Kim Stanley Robinson Quotes

I want to interpret the natural world and our links to it. It's driven by the belief of many world-class scientists that we're in the midst of an extinction crisis... This time it's us that's doing it.

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

People will be able to survive, of course, without honeycreepers and monk seals. But if the wolf spider is in trouble, we are in trouble, too.

The language 'It's too late' is very unsuitable for most environmental issues. It's too late for the dodo and for people who've starved to death already, but it's not too late to prevent an even bigger crisis. The sooner we act on the environment, the better.

For the most part we don’t have an immediate impact on the species that surrounds us. But we do have an immediate impact on their habitat which determines whether they survive on in some cases shift their ground.

We are in grave danger of losing forever not just millions of years of evolution on earth, but the eons of change that have produced man and his natural environment.

If you think about it, every single species is endangered. Homo sapiens at the front of the line, mosquitoes and lawyers at the back.

We frequently look into the future of mankind and see dangers. We see if we carry on doing what we are doing in 20 years' time there will be no rainforests left, just to use one example. Looking into the future may be one of the reasons that brains evolved in the first place.

We're being challenged to do something so profound, it's unprecedented in the history of our species, and there couldn't be more at stake. It's not even our species at stake; it's the whole dream of life on earth that's taken 4.5 billion years to realize - all this beautiful pastoral life on earth.

I think the environment is the biggest threat mankind has ever faced.

You should issue demerits for tree cutting or the destruction of humus.

I realize the answer is not to create wilderness and walk away.

The whale is endangered, while the ant continues to do just fine.

Biological diversity is messy. It walks, it crawls, it swims, it swoops, it buzzes. But extinction is silent, and it has no voice other than our own.

We must recognize that we're all part of a web of life around the world. Anytime you extinguish a species, the consequences are serious.

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.

The latest revelation - from no Mount Sinai, Sermon on the Mount or Bo tree - is the outcry of mute things themselves that we must heed by curbing our powers over creation, lest we perish together on a wasteland of what that creation once was.

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.

As a nation, we owe a great deal to the National Audubon Society, one of our most distinguished and important environmental organizations, and all those who work to protect America's open land and waterways.

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.

This Earth is our only home. Together, we must protect and cherish it.

In particular, for younger researchers on whom the future of mankind may depend. We believe that they are working with all the scientific wisdom at their disposal for the preservation of the inheritance of the earth and for the lasting survival of mankind.

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.

We habitually engage in meddling with nature. Until this century most of this meddling was good. Witness the preservation of the European countryside. But since then we've smoked it up and littered it and dumped too much in too many waters. I don't think it's our privilege to behave this way.

Politicians need a better understanding of global ecology. We need to be freed from our species-specific arrogance. No evidence exists that we are 'chosen', the unique species for which all the others were made. Nor are we the most important one because we are so numerous, powerful and dangerous.