Ric Keller Quotes

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

Conservation is not without a cost.

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

Yes, we have ruined the Earth and have done an exceptionally good job of it. Yes, we should look at sustainable development. But we cannot afford to do things sequentially, but parallelly and make sure that we do not repeat our mistakes.

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency.

World-wide practice of Conservation and the fair and continued access by all nations to the resources they need are the two indispensable foundations of continuous plenty and of permanent peace.

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.

We have to understand in value what the services of nature are so that we can understand that degrading them is an irreplaceable resource that no amount of money or human ingenuity can replace.

I think the greatest challenge in environmentalism and the most rewarding challenge is trying to figure out how humans can meet their needs while protecting the environment.

Fossil fuels and mining is a short-term gambit. If we develop those resources at the expense of the environmental gold mine that is the Great Barrier Reef, we will all lose in the long run.

One of Alaska's strengths is our pioneer role in environmentally sensitive development.

Poverty and backwardness in the midst of clear waters and verdant mountains is no good, nor is it to have prosperity and wealth while the environment deteriorates.

You can't conserve what you haven't got.

Environmental activism against the resource industry is widespread all over the world, but at the same time we have to realise that these are basic materials on which civilisation depends. We need to tap natural resources in a sustainable manner.

We habitually engage in meddling with nature. Until this century most of this meddling was good. Witness the preservation of the European countryside. But since then we've smoked it up and littered it and dumped too much in too many waters. I don't think it's our privilege to behave this way.

I wouldn't want anyone to destroy the earth.

The earth and its resources belong of right to its people.

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

We have to preserve it and use it sustainably. And the short-term use of resources at the destruction of the long-term heritage of this country is not a policy that we can pursue.

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?

Unless we practice conservation, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day.

The natural capital is not income, but we spend our natural capital as if it were revenue, as if it were going to come back next year without any problems, whereas these renewals in nature can take hundreds of years.

A proper respect for nature means that you can't pollute the air, poison the rivers and chop down the forests indiscriminately without suffering greatly.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect