Pierre Trudeau Quotes

The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we inhabit are not only critical elements in the quality of life we enjoy - they are a reflection of the majesty of our Creator.

The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.

Our national conservation effort must include the complete spectrum of resources: air, water, and land; fuels, energy, and minerals; soils, forests, and forage; fish and wildlife. Together they make up the world of nature which surrounds us- of the American heritage.

The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?

Don't mess up the environment until you're quite sure what you're doing.

For me, it always comes back to the land, respecting the land, the wildlife, the plants, the rivers, mountains, and deserts, the absolute essential bedrock of our lives. This is the source of where my power lies, the source of where all our power lies. We are animal. We are Earth. We are water. We are a community of human beings living on this planet together. And we forget that. We become disconnected, we lose our center point of gravity, that stillness that allows us to listen to life on a deeper level and to meet each other in a fully authentic and present way.

Facts have proved that prosperity at the expense of the environment is only delaying disaster. We cannot passively protect our environment by simply stopping economic development.

We only have this one planet; we got to figure out how to live on it without destroying it.

When you think of pristine preservation of America, you immediately think of Tulsa and Oklahoma.

If humanity today succeeds in combining the new scientific capacities with a strong ethical dimension, it will certainly be able to promote the environment as a home and a resource for...all...and will be able to eliminate the causes of pollution and to guarantee adequate conditions of hygiene and health for small groups as well as for vast human settlements.

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.

From every conceivable angle-economic social, cultural, public health, national defense-conservation of natural resources is an objective on which all should agree.

That's what the best global conservation organisations and the American government (and other environmentally inclined governments, such as Sweden and the Netherlands) are doing: protecting the remaining wild environment. This is the equivalent of getting a patient to the emergency room - keep them alive and then figure out how to save them.

We need to be rid of the insane policy of environmentalism. No more 'green', anti-growth, anti-science environmental policy.

As we work to expand our supplies of energy, we should also recognize that we must balance those efforts with our concern to preserve our environment. In the past, as we have sought new energy sources, we have too often damaged or despoiled our land.

I want the cleanest water, the freshest air and wildlife in abundance... but most of all I want a future for our children.

Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow. Invasions can be arrested or modified in a manner to keep an area usable either for recreation, science or for wildlife, but the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible. It follows, then, that any wilderness program is a rearguard action, through which retreats are reduced to a minimum.

When it comes to the environment and global warming from emissions, it has to be dealt with in one of two ways - preemptive regulations, which I don't agree with, or with private property principles. Nobody has the right to pollute their neighbors' air or water or land.

To me, the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhetoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self-inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth, or heal our sick planet, is evidence of our immense capacity for self delusion. Rather, we need to protect ourselves from ourselves.

Many of the earth's habitats, animals, plants, insects and even micro-organisms that we know to be rare may not be known at all by future generations. We have the capability and the responsibility to act; we must do so before it is too late.

Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is - or should be - the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all - perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows.

As we begin to plan for a new human society, we need to foster common values about clean air, water, and other elements of self-sustenance. These, along with a complete inventory of Earth's resources, will form the basis for a holistic approach to cybernated decision-making.

They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.