Sylvia Earle Quotes

I was always a girl who loved animals and cared about the environment - um, I totally recycled at home and turned the lights off every time I left! But it wasn't until I met the love of my life, Philippe Cousteau, that I realized every thing we do, buy and use makes a difference in the world... for better or worse.

Most of the news about the state of the environment is pretty ugly. This is frightening for me personally, but actually motivational for me artistically.

Many people who live in big countries like ours thought that we had resources that would work for us for many, many years, but that was a mistake. Our natural wealth corrupted us. In this country, you were among the first to raise environmental issues. In Russia, despite all of its problems today, people are concerned about the environment, and it's become a central issue on the agenda.

Of all the unpopular things that Donald Trump is doing, the polling shows that the one that's most out of whack with Americans' opinions are these attacks on the environment. And it means, too, that people are going to have to start stepping up a little bit in other places.

I think that the environment is very a complicated question. I am very sympathetic to people who support the environment who live in the United States. I am very sympathetic to people who don't support the environment who live in a very poor country.

In America, I don't know how much longer the environment is going to exist. I sort of strongly believe that we're in danger.

We don't have seasons anymore. You know why? We lost the ozone layer. Well, put it on milk cartons - let's find it!

I'm an old member of Greenpeace. I worried intensely, as I think most of my friends did, that the world was coming apart.

Sometimes the media gives us the impression that we are terminal patients, because of problems of global warmth or the ozone layer. And the people, they don't understand that they can could change this situation for the better if they could act locally in a city.

I resent the idea that somebody in Washington will protect our environment better than we can.

The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch's brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment.

Do you really want to know why I'm doing all this goodwill, and why I'm an ambassador for Habitat for Humanity and why I gave a million to [relief efforts for Hurricane] Katrina? It's because I feel guilty about the huge hole in the ozone layer my haircuts created. It's my responsibility to right the wrongs of the Eighties.

It was Rachel Carson's famous book 'Silent Spring' that got me involved with the environment. I read it in The New Yorker, in installments. Up to then, I'd thought the main job to do is help the meek inherit the Earth. And I still, that's a job that's got to be done. But I realized if we didn't do something soon, what the meek would inherit would be a pretty poisonous place to live.

I've always been very aware of environment. When I was a kid I wanted to be a marine biologist until I realized I hated being underwater. I think a lot of that came from traveling and seeing the levels of waste produced by so many factories around the world.

I feel a desperation to make people see what we are doing to the environment, what a mess we are making of our world. At this point, the more people I reach, the more I accomplish. ... I miss Gombe and my wonderful years in the forest But if I were to go back to that, I wouldn't feel I was doing what I should be doing.

...Environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they've lost credibility with the public.

When future generations judge those who came before them on environmental issues, they may conclude "they didn't know": let us not go down in history as the generations who knew, but didn't care

Why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?

I don't know how to make people who absolutely have to be obsessed with paying a week's energy bills... obsessed with climate change... It's very hard.

I think the environment is possibly our most worrying thing at the moment, so I think mountaintops are the place to live.

We should be treating, I think, the whole issue of climate change and global warming with a far greater degree of priority than I think is happening now.

I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels.

We've polluted the stratosphere with these chlorine and bromine compounds, and because it's now colder, and because we have this change in the climate, we're getting more ozone loss than we would have gotten in a normal year.

Environmental issues are on everyone's mind. It's part of our culture now and I can only applaud and laud anyone who is doing what they can and raising awareness.

While I am not a scientist, and write primarily on economics, tax policy and budget issues, I have been fascinated over the years by Heartland's work on climate change.