Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

We have an obligation to live in harmony with creation, with our capital... with God's creation. And we need to administer and work that very carefully.

The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we inhabit are not only critical elements in the quality of life we enjoy - they are a reflection of the majesty of our Creator.

If humanity today succeeds in combining the new scientific capacities with a strong ethical dimension, it will certainly be able to promote the environment as a home and a resource for...all...and will be able to eliminate the causes of pollution and to guarantee adequate conditions of hygiene and health for small groups as well as for vast human settlements.

Amory Lovins says the primary design criteria he uses is the question How do we love all the children? Not just our children, not just the ones who look like us or who have resources, not just the human children but the young of birds and salmon and redwood trees. When we love all the children, when that love is truly sacred to us in the sense of being most important, then we have to take action in the world to enact that love. We are called to make the earth a place where all the children can thrive.

We've have to heed our Biblical obligation to be good stewards of the Earth after leaving the Garden of Eden.

We cannot choose between [economic] growth and sustainability - we must have both

I believe in a sound, strong environmental policy that protects the health of our people and a wise stewardship of our nation's natural resources.

I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that's beyond fixing.

We protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities.

We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.

The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life.

All too often we fail to ask what we are trying to sustain. Ultimately, sustainability must be measured by the endurance of thriving human communities.

If we've learned any lessons during the past few decades, perhaps the most important is that preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge; it's common sense. Our physical health, our social happiness, and our economic well-being will be sustained only by all of us working in partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our natural resources.

Simply because humankind have the power now to meddle or 'manage' or 'exercise stewardship' in every nook and cranny of the world does not mean that we have a right to do so. Even less, the obligation.

The time has come to link ecology to economic and human development. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. What is happening to the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil will affect us all.

The road to conservation is paved with good intentions that often prove futile, or even dangerous, due to a lack of understanding of either land or economic land use.

In this new millennium it is more important to defend the rights of the Mother Earth to guarantee human rights.

If there is to be a human future, we must bring ourselves into balanced relationship with one another and the Earth.

Around the world, we see the results of exploitation which destroys much without taking future generations into account. Protecting the world's forests; stemming desertification and erosion; avoiding the spread of toxic substances harmful to man, animals and plants; protecting the atmosphere; all these can be accomplished only through active and wise cooperation, without borders or political power plays.

We are committed to cleaning up the air and cleaning up the water. But we also are committed to a strong economy, and we are not going to allow the environmental issue to be used sometimes falsely and sometimes in a demagogic way basically to destroy the system-the industrial system that made this the great country it is.

Remember that the animals and plants have no M.P. they can write to; they can't perform sit-down strikes or, indeed, strikes of any sort; they have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them but do not own it.

We have too long treated the natural world as an adversary rather than as a life-sustaining gift from the Almighty. If man has the genius to build, which he has, he must also have the ability and the responsibility to preserve.

Today we celebrate Earth Day. I exhort everyone to see the world through the eyes of God the Creator: the earth is an environment to be safeguarded, a garden to be cultivated. The relationship of mankind with nature must not be conducted with greed, manipulation and exploitation, but it must conserve the divine harmony that exists between creatures and Creation within the logic of respect and care, so it can be put to the service of our brothers, also of future generations.

Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family.

God then makes people whom he puts right in the middle of all this loaded creation. Commanding them to care for creation, to manage it, to lovingly use it, to creatively order it... They are environmentalists. Being deeply connected with their environment is who they are. For them to be anything else or to deny their divine responsibility to care for all that God has made would be to deny something that is at the core of their existence. This is why litter and pollution are spiritual issues.