Marilyn Ferguson Quotes

There's so much burying of heads in sand going on in the U.S., people are finally beginning to recognize that the environment is dying, but it's far too late, and I am conflicted.

We have serious challenges regarding climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, forests and farmland. Not to mention the huge inequality still prevailing in several parts of the planet.

So many of us who've been thinking about the ecological crisis have had this horrible creeping feeling, like nothing was getting done and it was getting worse.

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

It was once religion which told us that we are all sinners because of original sin. It is now the ecology of our planet which pronounces us all to be sinners because of the excessive exploits of human inventiveness.

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

We must act swiftly in order to halt the rate of decay our planet faces.

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

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.

Yet, despite our many advances, our environment is still threatened by a range of problems, including global climate change, energy dependence on unsustainable fossil fuels, and loss of biodiversity.

All the conservation efforts in the world won't be enough to make a dent in the oncoming sustainability crisis our planet faces.

I don't see this planet being... they're talking about how they're turning around the environmental problems here, but I think it's already too late.

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.

To be sure, governments will remain critical to any comprehensive effort to save our planet.

With our evolved busy hands and our evolved busy brains, in an extraordinarily short period of time we've managed to alter the earth with such geologic-forcing effects that we ourselves are forces of nature. Climate change, ocean acidification, the sixth mass extinction of species.

We are using resources as if we had two planets, not one. There can be no 'plan B' because there is no 'planet B.'

If you look at the state of our planet, the next generations won't be around if we consider sustainability as a gimmick.

We're not environmentally doing very good things to this planet, and we might not be around too long.

I think its time to change and balance the environment and growth. If we don't do that, we're going to suffer a hard landing one day very soon.

It's very important that people realize: the air is being taken away, the oceans are being taken away, the room is being taken away, but we're so worried about gas prices that we don't even see this stuff.

There are real and growing dangers to our simple and most precious possessions: the air we breathe, the water we bring, and the land which sustains us.... If we do not act, the world of the year 2000 will be much less able to sustain life than it is now.

I do believe this period of the 1980's will be remembered as the time the planet struck back. The planet is telling us we can't treat it this way anymore.

We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.

In the case of the environment, there's no one to bail it out.

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