Richard M. Daley Quotes

Further devastation of the air, land and sea is obviously a very real possibility, unless the attitudes of politicians and all who irresponsibly exploit our natural resources change significantly in the very near future and all collaborate and sacrifice for the good of the planet.

The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned.

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.

When I was 7 years old, I announced that I was going to write a book about pollution. I didn't get around to it until I was 29, but I always recognized that pollution was a theft. That it was a way of stealing something from the public - the common earth.

My father gave me this poster from National Geographic back in the very early 70s, so I was a young teenager. It showed how man polluted his world. And the issues that they talked about, whether it was water pollution, air, or terrestrial... The issues that they talk about on this poster are still very much present today.

You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert. If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!

We've been at war with nature. Now we need to apologize and clean up.

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.

I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.

Unfortunately, some in Washington remain tied to the dogma that responsible energy development cannot be achieved without taking a wrecking ball to the environment.

For too much of history, we've viewed the world's precious resources - both environmental and human - as things to extract, to make the most of in order to maximize their potential.

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

If nature were a bank, they would have already rescued it.

Fundamentally, if you look at where the environmental issues are coming from, it's all because of humans and our impact on the environment, so while it's true that one individual is not going to sufficiently fix the environment, it is a necessary thing.

But overall, Obama's record on the environment has been uninspired - and that's putting it kindly. He hasn't stopped coal companies from blowing up mountaintops and devastating large regions of Appalachia.

I wouldn't want anyone to destroy the earth.

Americans trash the planet not because we're evil, but because the industrial systems we've devised leave no other choice. Our ranch houses and high-rises, factories and farms, freeways and power plants were conceived before we had a clue how the planet works.

We say we need to clean up the environment; to clean up the environment, we need to be richer. But maybe getting richer is actually making us poorer.

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.

I always get involved with the environment because once you go past the tipping point with the environment, you don't get it back.

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

Putting our ecosystem in great peril is certainly not a part of Chinese culture that I know.

I have bigger concerns than what pop stars are doing. I'm more concerned about our environment, what industrialists are doing to it.

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.