Ma Jun Quotes

The order and harmony of the Western world, its most famous achievement, and a laboratory in which structures of a complexity as yet unknown are being fashioned, demand the elimination of a prodigious mass of noxious by-products which now contaminate the globe. The first thing we see as we travel round the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.

We've got to search back to our last known safe landmark. I can't say exactly where, but I think it's back there at the start of the Industrial Revolution, we began applying energy in vast amounts to tools with which we began tearing the environment apart.

Like in those cancer villages, a group of old ladies kneeling down in front of me, you know, holding a bottle of polluted water and hoping that they would get help, this is the voice that got drowned in this complex, globalized supply chain system.

Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore,, Currents of debris upon my breast.

The millions and millions and millions of tons of toxic waste dumped into rivers and ocean. Extracting materials in a way that's not sustainable. All of those things suddenly in the last, I want to say, couple years alone, they matter to people. That's a big deal.

Chemical waste products are the droppings of science.

We've become a plastic society.

That area environmentally is a waste. You can't do anything. I don't care if the Sierra Club goes out there. It is fully polluted! You're not only going to work to clean up the environment, but also you will put people to work.

Everybody knows that the industrialized nations are the worst offenders.

Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can't.

Plastic bags are bad and for the most part unnecessary.

The West has become the world model; developing countries are dreaming of living like us, which is impossible. They should reject our model, because it is not sustainable. Developing countries should even give us the example, but unfortunately that's not what happens.

Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.

The Third World is not a reality but an ideology.

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt.

I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to it.

Contrary to what you might think, China's economy is relatively less efficient, and more polluting, than those of rich countries.

There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading.

Once a landscape is industrialized, its wild character is lost for good. You can't recreate untouched tundra, mountain meadows, crystal clear streams, and animals that have never encountered toxic waste.

The things that drive me crazy are coming from this place of people suffering because of people polluting into rivers or whatever. It's not simply just about systems; it's an emotional reaction to seeing animals or people suffering.

Globalization is about liberalized imports and exports, which makes India export our best natural wealth and import the junk and wasted pollution of international production, including of the Western economies.

Runaway technology, whose only law is profit, has for years poisoned our air, ravaged our soil, stripped our forests bare, and corrupted our water resources

We've raped our homelands to maintain our economies.

Environmental crimes often and in death and disease

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.