Species Extinction Quotes

• The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.

  William Beebe

  Art, Inspiration, Hard Work

  "The Bird: Its Form and Function". Book by William Beebe, 1906.

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• In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches.

  Paul R. Ehrlich

  Humanity, Extinction, Pushing

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2014). “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, p.268, A&C Black

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• We're handing them [young people & future generations] a climate system which is potentially out of their control. We're in an emergency: you can see what's on the horizon over the next few decades with the effects it will have on ecosystems, sea level and species extinction

  James Hansen

  Future, Sea, Ecosystems

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• Climate change is not a major issue because it will cause sea level rises or temperature increases, since we know how to live at higher elevations and regulate the temperature within our homes. It is a major issue because ecosystems are finding it difficult to adapt to the rapidity of the climate and environmental changes and are dying off, thereby accelerating the species extinction that is already underway due to our consumption habits.

  Shailesh Rao

  Nature, Home, Sea

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• Our biggest challenges for the ocean and for the planet are problems of perception. People need to understand that species extinctions, habitat destruction, ocean acidification, and pollution are all chipping away at the resilience of the thin layer of life that sustains us on Spaceship Earth.

  Edith Widder

  Ocean, People, Challenges

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• Shelters, conservationists, those concerned about unnecessary cruelty toward the animals we eat, and people working against species extinction fight to preserve the true riches of our planet, our real inheritance. These are big, critical goals.

  April Gornik

  Real, Fighting, Animal

  "Our Real Wealth" by April Gornik, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 14, 2010.

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• I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems - climate crisis, species extinction, water and energy shortage - we surely do. But ultimately we knock them down.

  Peter Diamandis

  Motivation, Inspiration, Water

  "Abundance is our future". TED2012, www.ted.com. February 2012.

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• We've made some heroic efforts, but the Earth as a whole is in worse shape today than 30 years ago, ... There's been 30 more years of greenhouses gases, species extinctions and population growth.

  Denis Hayes

  Years, Effort, Growth

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• If we somehow put a value on species extinction and factor that into our costs that bottom line would look very different. IF we put any resource depletion into costs our bottom line would change. So what we have is a dishonest market that does not take into account all the costs when it establishes its prices. We need an honest marketplace before we can let the market work for sustainability rather than against it as it works today.

  Ray Anderson

  Business, Lines, Extinction

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• Overpopulation in the United States will become THE single greatest issue facing Americans in the 21st century. We either solve it proactively or nature will solve it brutally for us via water shortages, energy crisis, air pollution, gridlock, species extinction and worse.

  Frosty Wooldridge

  Issues, Air, Water

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• In the beginning, there were bacteria.... [A] nearly universal assumption is that all subsequent life descended from the original life form through a continuous chain of ancestor-descendant pairs. This assumption looks good because all living organisms share biochemical traits. It is conceivable, of course, that life originated more than once on the early earth but that all except one life form died out early, leaving a single lineage as the ancestor of life as we know it. If this did happen, it was the first important species extinction.

  David M. Raup

  Leaving, Important, Earth

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