Boyan Slat Quotes

We treat a planet at crisis point as an externality that can be shunted into a future generation. We continue to act as if we had the natural resources of several planets, not one.

We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.

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.

If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then, more than likely, you're going to exploit the world.

Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.

Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.

The destruction of our environment and resources cannot be stemmed unless the growth of the world's population is stemmed and ultimately reduced.

Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.

The main environmental challenge of the 21st century is poverty. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, it's hard to consider the environment 100 years down the line.

I was always aware that this whole Earth is on overload.

If the rest of the world aspires to our way of life ... we'll bury ourselves in waste.

The overpopulation of the earth The destruction of our natural habitat The rat race of humanity against itself The disappearance of all strong emotions and passions through pampering Genetic deterioration through deficient selection pressure on development and the lack of preservation of the norms of social behavior The breakdown of tradition; and The increasing susceptibility of humans to indoctrination

We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?

We've been given the gift of a billion years of cosmic time, and we should not screw it up. But at the rate we're using up our planet's natural resources and fouling our own nest means we're not going to last a billion years.

It is undeniable that the looming environmental crisis is partly the consequence of population growth.

Despite our very recent appearance on the planet, humanity combines arrogance with increasing material demands, even as we become more numerous. Our toughness is a delusion. Have we the intelligence and discipline to vigilantly guard against our tendency to grow without limit?

The human overpopulation issue is the topic I see as the most vital to solve if our children and grandchildren are to have a good quality of life.

Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms.

I don't think the planet can survive people. It's not the other way around. I don't think the planet can survive.

The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.

The most important question we have to deal with is a combination of population control and the control of our environment - how to utilize the world in as effective a way as we can for the future of mankind.

I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.

I worry about the world.

We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that's what's happening. Too many people there. They can't support themselves - and it's not an inhuman thing to say. It's the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it's going to get worse and worse.

Climate change is not a discrete issue; it's a symptom of larger problems. Fundamentally, our society as currently designed has no future. We're chewing up the planet so fast, in so many different ways, that we could solve the climate problem tomorrow and still find that environmental collapse is imminent.