Helen Caldicott Quotes

There are fewer chemical pollutants in the air. Our drinking water is safer. Our food standards have been raised. We've cleaned up more toxic waste sites in three years than the previous administrations did in twelve. The environment is cleaner, and we have fought off the most vigorous assault on environmental protection since we began to protect the environment in 1970. We are moving in the right direction to the 21st century.

I have always seen pollution as theft.

There are systems called zero discharge emission systems that would prevent any pollution from making it into the water or the air.

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.

The causal chain of the deterioration (of the environment) is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide---all can be traced easily to too many people.

There are real and growing dangers to our simple and most precious possessions: the air we breathe, the water we bring, and the land which sustains us.... If we do not act, the world of the year 2000 will be much less able to sustain life than it is now.

We have done extraordinary things to destroy our waters. We can never do enough to research and coordinate cleaning these waters up.

We ought to move toward the objective of allowing our state to become number one, not in the protection of toxic substances, but in the prosecution of those who are polluting our environment.

I wouldn't want anyone to destroy the earth.

China leads the world in energy consumption, carbon emissions, and the release of major air and water pollutants, and the environmental impact is felt both regionally and globally.

Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.

We can have technology, prosperity, nice homes and cars, but at the same time we must be conscious of what we are dumping into the water, the air and our food.

Keep talking about moving toxic wastes, but never let it cross your mind to quit producing them. Keep Judging yourselves in Manson. Don't look in the mirror. You will serve the Earth as much as she serves you or you will commit suicide.

A proper respect for nature means that you can't pollute the air, poison the rivers and chop down the forests indiscriminately without suffering greatly.

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

In many developing countries environmental problems are relegated to the periphery because they do not appear to be as urgent as other issues … We cannot survive without clean drinking water, food and pure air. Environmental concerns are not a luxury in Africa.

Every American deserves to breathe clean air.

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.

Environmental degradation and pollution constrain economic growth, contribute to large-scale migration, harm public health, and engender social unrest.

I always saw pollution as theft, and I always thought, 'Why should somebody be able to pollute the air, which belongs to all of us, or destroy a river or a waterway, which is supposed to belong to the whole community?'

Already, viral contamination offers an initial response to the question of the downside of electronic circuits, but another area of research beckons the area of ecological pollution. The pollution not only of air, water, and other substances, but also the unperceived pollution of distances.

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

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

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.