George McGovern Quotes

Americans don't pay much attention to environmental issues, because they aren't sexy. I mean, cleaning up coal plants and reining in outlaw frackers is hugely important work, but it doesn't get anybody's pulse racing.

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.

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

Every time we try to do something to improve the environment someone predicts that it will ruin the economy.

EPA can and should now focus on getting real results in the fight for clean air, land, and water.

Over and over, we hear politicians say they can't spend our tax dollars on environmental protection when the economy is so fragile.

If you're a Conservative, why aren't you behind conserving the land?

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.

There is a growing recognition of the importance of really bringing pollution under control.

I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes.

In the end, I think the majority of Romanian society will understand that if we respect environmental protection standards, if we have benefits in taxes, royalties, jobs, we should do what all the modern countries in Europe and beyond are doing to take advantage of their natural resources.

For the U.S., I think we should have a carbon tax, for environmental reasons.

The future will either be green or not at all.

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

We can make a concerted effort to stop poisoning the planet: that would be a good way of appeasing the gods.

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.

Conservation has been in eclipse in this country ever since Theodore Roosevelt’s day. It had barely gotten off the ground when Uncle Joe Cannon, the Speaker of the House in those days, issued his ultimatum: “Not 1 cent for scenery.” Well, today we are repealing Cannon’s law. We are declaring a new doctrine of conservation.

The forests shall not be burned needlessly.

What’s been going on for years is political science, not good science in the environmental area.

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.

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

How much longer, for instance, can we continue to crowd more and more people into this world? …. How long can we permit the uncontrolled use of the earth's resources when there is no possibility of replacing them? Indeed, how long will it be before we have completely used up everything our lives depend on? These issues are the politics of the future. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have begun to spell out in substantive fashion the means by which we can control population growth, environmental problems, and the conservation of our natural resources.

The current challenge facing the environmental authorities is how to properly deal with the environmental problems caused by economic development.

Doing everything the scientists wanted us to do [to protect the environment] would be ruinous.

The 'environmental left' tells us that, though we have natural resources like natural gas and oil and coal, and though we can feed the world, we should keep those things in the ground, put up fences, and be about prohibition.