Edwin Newman Quotes

China is the world’s second largest economy, but the enormous costs of its growth are becoming apparent. Residents of its boom cities and a growing number of rural regions question the safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat. It is as if they were living in the Chinese equivalent of the Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear disaster areas. The environmental hazards here are legion, and the consequences might not manifest themselves for years or even decades.

Human use of fossil fuels is altering the chemistry of the atmosphere; oceans are polluted and depleted of fish; 80 per cent of Earth's forests are heavily impacted or gone yet their destruction continues. An estimated 50,000 species are driven to extinction each year. We dump millions of tonnes of chemicals, most untested for their biological effects, and many highly toxic, into air, water and soil. We have created an ecological holocaust. Our very health and survival are at stake, yet we act as if we have plenty of time to respond.

In America, I don't know how much longer the environment is going to exist. I sort of strongly believe that we're in danger.

Our daily habits of driving, drilling, buying and supporting all of the economic benefits a free economy demands has cost us dearly, but none more so than for the people of Shishmaref.

The strong evidence is that we're running out of space. We're collectively affecting the world's climate. This is due to the still-growing human population and our increase in consumption.

I think there are changes in the environment. There are a lot of items to contribute to it.

Pushing production out of America to nations without our environmental standards increases global environmental risks.

Pollution is a serious one. Water pollution, air pollution, and then solid hazardous waste pollution. And then beyond that, we also have the resources issue. Not just water resources but other natural resources, the mining resources being consumed, and the destruction of our ecosystem.

We have chosen to bring future generations into this world of rising seas and warming temperatures, droughts and floods, heat waves and wildfires, a world in which one in four mammals and one in eight birds are at risk of disappearing forever. While the damage we've done is irreversible, that doesn't give us the right to do nothing.

Everybody knows that the industrialized nations are the worst offenders.

Wild animals are just as confused as people are now. You've got toxins in the water, oil, sewage, all sorts of things.

Perhaps it has been too uncomfortable for those with vested interests to acknowledge, but we have spent the best part of the past century enthusiastically testing the world to utter destruction; not looking closely enough at the long-term impact our actions will have.

Natural disasters in Bolivia have been getting worse with the passage of time. It's brought about by a system: the capitalist system, the unbridled industrialization of the resources of the Planet Earth.

Well, it seems all the fish in the rivers are dying. Could this be an act of cod?

Human activity is having a major impact on the planet. We consume or have diverted a large proportion of the productivity of the land and oceans. Our hunger for land crowds out fellow species. Our waste products pollute the waters, warm the atmosphere and acidify the oceans.

The coal industry is a huge industry when we're talking about polluting the environment, our air and our waterways.

I can't even consider the prospect of grandchildren because I don't know if there will be anything left for them on Earth. That's how serious the problem is. We can't drink the water or breathe the air, and we're all dying from some sort of cancer. How many generations can sustain that? It frightens me terribly.

China is bearing the environmental cost for much of the world because China is the factory of the world.

I always get involved with the environment because once you go past the tipping point with the environment, you don't get it back.

We in the industrialized world make a greater difference because our ecological footprint, our impact on the condition of the environment, is 40 to 50 times larger than that of people in the developing world.

Our dependence on the pollutants of this Earth have always, and will continue to have, far-reaching consequences to our eco-systems, bio systems, geosystems and our race's natural evolution.

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

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

Our globe is under new dramatic environmental pressure: our globe is warming, our ice caps melting, our glaciers receding, our coral is dying, our soils are eroding, our water tables falling, our fisheries are being depleted, our remaining rainforests shrinking. Something is very, very wrong with our eco-system.

You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.