Sylvia Earle Quotes
Fortunately, we know more about the problems that we have than in all preceding history. We know now the consequences of the things that we put into the air, into the water - of the way we treat life on Earth.
Earle, Sylvia A. The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One. National Geographic Books, 2009.
Misattributed. Statement was written by a humor writer to sound like Dan Quayle but wasn’t actually stated by him.
Many pollution control standards are created by specifying a maxilum allowable proportion of a toxic substance in any waste. So what many polluters do is to dilute their toxic waste with enough water to lower the pollution proportion to meet the standard and then dump the waste into the ground where it runs into the streams, rivers, bays and aquifers. This is “pollution by dilution”. When this is done, the same amount of toxic material is dumped and nothing is improved.
This is a fascinating quotation in that Cooper was a strong patriot of the American system. Today, this statement would be considered un-American and communistic. The notion that each person had a right to a share of land ownership. America changed in this respect. In Cooper’s day, there was so much land and so few people that it was part of the American concept that each man should have land. (Free men and not slaves of course). But as the population grew, speculators realized that there was opportunity and today in America ALL LAND is owned by people, corporations, other organizations and the government. The population is still growing and the potable water is in shorter and shorter supply. Already, we have to pay for water in much of the country. Perhaps in years to come, someone who argues that each person is entitled to clean air to breathe might be thought of as a radical communist.
Sylvia Alice Earle is an American marine biologist, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic explorer-in-residence since 1998. Earle was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was named by Time Magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998. She is also part of the group Ocean Elders, which is dedicated to protecting the ocean and its wildlife.
