Ramez Naam Quotes

I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital "N" and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc.

We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.

The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.

It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars.

By focusing on teaching businesses about the ROI they can achieve by preserving and investing in nature, you're expanding the scope of the impact you can have.

We depend on nature. Now, nature's depending on us.

We have a very old conservation movement, particularly in the United States, which has focused on campaigns to protect endangered species: the spotted owl, the old-growth forest. But usually it stops there. To me, biodiversity is the full spectrum. Species conservation is not only about wilderness conservation. It’s also about protecting the livelihood of people even while changing the dominant relationship that humans have had with other species. In India, it’s an economic issue, not just an ecological one.

We share this planet, our home, with millions of species. Justice and sustainability both demand that we do not use more resources than we need.

Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.

Economists don't seem to have noticed that the economy sits entirely within the ecology.

[The natural world cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among many other gifts.] Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.

When we protect the places where the processes of life can flourish, we strengthen not only the future of medicine, agriculture and industry, but also the essential conditions for peace and prosperity.

We can't impede progress in the name of environmental action that yields little for the environment and even less for our people.. and we should look at the environment as an economic opportunity.

We have to create a sustainable environment, worldwide, and we're not doing it. The best thing we can do with the rest of this century is aggressively acquire - and put aside - the richest natural reserves that we can, and then do our best to manage the needs and desires of the 11 billion people we expect to have by the end of the century. This is where biology is headed. For that reason, the sooner we get on with mapping biodiversity on Earth, the better off biology will be - not to mention the whole subject of saving it before we carelessly throw it away.

The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth - soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife.

Environmentalists and clean energy champions should stop telling people that we are working for "sustainability," which nobody understands.

We have spent the best part of the past century enthusiastically testing the world to utter destruction; not looking closely enough at the long-term impact our actions will have.

If you can unify the public mind saving an iconic species like the tiger, like they did with the panda, that means you have to protect their habitat and everything that they hunt. And that means saving massive, thousands of acres for them to be able to roam and breed. So it's more of a land effort.

Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

There is too little public recognition of how much we all depend upon farmers as stewards of our soil, water and wildlife resources.

The preservation of parks, wilderness, and wildlife has also aided liberty by keeping alive the 19th century sense of adventure and awe with which our forefathers greeted the American West. Many laws protecting environmental quality have promoted liberty by securing property against the destructive trespass of pollution. In our own time, the nearly universal appreciation of these preserved landscapes, restored waters, and cleaner air through outdoor recreation is a modern expression of our freedom and leisure to enjoy the wonderful life that generations past have built for us.

Sometime in the last ten years the best brains of the Occident discovered to their amazement that we live in an Environment. This discovery has been forced on us by the realization that we are approaching the limits of something.

Economy without ecology means managing the human nature relationship without knowing the delicate balance between humankind and the natural world

Not only has wilderness been a force in molding our character as a people, but its influence continues, and will, if we are wise enough to preserve it on this continent, be a stabilizing power as well as a spiritual reserve for the future.