A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.
For too long we have tried to consume our way to prosperity. Look at the cost: polluted lands and oceans, climate change, growing scarcity of resources from food to land to fresh water, rampant inequality. We need to invent a new model; a model that offers growth and social inclusion... that is more respectful of the planet's finite resources. Nature has been kind to human beings, but we have not been kind to nature.
I, Maggie, personally cannot tell you that you're going to save the planet. But what I do know is that we can draw a line to an issue that can conserve what we already have and what's left in a way that we can actually breathe the air, drink the water, actually grow things in soil - that matters in a real, practical way.
All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river.
I have often thought that my work with wildlife taught me the meaning of patience, and my work with the big trees taught me the meaning of humility, and my work with the ice has taught me the meaning of mortality.
The planet is fine. The people are f****d. Because everyone is trying to save the planet. The planet doesn’t need that. The planet will take care of itself. People are selfish. And that's what they're doing is trying to save the planet for themselves to have a nicer place to live.
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.
You gotta realize that the whole fiasco of the environment, all this global warming hocus-pocus - which the only thing it's done is made Al Gore a multi-millionaire - but, what it's done is, it has been used as a way to curtail growth, to destroy the growth, exploration.
Don't mess up the environment until you're quite sure what you're doing.
I've visited Lincoln Park Zoo more times than I can count because I believe the more the public learns about our animals, plants and environment, the better equipped we are to play a leading role in protecting our planet.
The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.
The future will belong to the nature-smart...Th e more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.
Protecting our Great Lakes and conserving this resource for the next generation is critical both for surrounding communities and our planet as a whole.
National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.
When it comes to trying to manage how our entire planet-wide market and all the people and businesses in it deal with nature and our natural resources - we first and foremost need to change the incentives.
I believe in helping the planet survive, and that includes reaching out to help some of the disappearing creatures whose habitats we're destroying. It's up to us to somehow reverse that trend. I don't know how we'll achieve it, but we need to.
Development which has no regard for whom or what it harms is not development. It is the opposite of progress, damaging the Earth's capacity to support us and the rest of its living systems.
Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man's head.
We need to move beyond the idea of 'environment' and fall back in love with Mother Earth.
We're a part of nature. As we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. It's a selfish thing to want to protect nature.
We know that to wage a nuclear war today, for example, would be a form of suicide; or that to pollute the air or the oceans in order to achieve some short-term benefit would be to destroy the very basis for our survival.
And by reducing carbon pollution in our atmosphere, we are protecting our air, water, mountains, forests, deserts, valleys, coasts and rivers - the astounding natural ecosystems that support all life and make Oregon the special place we call home.
Our planet's alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action!
There is little doubt that a significant part of any serious solution will require advances of technology, but that can only be part of the solution. Other major changes are necessary.
The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.
