David Grinspoon Quotes

The Anthropocentic Age - the first age in which humankind is the dominant species on the planet - cuts both ways: it is up to us to destroy or save the planet. We certainly have the ability.

The most striking thing to me about human space flight and my own personal experience is that I've seen dramatic changes on Earth. We humans are rapidly changing the planet. I've watched Amazonia as the rainforest has been cut down. That's something I've seen out the window. I'm very worried about that.

Disasters are called natural, as if nature were the executioner and not the victim.

With our evolved busy hands and our evolved busy brains, in an extraordinarily short period of time we've managed to alter the earth with such geologic-forcing effects that we ourselves are forces of nature. Climate change, ocean acidification, the sixth mass extinction of species.

I'm not going to argue with scientists how much human activity affects natural environment, including climate.

What I wonder most about the Anthropocene is not when did it start - but when, and how, will it end? Will it end? Or is it possible that our own growing awareness of our role on Earth can itself play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome toward one that we would desire?

Perhaps it has been too uncomfortable for those with vested interests to acknowledge, but 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.

Once humans traded their hunter-gatherer existences for more settled communities, we began a quest to make our lives better and more comfortable, but we've also been sucking precious finite resources from our environment ever since.

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

Human beings are definitely changing the planet, but how much impact they are having on climate, I don't know and I don't care.

China is bearing the environmental cost for much of the world because China is the factory of the world.

We have altered the physical, chemical and biological properties of the planet on a geological scale. We have left no part of the globe untouched.

I think the global mass culture is either consciously or unconsciously sensitized to how vulnerable we are here on the planet.

Environmental degradation has one cause above all others: the propensity of human beings to take the benefit and leave the costs to someone else, preferably someone far away in space or time, whose protests can be safely ignored.

As artists, we can help, visually and intellectually, to make people understand that, at some point, we have to accept that it is our collective impact that is putting the whole planet in jeopardy.

There's eco-pragmatism, where you recognize, 'Yeah, we live on a planet that's permanently altered by humanity, and rather than seek to return to or preserve pure wilderness, we recognize that's an illusion, and we proceed under the new knowledge that we live, in fact, in a human-dominated planet.'

We've been playing in the sandbox of creation for millions of years. We ruin one environment, we move on to the next - manifest destiny. Now it's hitting us collectively: Our mother's life is in our hands.

If I was an alien looking down at Earth and studying the way we've treated the planet, would I really think humans are worthy of all these resources? Probably not.

The debate is over. The scientific community has spoken in a virtually unanimous voice. Climate change is real. It is caused by human activity.

The strong evidence is that we're running out of space. We're collectively affecting the world's climate. This is due to the still-growing human population and our increase in consumption.

For how many people do you think might yet stand on this planet before the sun grows cold? That's the responsibility we hold in our hands.

It was once religion which told us that we are all sinners because of original sin. It is now the ecology of our planet which pronounces us all to be sinners because of the excessive exploits of human inventiveness.

What we are doing is, rather than living on the interest of our basic biological capital, we're using up our capital, so we're dipping into our capital. We're using up what should be our children's and grandchildren's legacy.

We're not going to persuade people in the developing world to go without, but neither can we afford a planet on which everyone lives like an American. Billions more people living in suburbs and driving SUVs to shopping malls is a recipe for planetary suicide. We can't even afford to continue that way of life ourselves.

Man is now in charge of the thermostat for the globe.