Human Footprint Quotes

Where man had been, in every place he left, garbage remained. Even in his pursuit of the ultimate truth and quest for his God, he produced garbage. By his garbage, which lay stratum upon stratum, he could always - one had only to dig - be known. For more long-lived than man is his refuse. Garbage alone lives after him.

Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords.

I like a certain grandeur to a landscape, which both the Arctic and coastal BC have. I like it to be at all times clear that people aren't the dominant fact of a particular geography.

There must be limits, somewhere, to the human footprint on this earth. When the whole of the world is reduced to nothing but human product, we will have lost the map that can show us how we got here, and can offer our spirits an answer when we ask why. Surely we are capable of declaring sacred some quarters that we dare not enter or possess.

What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?

It's more important what you leave to people on this planet. I want my legacy to exist now, currently, not after I'm gone.

The worst environmental decision you can make as a human being is to have 14 kids.

Human beings are a wonderful virus in some ways.

Most of the planet's terrestrial surfaces are visually accessible through video cameras and satellite imagery, if not physically within reach. Even the approaches to Mount Everest are now littered with human debris. One can drive to Timbuktu, which for centuries was synonymous with inaccessibility.