Lewis Mumford Quotes

Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds, and mammals—not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements.

The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wantonly destroyed great works of art or sat slothfully by while they destroyed. We have passed this stage.... Here in the U.S. we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy our forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals - not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at best it looks as if our people were awakening.

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

The causal chain of the deterioration (of the environment) is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide---all can be traced easily to too many people.

The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?

Already, viral contamination offers an initial response to the question of the downside of electronic circuits, but another area of research beckons the area of ecological pollution. The pollution not only of air, water, and other substances, but also the unperceived pollution of distances.

The message from all quarters is the same: our undisciplined consumption must end. If we continue to gobble up our resources without any regard to stewardship and to spew out our deadly wastes over land, sea, and air, we may well be drawing down the final curtain upon ourselves.

You know, the environment is fragmenting, and the environment is, in many places, absolutely hideous!

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.

Because we're not in harmony with the environment, we're destroying the environment that supports us.

How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.

Human activity is having a major impact on the planet. We consume or have diverted a large proportion of the productivity of the land and oceans. Our hunger for land crowds out fellow species. Our waste products pollute the waters, warm the atmosphere and acidify the oceans.

With so much evidence of depleting natural resources, toxic waste, climate change, irreparable harm to our food chain and rapidly increasing instances of natural disasters, why do we keep perpetuating the problem? Why do we continue marching at the same alarming beat?

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

Today, the tide has turned, we are destroying them.

We have serious challenges regarding climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, forests and farmland. Not to mention the huge inequality still prevailing in several parts of the planet.

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.

Just think: in all the clean, beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death.

Wilderness is harder and harder to find these days on this beautiful planet, and we're abusing our planet to the point of almost no return.

The bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century

There probably were floods when our land was newly settled but before we cut our trees so recklessly they were not so serious. If we go to the headwaters of our rivers and we will find the cause and the results which follow in the wake of man's destructive ignorance.

I'm not very proud of coming from a place that everyone thinks is this pure green country whereas, in reality, all our lakes and waterways are poison.

We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air.

Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.

The body is like the earth ... as vulnerable to overbuilding, being carved into parcels, cut off, overmined, and shorn of its power as any landscape.