Gil Stern Quotes

Man is complex—he makes deserts bloom and lakes die.

Our conservation laws are based on static ideas about nature—not landscapes that are rapidly changing because of something humans did.

The environment is more than just nature. The environment is peoples needs.

You can say, like, planet Earth has an existing geology, and what we do as human beings and as architects is that we try to sort of alter and modify and expand the geology.

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.

Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

Limits [to growth] are indeed imposed by the impact of present technologies and social organization on the biosphere, but we must have the ingenuity to change. And change we must.

… human population growth within the ecosystem was closely analogous to the growth of malignant tumor cells within an organism: that man was acting like a cancer on the biosphere. The multiplication of human numbers certainly seems wild and uncontrolled... Four million a month - the equivalent of the population of Chicago... We seem to be doing all right at the moment; but if you could ask cancer cells, I suspect they would think they were doing fine. But when the organism dies, so do they; and for our own, selfish, practical, utilitarian reasons, I think we should be careful about how we influence the rest of the ecosystem.

The environment, what surrounds you, is so alive and delightful and complex.

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.

Fortunately, nature is as generous with its problems as Nobel with his fortune. The more we know, the more aware we are of what we know not.

The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.

In a fragile environment, we need to be aware of ourselves as members of a uniquely powerful species living among other species who are quite as interesting as we are but vulnerable to us because we are cleverer in more destructive ways.

Because we're not in harmony with the environment, we're destroying the environment that supports us.

If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then, more than likely, you're going to exploit the world.

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.

If you sort of treat the environment in sort of this mechanical, industrial way that there's a disconnect between man and the environment, it's very easy to treat people that way.

The images of Earth's delicate biosphere, contrasting with the sterile moonscape where the astronauts left their footsteps, have become iconic for environmentalists: these may indeed be the Apollo programme's most enduring legacy.

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

How much will you give for the lives of your childrens children, which is yourself? How much are people willing to give up for air, earth, water, animals, and the coming generations? I think the answer to that is pretty clear.

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

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?