Carol Ann Duffy Quotes

The combination of population growth and the growth in consumption is a danger that we are not prepared for and something we will need global co-operation on.

The destruction of our environment and resources cannot be stemmed unless the growth of the world's population is stemmed and ultimately reduced.

We are using resources as if we had two planets, not one. There can be no 'plan B' because there is no 'planet B.'

The more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.

At an ever accelerating rate we are now squandering the capital of metallic ores and fossil fuels accumulated in the earth’s crust during hundreds of millions of years. How long can this spending spree go on?

We've been given the gift of a billion years of cosmic time, and we should not screw it up. But at the rate we're using up our planet's natural resources and fouling our own nest means we're not going to last a billion years.

It is undeniable that the looming environmental crisis is partly the consequence of population growth.

My father gave me this poster from National Geographic back in the very early 70s, so I was a young teenager. It showed how man polluted his world. And the issues that they talked about, whether it was water pollution, air, or terrestrial... The issues that they talk about on this poster are still very much present today.

We treat a planet at crisis point as an externality that can be shunted into a future generation. We continue to act as if we had the natural resources of several planets, not one.

Wouldn't it help Americans more, in the long run, if we were forced to accept some responsibility for the environmental wreckage we prefer to assume is totally out of our control?

It was once religion which told us that we are all sinners because of original sin. It is now the ecology of our planet which pronounces us all to be sinners because of the excessive exploits of human inventiveness.

I think having toured the world and seeing many places, I've just been blown away by how we've really scarred our home. I'm as guilty as the next person if not more so. I travel a lot. The damage we do to our planet is huge.

I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.

Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.

We live on a finite planet. We have finite resources, and we're running out of good, arable land.

It is not oil or the environment, it is oil and the environment. We are living in the same world. We are not enemies.

Environmentalism has failed.

The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.

With so much evidence of depleting natural resources, toxic waste, climate change, irreparable harm to our food chain and rapidly increasing instances of natural disasters, why do we keep perpetuating the problem? Why do we continue marching at the same alarming beat?

Environmental disaster is the gravest threat to China's continued development. That's according to me, but it is not some wacko view.

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.

Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.

We have serious challenges regarding climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, forests and farmland. Not to mention the huge inequality still prevailing in several parts of the planet.

We can have technology, prosperity, nice homes and cars, but at the same time we must be conscious of what we are dumping into the water, the air and our food.

You can print money to bail out a bank, but you can't print life to bail out a planet.