Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

We have to start listening to nature now.

The planet is under pressure and our choices have never been more important. The Food Revolution Summit is an informative and empowering platform which highlights ways to set a new pattern for the future of the planet.

Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it's a challenge to the moral imagination.

If we don’t tackle these problems soon, they will tackle us.

We are going to learn how to relate to the Earth and our own natural environment here by looking seriously at space colony ecologies.

Our ecological emergency demands proactive choices, not reactive sideswipes.

Nothing is being done of any real significance. Our demand is the government must tell the truth about the crisis we're in. And that includes working with communities to build resilience... We want to go to net carbon zero emissions by 2015 and reduce our consumption levels.

Listening to nature's operating instructions.

Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecendented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It's bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms

We can at least see that the question is asked, and asked on the basis of a clear recognition that there is no way of manipulating our environment that is without cost or consequence - and thus also of a recognition that we are inextricably bound up with the destiny of our world. There is no guarantee that the world we live in will "tolerate" us indefinitely if we prove ourselves unable to live within its constraints.

As long as we are graceful, appreciative lodgers, the earth remains healthy and wondrous.

We only have this one planet; we got to figure out how to live on it without destroying it.

We need a transformation of the world economy and of how we use and share the Earth's resources. We are running out of time. We are truly at the point of no return.

Humanity as a species must change dramatically and radically or our survival is at stake.

We live within the environment. So that directly relates with our survival, our life. So through that way, more concern of well being of humanity, then naturally concerned about environment.

We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.

I believe that the only thing that will dispel the darkness is for the light to come on. And the lights are coming on. Here, there. People are eating more vegetables, living green, taking in and saving animals. All of that is the light coming on.

This is an incredibly creative time. It is a difficult time. It is a disparaging time. A time of cultural and global transitions based on the realization that the Earth cannot support nonsustainable practices anymore. I believe capitalism will eventually be replaced by a communitarian ethic where the rights and care of all beings will be taken into consideration, not just the greed of a corporate few.

Never again will we have this good a chance as we now have to find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that keep us alive. It's a sweet spot in history. That's why this is such a critical time.

Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?

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.

We already know enough to begin to cope with all the major problems that are now threatening human life and much of the rest of life on earth. Our crisis is not a crisis of information; it is a crisis of decision of policy and action.

Mindfulness of the resources we have and respect for where we live, eat, and sleep is a good starting point. Being conscious of your consumption, what goes in and out, will help cut down on wastefulness.

I think climate change is probably the most extreme, and it's been going on for years because it's very difficult to talk about a planetary issue like climate change and to get people who live within four-year electoral cycles to actually pay attention to something that you predict is happening way in the future.

We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings.