John Hillcoat Quotes

A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.

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.

All the conservation efforts in the world won't be enough to make a dent in the oncoming sustainability crisis our planet faces.

We're not environmentally doing very good things to this planet, and we might not be around too long.

When you start traveling and thinking from a global perspective, you realize how small the planet is and how predatory we are to its ecology.

Everybody knows that the industrialized nations are the worst offenders.

The environment issue is hydra-headed and complicated, but it is of immense importance that we understand how fast the world is changing.

We're busily wrecking the chances for future generations at a rapid rate of knots by not recognizing the damage we're doing to the natural environment, bearing in mind that this is the only planet that we know has any life on it.

I think we should all be more concerned about the environment and the effects of global warming. It will be pointless to talk about all the issues that divide us when it's 300 degrees outside.

Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.

The truth is, as most of us know, that global warming is real and humans are major contributors, mainly because we wastefully burn fossil fuels.

We habitually engage in meddling with nature. Until this century most of this meddling was good. Witness the preservation of the European countryside. But since then we've smoked it up and littered it and dumped too much in too many waters. I don't think it's our privilege to behave this way.

The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.

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

I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems.

We cannot but feel uneasy about the losses caused by humanity themselves. Apart from the losses of life and property in destructive wars, the environment and natural resources are also being destroyed by human hands.

The planet does nothing but support us, and we are constantly committing crimes against nature.

Scientists and supercomputers have amplified our ability to look ahead. For decades, experts have warned us that human numbers, technology, hyper-consumption and a global economy are altering the chemical, geological, and biological properties of the biosphere.

I did not imagine that the second half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity created by science.

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.

It's a war, I think, to save the planet, really, from ourselves.

As artists, we can help, visually and intellectually, to make people understand that, at some point, we have to accept that it is our collective impact that is putting the whole planet in jeopardy.

You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert. If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!

There's so much burying of heads in sand going on in the U.S., people are finally beginning to recognize that the environment is dying, but it's far too late, and I am conflicted.

Economies are embedded inside ecosystems. Companies dependent on tourism, for example, are affected by low rainfall - there's less snow for skiers, and forest fires are more intense.