James Fallows Quotes

Smog is affecting larger parts of China, and environmental pollution has become a major problem, which is nature's red-light warning against the model of inefficient and blind development.

Whether you believe in climate change or not, we want clean air. We want clean water for the American people.

Further devastation of the air, land and sea is obviously a very real possibility, unless the attitudes of politicians and all who irresponsibly exploit our natural resources change significantly in the very near future and all collaborate and sacrifice for the good of the planet.

I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes.

Unless we practice conservation, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day.

Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.

I think its time to change and balance the environment and growth. If we don't do that, we're going to suffer a hard landing one day very soon.

I think people really understand that clean air and clean water and not having factories dumping their emissions into the atmosphere and into the rivers and into the sea has been a very good thing for America. EPA stands watch for very important principles that go all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt.

There are real and growing dangers to our simple and most precious possessions: the air we breathe, the water we bring, and the land which sustains us.... If we do not act, the world of the year 2000 will be much less able to sustain life than it is now.

The free market should not include the right to pollute our environment.

I've long believed the environmental issue is an economic issue and a political issue. The three are entwined. You can't build prosperity on any basis other than a long-term basis, and you can't do that if you don't have a healthy environment.

When I was 7 years old, I announced that I was going to write a book about pollution. I didn't get around to it until I was 29, but I always recognized that pollution was a theft. That it was a way of stealing something from the public - the common earth.

The environment, stabilizing the climate, needs urgent attention from all of us.

Yes, we have ruined the Earth and have done an exceptionally good job of it. Yes, we should look at sustainable development. But we cannot afford to do things sequentially, but parallelly and make sure that we do not repeat our mistakes.

I believe everyone deserves access to clean air and water, and that climate change has exacerbated this challenge.

It's for us to take care of the air we breathe and the water we drink. And I do believe we have an impact on that, and we do have the ability to change it if we make the decision to.

We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.

Comprehensive climate legislation must be passed so that we can ensure a world where this and future generations can experience the bliss of breathing clean crisp air, while fishing in the Adirondacks... and being able to eat the fish afterwards.

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.

We don't need a War on Carbon. We need a new prosperity that can be shared by all while still respecting a multitude of real ecological limits - not just atmospheric gas concentrations, but topsoil depth, water supplies, toxic chemical concentrations, and the health of ecosystems, including the diversity of life they depend upon.

If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then, more than likely, you're going to exploit the world.

I think the greatest challenge in environmentalism and the most rewarding challenge is trying to figure out how humans can meet their needs while protecting the environment.

Pollution is a serious one. Water pollution, air pollution, and then solid hazardous waste pollution. And then beyond that, we also have the resources issue. Not just water resources but other natural resources, the mining resources being consumed, and the destruction of our ecosystem.

Everybody knows that the industrialized nations are the worst offenders.

The environmental crisis arises from a fundamental fault: our systems of production - in industry, agriculture, energy and transportation - essential as they are, make people sick and die.