecological from the kind of feminisms that have become extremely technocratic. I would even call them very patriarchal.

  Vandana Shiva

  Feminism, Kind, Term

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

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• Unless we stop the degradation of our oceans, marine ecological systems will begin collapsing and when enough of them fail, the oceans will die. And if the oceans die, then civilization collapses and we all die

  Paul Watson

  Ocean, Marine, Civilization

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• The theory of evolution by natural selection is an ecological theory-founded on ecological observation by perhaps the greatest of all ecologists. It has been adopted by and brought up by the science of genetics, and ecologists, being modest people, are apt to forget their distinguished parenthood.

  John L. Harper

  Science, Theory Of Evolution, People

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• Already, viral contamination offers an initial response to the question of the downside of electronic circuits, but another area of research beckons the area of ecological pollution. The pollution not only of air, water, and other substances, but also the unperceived pollution of distances.

  Paul Virilio

  Distance, Air, Water

  Paul Virilio (1997). “Open Sky”, p.40, Verso

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• We have a very old conservation movement, particularly in the United States, which has focused on campaigns to protect endangered species: the spotted owl, the old-growth forest. But usually it stops there. To me, biodiversity is the full spectrum. Species conservation is not only about wilderness conservation. It’s also about protecting the livelihood of people even while changing the dominant relationship that humans have had with other species. In India, it’s an economic issue, not just an ecological one.

  Vandana Shiva

  Issues, People, Owl

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

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• A case can certainly be made that Christians bear a major responsibility for our ecological crisis. But the fault is not their biblical but their unbiblical view of nature. Christians have long failed to understand what the Bible really teaches concerning nature and our responsibility for it. For this there is no excuse. Repentance must be our first response. Our second response must then be to right the wrongs of our faulty understanding and act accordingly. We are all responsible to know what can be known of God's will for nature, and we are then responsible to act on that knowledge.

  James W. Sire

  Christian, Responsibility, Biblical

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• The problem of environmental children's health is very urgent in Russia. Environmental situation now is the main factor, which determines young generation's health... the volume of pollutant emissions in atmosphere and water grew and scale of ecological man-caused catastrophes increased. More than half of Russian territories, where 60-70 percent of the of population lives, have unsafe ecological situation.

  Maria Cherkasova

  Children, Men, Russia

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• In its broadest ecological context, economic development is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting the natural environment.

  Richard G. Wilkinson

  Development, Way, Environment

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• Well I think on a simple ecological level that the diversity of this planet is important for our survival, that all of our different cultures, people are important to the health of the whole the same way that a species of animal should be saved and at a simple ecology level.

  Richard Gere

  Animal, Simple, Thinking

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• I write both, as you know, dozens of ecological and social scientific and historical works, dozens of novels. It's hard to describe a novel that grapples with the horrors of World War II as anything but grueling. But Codex Orféo is somehow...well, I hope, riveting for readers. Deeply provocative. Cinematic in a nearly surreal sense.

  Michael Tobias

  War, Writing, Historical

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• Women's struggle for equality worldwide is about more than equality between men and women. Our struggle is about reversing the trends of social, economic, political, and ecological crisis - a global nervous breakdown! Our struggle is about creating sustainable lives and attainable dreams.

  Bella Abzug

  Change, Dream, Struggle

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• The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Life, Past, Men

  Jeremy Rifkin (1989). “Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History”, Touchstone

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• It is really important to solve the problem of rational utilization and distribution of wate supplies. I dare say, the shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Water, Environmental, Important

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• We must recognize that the goal of a cleaner environment will not be achieved by rhetoric or moral dedication alone. It will not be cheap or easy and the costs will have to be borne by each citizen, consumer and taxpayer. How clean is clean enough can only be answered in terms of how much we are willing to pay and how soon we seek success... It is simplistic to seek ecological perfection at the cost of bankrupting the very tax-paying enterprises which must pay for the social advances we seek.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Dedication, Goal, Perfection

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