Vivienne Westwood Quotes

In the long term the economy and the environment are the same thing. If it is unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is a rule of nature.

If it's unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is the rule of nature

Fortunately, we know more about the problems that we have than in all preceding history. We know now the consequences of the things that we put into the air, into the water - of the way we treat life on Earth.

Development requires modification and transformation of the environment... the planet's capacity to support its people us being irreversibly reduced by the destruction and degradation of the biosphere and the need to understand the problem and take corrective action is becoming urgent.

For those of us who worry more about working people than about windfall profits for oil companies, it may net out. A better question is: what does it do to our economy if we manage to overheat the earth? This summer's drought provides a small taste.

We're adding a billion people every decade. We're just spin doctors. Whatever we do is supposedly great, and yet it's always at the expense of diversity and nature. We're like elephants. The ecology of the elephant is more similar to human than any other.

After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.

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.

Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term.

The Prime Minister of India, at a meeting that I co-chaired a few months ago, stated that any development that is not sustainable is not development.

For centuries, building materials were free. You want to build a house, you cut down some trees. But we haven't been thinking about the cost to the planet.

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

Every time we try to do something to improve the environment someone predicts that it will ruin the economy.

Conservation is not without a cost.

The true cost to the world of a burger is far greater than the money you hand over to buy it.

Economic growth tends to require the taking of resources from the Earth. So something has to change on a debt-based economy.

The world breaks a little bit every time we cut down a tree. It's so much easier to cut one down than to grow one. And so it's worth interrogating every time we do it.

What I wonder most about the Anthropocene is not when did it start - but when, and how, will it end? Will it end? Or is it possible that our own growing awareness of our role on Earth can itself play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome toward one that we would desire?

The planet isn't going anywhere. We are.

Squeezing the lives of people is now being proposed as the saviour of the planet. Through the green economy an attempt is being made to technologise, financialise, privatise and commodify all of the earth’s resources and living processes.

There's this thing that you're not meant to have too many children - for global warming, it's bad. But I know lots of crappy people, and I would rather that good people have lots of kids and outnumber the baddies.

The earth is a great piece of stupidity.

We will have no jobs if we have no planet.

The price of apparently cheap food is costing nothing less than the Earth!

Every time we burn a gallon of gas or an acre of rain forest, aren't we killing the future to preserve the present?