Alice Roberts Quotes

The value of biodiversity is that it makes our ecosystems more resilient, which is a prerequisite for stable societies; its wanton destruction is akin to setting fire to our lifeboat.

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

Biodiversity underpins life on earth. And if we don't look after this biodiversity, if we don't protect it, if we don't actually harness it in the right way, we are threatening our own livelihoods on this planet.

It saddens me that in the 21st century, with all our knowledge and power, we are hearing more and more stories of possible extinctions due to people's choice. We are responsible for our choices and the only ones capable of changing our future.

The byproduct of the main thrust to protect the biodiversity of a given place is that you get especially young people out to the parks, because it will be future generations that will have to value these landscapes and these ecosystems and make sure that nobody is changing the law.

Throughout all of human history we've enjoyed certain benign circumstances: an envelope of atmosphere, an envelope of temperature. A kind of resilience that if you cut down trees, then they'll grow back. You take fish, they recover. You put stuff into the atmosphere that you know is not good for us, but we can still breathe. We haven't awakened, generally, to the sense of urgency that does exist.

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

Unless we keep this planet healthy, everything else is for naught.

Ignorance, hatred and greed are killing nature.

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.

If, in our haste to 'progress,' the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America. We cannot afford an America where expedience tramples upon esthetics and development decisions are made with an eye only on the present.

Species conversation is beyond a doubt an issue that truly matters to the American public.

We owe it to each other - and to our children and grandchildren - to leave our planet in a better state than when we found it.

If conservationists will attempt to resume responsibility for their need to eat, they will be led back fairly directly to all their previous concerns for the welfare of nature.

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.

I wouldn't want anyone to destroy the earth.

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.

The cost of our success is the exhaustion of natural resources, leading to energy crises, climate change, pollution, and the destruction of our habitat. If you exhaust natural resources, there will be nothing left for your children. If we continue in the same direction, humankind is headed for some frightful ordeals, if not extinction.

I'm working in this very complex set of issues having to do with who we are as a species and how much we can do to the Earth before it starts to buckle under. My work can easily read as an indictment, but I don't see it as that simple a problem.

If you look at the state of our planet, the next generations won't be around if we consider sustainability as a gimmick.

Nature conserves, prefers novelty.

I also have an idea for a book on biodiversity, and why and how we should be conserving it.

Unless action is taken soon - unless we can display the same vision of that earlier period - we will lose the treasure of California's open space and environmental beauty.

I was so fanatical about trying to save wildlife... I was unable to accept that we couldn't solve this problem of thousands of years, of wherever humans operated, the environment deteriorated.

I think its time to change and balance the environment and growth. If we don't do that, we're going to suffer a hard landing one day very soon.