David Maisel Quotes

In order to produce enough gold to create a wedding band, … a mine would have to extract tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds of ore. … each mine produces thousands of tons of waste rock and other materials. The end result is that mines across the West create millions of tons of waste. This waste is usually stored on the earth's surface in vast piles that may be hundreds of feet high and cover an area the size of several football fields.

Of course, as consumers, we want cheap and good products; however, if these production processes are exceeding wastewater discharge standards and even causing heavy metal pollution, they will cause long-lasting damage to the ecological environment and public health.

The coal mining industry is very destructive and it doesn't have to be.

From the industry's point of view, the problem is not that coal companies blast the top off mountains, turning the area into a moonscape and polluting the air and releasing toxic chemical into what's left of the local streams and aquifers. It's that the people who live near the mines are too cozy with their cousins.

The commencement of coal mining at Parsa Kente is a milestone event in coal mining sector.

But we have not used our waters well. Our major rivers are defiled by noxious debris. Pollutants from cities and industries kill the fish in our streams. Many waterways are covered with oil slicks and contain growths of algae that destroy productive life and make the water unfit for recreation. "Polluted Water-No Swimming" has become a familiar sign on too many beaches and rivers. A lake that has served many generations of men now can be destroyed by man in less than one generation.

The oil companies don’t own the resources…. We own the resources.

Every time there is an economic intensification, there is an ecological impact.

Strip mining is man’s thorough and total assault upon his planet.

I have always seen pollution as theft.

We have extracted from the land from the moment we stood on two feet. We are working to supply the kinds of materials that are necessary for the lives we've built for ourselves.

I have a huge fan following in Bellary, and when they met me, they told me about their problems. I have seen mining done without proper safety measures and not taking environmental protection into account.

Tar sands oil is dirtier, more corrosive, and worse for the environment than conventional oil.

Hinkley will be a ghost town. It will be another town lost in America due to pollution.

Coal is a big deal here in Wyoming.

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

The fossil fuel industry is destroying our planet and everything that we love.

As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.

During the Cold War, workers proudly contributed to national defense, but the carelessness and haste in handling toxic waste created a nightmare of pollution for subsequent generations.

Sulfide-ore mining is one of the most toxic industries in America and has a long history of polluting waterways with acid drainage that contains arsenic, mercury, and lead.

E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the United States and can pose serious environmental and health problems here and around the world when not handled properly.

The worst is yet to come, because all the plastic that is already out there is going to become more hazardous if we don't clean it up.

This plastic doesn't go away by itself, and to just let hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic be out there to be fragmented into these small and dangerous microplastics to me seems like an unacceptable scenario.

As the pace of technology increases, the amount of toxic electronic waste is piling up at home and abroad.

The process to generate energy using the Canadian tar sands is particularly dirty, producing one of the most noxious fossil fuels on the planet and leaving a devastated landscape in its wake.