Cesar Chavez Quotes

Wealth and vegetation go together, and that exacerbates environmental injustice. The poor bear the burden of degraded environments.

It is futile to seek solutions to environmental disturbances without considering them from a broad perspective that encompasses the factors underlying world poverty and the inequities within and among nations.

We punk fans have so much energy to give to the fight against injustice, i.e. the abuse of the poor by the rich, i.e. climate change.

We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?

The main environmental challenge of the 21st century is poverty. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, it's hard to consider the environment 100 years down the line.

Nearly everywhere there is crushing poverty, religious and ethnic enmity, and exploitation of people, other species, and the earth. Sometimes it may even seem that we have passed the point of no return -- that we cannot limit population, harmonize differences, and decontaminate the planet in time. But in a time of crisis, the only philosophically tenable position for a pessimist is optimism.

There are no national strategies any longer. There's only national poverty. With the global economy there are only global strategies. We're moving from a world of enemies that are national to a world of global dangers. Can you place boundaries on pollution?

Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore,, Currents of debris upon my breast.

Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery.

No-one wants polluted air, water or land, denuded forests or extinct animal species. But the error most people make is to trust the legislature to prevent these tragedies. What they don’t realize is how big a role the legislature has played historically in causing environmental destruction.

You cannot, for instance, sustainably protect the environment if the majority of the people are still in primitive agriculture leading to the encroachment of forest reserves.

Everything is about energy. We're surrounded by electro mist, fog and smog. We're covering ourselves in the wrong sorts of electro-magnetism. These idiot politicians who talk about climate change, for goodness sake, do they really think little us can do anything about it? No, of course not.

You know it's funny, when it rains it pours they got money for wars, but can't feed the poor.

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.

We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.

Politicians usually get the blame for dragging their feet on environmental issues. And fair enough. Most of them do just that. But the blame isn't theirs alone. For politicians afraid of losing votes, a bristling media waiting to transform good green ideas into monsters is a colossal disincentive.

Clean water and power is our right as humans on this earth, and for too long, our governments in Africa have failed to provide these things.

Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.

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.

Further devastation of the air, land and sea is obviously a very real possibility, unless the attitudes of politicians and all who irresponsibly exploit our natural resources change significantly in the very near future and all collaborate and sacrifice for the good of the planet.

That area environmentally is a waste. You can't do anything. I don't care if the Sierra Club goes out there. It is fully polluted! You're not only going to work to clean up the environment, but also you will put people to work.

I'm sad that it's uncool or offensive to talk about environmental or human rights issues.

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

What I quickly discovered is that our so-called new South Africa has as much material for a story-teller as the old one. The landscape hasn't really changed. Who is in power now is different to who was in power then, but the squatter camps grow like cancer, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

I'm a radical environmentalist; I think the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better. The world will do better without us. Maybe some fuzzy animals will go with us, but there'll be plenty of other animals, and they'll be back.