Ramez Naam Quotes

In the 19th century, we devoted our best minds to exploring nature. In the 20th century, we devoted ourselves to controlling and harnessing it. In the 21st century, we must devote ourselves to restoring it.

Nature is actually resilient, if we take care to just stop actively destroying it.

It is not enough to celebrate the earth and all its inhabitants, we must restore what we have destroyed.

Save the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

It is a wonderful honor to receive the Audubon Medal from the National Audubon Society, which for more than a century has fought tirelessly to protect and preserve our natural resources and environment for future generations.

My efforts in Congress are guided by the belief that environmental preservation and restoration are a critical part of the legacy we leave to future generations.

The future will either be green or not at all.

We can make a concerted effort to stop poisoning the planet: that would be a good way of appeasing the gods.

The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it..

What was earth, we made into filth. We must at least be able to transform it back to earth.

The Congress, the Administration and the public all share a profound commitment to the rescue of our natural environment, and the preservation of the Earth as a place both habitable by and hospitable to man.

Conservation is not merely a question of morality, but a question of our own survival.

There must be limits, somewhere, to the human footprint on this earth. When the whole of the world is reduced to nothing but human product, we will have lost the map that can show us how we got here, and can offer our spirits an answer when we ask why. Surely we are capable of declaring sacred some quarters that we dare not enter or possess.

Conservation is the application of common sense to the common problems for the common good.

If there is any one duty which more than another we owe it to our children and our children's children to perform at once, it is to save the forests of this country, for they constitute the first and most important element in the conservation of the natural resources of this country.

Ecology is boring for the same reason that destruction is fun.

To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.

The road to conservation is paved with good intentions that often prove futile, or even dangerous, due to a lack of understanding of either land or economic land use.

Even chimps understand the concept - if a troop of chimps enters a fruit tree, they will only pick the fruits that are ripe and leave the others growing. That is sustainability.

Folks who are alive today need to wake up and do what they can to stop abusing the planet, and find ways to preserve the web of life. That's where the soul is headed. It is time for us to become wounded healers.

Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it's common sense.

Nature does require her times of preservation.

Conservation means development as much as it does protection.

We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources ... But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted.