Ecosystems Quotes - Page 6

• Sloths actually are like furry living ecosystems all by themselves! Algae grows on their fur and they are also home to "sloth moths" who call them home and drink their tears.

  Ann Burton

  Home, Sloth, Tears

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• There is no waste in functioning natural ecosystems. All organisms, dead or alive, are potential sources of food for other organisms. A caterpillar eats a leaf; a robin eats the caterpillar; a hawk eats the robin. When the plant, caterpillar, robin, and hawk die, they are in turn consumed by decomposers.

  G. Tyler Miller

  Science, Robins, Alive

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• Anyplace of work where you have a cross section of work, you have mini-ecosystem. A little representation of what the planet is. You have the Alpha Dog. You have the young ones, the old ones. The pissed off one. The quiet one.

  Ryan Reynolds

  Dog, Littles, Pissed Off

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• Families are ecosystems. Each life grows in response to the lives around it

  Mary Schmich

  Grows, Response

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• Ecology is often confused with environmentalism, while in fact, environmentalism often leaves out the fact that people, too, can be a legitimate part of an ecosystem.

  Frank Herbert

  Funny, Confused, Animal

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• We don't think a sustainable society need be stagnant, boring, uniform, or rigid. It need not be, and probably could not be, centrally controlled or authoritarian. It could be a world that has the time, the resources, and the will to correct its mistakes, to innovate, to preserve the fertility of its planetary ecosystems. It could focus on mindfully increasing quality of life rather than on mindlessly expanding material consumption and the physical capital stock.

  Donella Meadows

  Mistake, Thinking, Focus

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• Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick- Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters.

  Chris Hedges

  Real, Surveillance State, Gossip

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• Now is not the time to repudiate environmental balance, but rather it is the time for all of us to work together - politician, advocate, rancher, scientist, and citizen. Only by doing this will the United States move forward and be a leader in environmental issues and ensure sustainability to our delicate ecosystem.

  Robert Redford

  Moving, Issues, Leader

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• People need to know that they have all the tools within themselves. Self-awareness, which means awareness of the body, awareness of their mental space, awareness of their relationships - not only with each other, but with life and the ecosystem.

  Deepak Chopra

  Mean, Self, Space

  "Deepak Chopra Talks About Awakening the World and His “Sages and Scientists” Symposium". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 15, 2013.

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• If we do nothing, we still get to a post-carbon future, but it will be bleak. However, if we plan the transition, we can have a world that supports robust communities of healthy, creative people and ecosystems with millions of other species.

  Richard Heinberg

  People, Support, Creative

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• I pledge allegiance to the soil
  of Turtle Island,
  and to the beings who thereon dwell
  one ecosystem
  in diversity
  under the sun
  With joyful interpenetratio n for all.

  Gary Snyder

  Islands, Turtles, Diversity

  Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison (2010). “The Etiquette of Freedom: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and the Practice of the Wild”, p.76, Counterpoint Press

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• If enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystems collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment.

  E. O. Wilson

  Nature, Giving, Too Late

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• Young entrepreneurs will make a difference in the Indian ecosystem.

  Ratan Tata

  Young Entrepreneurs, Differences, Making A Difference

  "I have a dream of an India where everyone has equal opportunity: Ratan Tata". Interview with Vani Kola, yourstory.com. February 10, 2015.

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• It's a flaw in our argument, for sure. By any reading of evolutionary theory, creationists ought to have died out ages ago. They serve no function in the planet's ecosystem, and no other species has survived so long while in such fundamental disagreement with observable reality. If I wasn't such an ardent believer in secular materialism, I'd wager this is really troubling Darwin in the afterlife.

  Richard Dawkins

  Reading, Reality, Afterlife

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• People like the robber barons assumed that the doctrine of the survival of the fittest authenticated them as deserving power. You know, "I'm the richest. Therefore, I'm the best. God's in his heaven, etc." And that reaction of the robber barons was so irritating to people that it made it unfashionable to think of an economy as an ecosystem. But the truth is that it is a lot like an ecosystem. And you get many of the same results.

  Charlie Munger

  Thinking, People, Heaven

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• While ants exist in just the right numbers for the rest of the living world, humans have become too numerous. If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plants and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.

  E. O. Wilson

  Animal, Land, Oil

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• I believe citizens are beginning to realize that their birthright, a healthy ecosystem, has been stolen, and they want it back.

  Charles Clover

  Believe, Healthy, Citizens

  Charles Clover (2008). “The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and what We Eat”, p.317, Univ of California Press

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• An ecosystem that has the maximum amount of diversity is the richest.

  Robert Greene

  Diversity, Maximum, Amount

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• What's sad is that nobody knows the constitution of the ecosystem that has just been destroyed. Is it an important future food? Is it an important medicine? What can it do for future generations - or present generations?

  Horst Rechelbacher

  Medicine, Important, Generations

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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• We are clearcutting virgin forests around the world, and 95 percent of species in the clearcut zone have never been studied. So we clearcut a part of the virgin forest and now part of our ecosystem has been wiped out. Some of it may grow back, and some of it won't.

  Horst Rechelbacher

  Forests, World, May

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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• We should not be living in human communities that enclose tiny preserved ecosystems within them. Human communities should be maintained in small population enclaves within linked wilderness ecosystems. No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas. Communication systems can link the communities.

  Paul Watson

  Communication, People, Community

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• The "developed" nations had given to the "free market" the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands, and communities, their forests, wetlands, and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business.

  Wendell Berry

  Sacrifice, Community, Environmental

  Wendell Berry (2001). “In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World”

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• As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

  James Hansen

  Shifting, Climate, Destroying

  "Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them". Article by James Hansen, www.theguardian.com. February 15, 2009.

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• The nuclear peril is usually seen in isolation from the threats to other forms of life and their ecosystems, but in fact it should be seen at the very center of the ecological crisis, as the cloud-covered Everest of which the more immediate, visible kinds of harm to the environment are the mere foothills.

  Jonathan Schell

  Clouds, Environmental, Facts

  Jonathan Schell (2000). “The Fate of the Earth: And, The Abolition”, p.111, Stanford University Press

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• I stand by my assertions that although you can know what happens to any individual species that you modify, you cannot be certain what will happen to the ecosystem. Also, we have a strange situation where we have malnourished fat people. It's not that we need more food. It's that we need to manage our food system better.

  Bill Nye

  People, Needs, Strange

  "Bill Nye Explains Why he is a GMO Skeptic" by Keith Kloor, blogs.discovermagazine.com. November 6, 2014.

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