Vandana Shiva Quotes

I look at it this way... For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers... so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse.

Life on the planet is being homogenized by the expanding human population and the frequent and rapid movement of people and goods, which carry invasive organisms with them. These invasives often flourish in their new ecosystems because, like the woolly adelgid, they have escaped their predators.

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

Americans trash the planet not because we're evil, but because the industrial systems we've devised leave no other choice. Our ranch houses and high-rises, factories and farms, freeways and power plants were conceived before we had a clue how the planet works.

We feel we have to put concrete on every inch of land. It disturbs the ecology, and it takes away the experience of a child going out into the woods and seeing all of nature.

Apart from the most obvious cases, like the Oriental Bittersweet vine, escaped from private gardens and smothering the mountains one acre at a time, the most painful proof of man's destruction is not what you can see right in front of you; it's what you will never see again.

It is shocking to smite down trees for mere decorations.

Every time there is an economic intensification, there is an ecological impact.

human ecology

You cannot put a contaminant in the ground and just think that Mother Nature whips it up and runs it off somewhere else and we never see it again.

If we keep pulling death from the ground, we will reap death from the skies.

You will not understand your part within the framework of nature until you actually see yourselves in danger of tearing it apart.

One degree turns out to be enough to really unhinge all sorts of earth's ecosystems.

If industrial man continues to multiply his numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his own making.

The ocean is tired. It's throwing back at us what we're throwing in there.

I don’t know if it is all (man’s fault) but the majority is, for the most part, it is man who continuously slaps down nature.

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history.

Unfortunately, The End of Nature turns out to be correct, although I wish it were not so. The only places that I was incorrect was, as with environmental science at the time, the estimation of the speed at which we see the effects of global warming.

An now the silences come in a single lifetime, in a single year... when species die, leaving a silent space in the world song that can never be filled.

Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.

One thing leads to the other. Deforestation leads to climate change, which leads to ecosystem losses, which negatively impacts our livelihoods - it's a vicious cycle.

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

We have, in a sense, lorded it over nature, over Sister Earth, over Mother Earth, i think man has gone too far.

You've got to spread out as far as you can, cut down a whole forest, irrigate a whole desert, just to make sure that you won't accidentally stumble upon a place that's still in its natural state.