Trevor Paglen Quotes

I think the Netherlands will become one big city at a point. It is inevitable when you live in a country with so many people. You cannot afford to leave nature as it is. Some people believe that the dunes should be left in their original state, but I think it's strange to let things become how they were 500 years ago.

When you think about the scale of human populations all over the world and the fact that there's so much here, really, the only way to be able to visualize that is to pull back in space... It allows us to see hidden temples and tombs and pyramids and even entire settlements.

Geography determines social development …. But geography may be losing much of its meaning.

As Geography without History seemeth a carkasse without motion; so History without Geography wandreth as a Vagrant without a certaine habitation.

Geography is the subject which holds the key to our future

It's man's impact on our world that appeals to me more than just nature running wild.

Phoenix is an interesting example. Drive around and see the golf courses everywhere, and you see people's big green lawns. And you live in a desert! I've always remarked about the capacity of human beings to look at somewhere and move there because of its uniqueness and its beauty and then change it.

Human beings are a wonderful virus in some ways.

Every species becomes extinct; at some point, we will go extinct. The question is, as Homo sapiens, are we going to be able to adapt to the change that we're actually part of? We're causing such dramatic changes to the planet, so yes, you do stop and think, 'I wonder where we're headed.'

We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.

Everybody's seen a stream or a wood they knew replaced by a strip mall.

Human beings are definitely changing the planet, but how much impact they are having on climate, I don't know and I don't care.

Humans are upsetting a fragile balance that their own human ancestors established.

If you represent the Earth's lifetime by a single year, say from January when it was made to December, the 21st-century would be a quarter of a second in June - a tiny fraction of the year. But even in this concertinaed cosmic perspective, our century is very, very special: the first when humans can change themselves and their home planet.

Men are weak now, and yet they transform the Earth's surface. In millions of years, their might will increase to the extent that they will change the surface of the Earth, its oceans, the atmosphere, and themselves.

We design our world, while our world acts back on us and designs us.

'Air' is what the world looks like: An inconvenient mashup of human politics and divine geography. We leave bits and pieces of ourselves and our history in every place we encounter.

Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences, is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place.

Geography is everywhere

Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land.

Geography determines the course of history.

human ecology

These landscapes aren't breaking news or necessarily even illegal. These are intentional, purposeful landscapes, whether to extend our cities or build a mine or put a road in or clear a forest. I've been photographing that which has been intended by us; it's not an accident.

The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful, they can change climate. Man can't change climate.

Well, I think it's clear that the climate is changing. I think reasonable people can differ about how much and how rapidly. But I think it's clear that it's changing and it's clear that humans are a contributing factor.