Johan Rockstrom Quotes

Even the wealth of the U.S. cannot protect against the levels of environmental destruction that we are unleashing.

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

I never lose an opportunity to speak about my obsession: humankind and the environment.

My main issue is sustainability of the Earth, and protection of those animals and people who dwell here.

Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever.

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 do believe this period of the 1980's will be remembered as the time the planet struck back. The planet is telling us we can't treat it this way anymore.

I agree on the need for environmental sustainability. It is no good raising gross national income while at the same time destroying natural assets.

I believe the green movement is gaining momentum because people are becoming more educated about the real importance of living green.

I'm convinced that the earth is much stronger than us.

We only have one earth. Let's take care of it.

The planet will adapt to anything. Maybe we should start to use the heart and the brain that we've been given to organize ourselves. Because if we keep screwing up things, we may be just passing by in the history of the planet.

After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.

Unless we keep this planet healthy, everything else is for naught.

For millions of years, this world has been a great gift to nearly everything living on it, a planet whose atmosphere, temperature, air, water, seasons, and weather were precisely calibrated to allow us - the big us, including forests and oceans, species large and small - to flourish.

So often we talk about saving the planet, but what we really mean is to save the planet the way it is, so we can live here. So that is can sustain us. Because the planet doesn't need to be saved. It doesn't care if all the squirrels, elephants, and trees die and there's just a couple of amoebas floating around at the poles.

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.

We see an entire planet which has many limitations.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.

If, in our haste to 'progress,' the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America. We cannot afford an America where expedience tramples upon esthetics and development decisions are made with an eye only on the present.

Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term.

Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment.

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.

I feel the 21st century is another new age. Not only can we collaborate again with nature, but we have to. It's an emergency.