Frans de Waal Quotes

So let's raise the tone of the debate. Too often at the moment we look like schoolchildren squabbling over a toy - our most precious toy, the Earth. And the danger is that as we pull in opposite directions in our global tug of war, the Earth will end up broken - or at least unable to sustain human life. That is the worst case scenario - or maybe, from the Earth's point of view, the best.

If, in our haste to 'progress,' the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America. We cannot afford an America where expedience tramples upon esthetics and development decisions are made with an eye only on the present.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Civilization needs a new operating system.

Civilization can never be sustainable.

The problem with climate change has always been that whilst political timeframes and economic investment timeframes work on a 3-5year cycle, the planet needs a rather longer term view.

In the future, every industry should be an environmental industry. In a world where energy and carbon emissions are constrained, every business must take resource productivity seriously

If we don't start acknowledging our correct position as nothing more than a part of the planet as opposed to this perception that we're superior, then we won't have it much longer. We're facing a very turbulent, war-torn, drought-ridden existence for future generations unless we act now.

We have an economy that tells us it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet.

I'm about to embark on what may be as important as an initiative as anything I do as President, trying to nudge the world in the direction of doing something serious about climate change.

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.

I think that the environment is very a complicated question. I am very sympathetic to people who support the environment who live in the United States. I am very sympathetic to people who don't support the environment who live in a very poor country.

What about our refusal to look squarely at the degradation of the planet we inhabit? In the last election cycle many candidates refused even to acknowledge the hard science, irrefutable science, of climate change. The president, while readily accepting the facts, has done far too little to alter them. How long are we, are you, prepared to wait?

You gotta realize that the whole fiasco of the environment, all this global warming hocus-pocus - which the only thing it's done is made Al Gore a multi-millionaire - but, what it's done is, it has been used as a way to curtail growth, to destroy the growth, exploration.

The seriousness of ecological degradation lays bare the depth of man's moral crisis... Simplicity, moderation, and discipline as well as the spirit of sacrifice must become a part of everyday life.

If we go on using the Earth uncaringly and without replenishing it, then we are just greedy consumers.

People of conscience in our leadership in Washington have been scared off by the right and the fossil fuel lobbies. They won't even use the term "sustainability" or "climate change" in an energy bill, which is ludicrous on its face. It completely ignores the elephant in the room that we're all dealing with. The average American doesn't even believe climate change is real, they think it's all a hoax.

You can't tackle climate change until you tackle poverty.

You are part of the first generation of officers to begin your service in a world where the effects of climate change are so clearly upon us. Climate change will shape how every one of our services plan, operate, train, equip, and protect their infrastructure, today and for the long-term.

Capitalism and the thirst for profit without limits of the capitalist system are destroying the planet...Climate change has placed all humankind before a great choice: to continue in the ways of capitalism and death, or to start down the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.

I think it's going to be a tough century; I also think people are starting to rise up, and that a growth in human solidarity will help compensate for the loss of margin in the natural world that will make life harder.

We can't impede progress in the name of environmental action that yields little for the environment and even less for our people.. and we should look at the environment as an economic opportunity.

The destiny of our land, the air we breathe, the water we drink is not in the mystical hands of an uncontrollable agent, it is in our hands. A future which brings the balancing of our resources-preserving quality with quantity - is a future limited only by the boundaries of our will to get the job done.

My job, personally, is to do as much as I can to spread the warning that if we're not careful, it will end. The problem is, we don't think beyond our immediate needs.

The environment has become a political, polarizing issue.

The journey of the soul is a vast, interconnected web, a meshwork of beings that are all working out their individual karmas in a collective gumbo, retaining the special flavor in each bite of life. But, the mystery of where we're going, in terms of whether we're going to have a planet that's worth living on after we finish abusing it, whether we'll wake up in time and stop ruining the water, land and skies is a big question mark.