David Maisel Quotes

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.

In the central Indian state of Orissa, mining has scarred the landscape, and it is already too late to secure most of the traditional elephant corridors.

I see how these beautiful forests are now open to destruction because of technology. Companies are able to get into more and more remote places that weren't economically viable before.

The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.

The destruction of the natural beauty, the ecosystems, and the majesty of mountains affect us in ways we're not even aware of. Every time a mountain is beheaded, we chop off a little part of our souls.

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

But overall, Obama's record on the environment has been uninspired - and that's putting it kindly. He hasn't stopped coal companies from blowing up mountaintops and devastating large regions of Appalachia.

I see a lot of damage to Mother Earth. I see water being taken from creeks where water belongs to animals, not to oil companies.

Windmills are going to be the death of Scotland and even England if they don't do something about them. They are ruining the countryside.

The story of mountaintop mining - why it happens, and what its consequences are - is still new to most Americans. They have no idea that their country's physical legacy - the purple mountain majesties that are America - is being destroyed at the rate of several ridgetops a week, by three million pounds of explosives every day.

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

As a result of manifest destiny, we gutted our resources.

The bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century

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

Man's war against nature is a war against himself.

Nature does not have the capacity to heal all the wounds that have been inflicted upon it by mankind.

Strip mining is man’s thorough and total assault upon his planet.

Scientists themselves readily admit that they do not fully understand the consequences of our many-faceted assault upon the interwoven fabric of atmosphere, water, land and life in all its biological diversity. But things could also turn out to be worse than the current scientific best guess. In military affairs, policy has long been based on the dictum that we should be prepared for the worst case. Why should it be so different when the security is that of the planet and our long-term future?

China is the world’s second largest economy, but the enormous costs of its growth are becoming apparent. Residents of its boom cities and a growing number of rural regions question the safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat. It is as if they were living in the Chinese equivalent of the Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear disaster areas. The environmental hazards here are legion, and the consequences might not manifest themselves for years or even decades.

What turned me into an environmentalist, on my eleventh birthday, was seeing the first strip mine.

When the British ruled Malaysia, they burnt millions of acres of Malaysian forests so that they could plant rubber.

When it comes to environmental regulation, the cruelty is the point.

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.

Year by year, more and more of the world gets disenchanted. Even the icy privacy of the arctic and antarctic circles is invaded. We have played Jack Horner with our earth, till there is never a plum left in it.