Tristram Stuart Quotes

I watch people throw aluminum cans in the trash, and I think of all the stories I've heard about the over-mining of aluminum, the erosion that happens, and the trees that fall down.

Unfortunately, our affluent society has also been an effluent society.

We live in a disposable society. We throw so much away. But it doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from the planet and it comes from future generations' lives.

Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.

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.

The Industrial Age is not sustainable. It's not sustainable in ecological terms, and it's not sustainable in human terms.

If the rest of the world aspires to our way of life ... we'll bury ourselves in waste.

Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

Sometimes I wake at 2 A.M. worrying that my great-granddaughter will have to march through her distant, broiling future gathering all the plastic I ever disposed of.

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.

Unfortunately, there are some ecological phenomenological chemicals within consumerism.

Regardless of what we consume, the sheer volume of consumption is overwhelming the Earth's living systems.

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

Yet, despite our many advances, our environment is still threatened by a range of problems, including global climate change, energy dependence on unsustainable fossil fuels, and loss of biodiversity.

I think the greatest challenge in environmentalism and the most rewarding challenge is trying to figure out how humans can meet their needs while protecting the environment.

We humans are the greatest of earth's parasites.

We assume that everything's becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that's true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.

Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can't.

The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.

Americans trash the planet not because we're evil, but because the industrial systems we've devised leave no other choice. Our ranch houses and high-rises, factories and farms, freeways and power plants were conceived before we had a clue how the planet works.

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

Everything I do is the environment.

We say we need to clean up the environment; to clean up the environment, we need to be richer. But maybe getting richer is actually making us poorer.

Unless we practice conservation, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day.

My goal is to leave this planet with the biggest carbon footprint I can possibly leave.