.

.

The environment is the greatest challenge facing mankind today

• The fate of the living planet is the most important issue facing mankind. Gaylord Nelson
• The great challenge of the twenty-first century is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible. Edward O. Wilson
• The supreme reality of our time is …the vulnerability of our planet. John F. Kennedy
• Nature,  Sustainability

.

In little over 50 years, we’ve consumed more natural resources than in all previous human history …

• It is a stark and arresting fact that, since the middle of the 20th century, humankind has consumed more natural resources than in all previous human history. Margaret Beckett
• It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. Rachel Carson
• …our culture’s frenzied and mindless assault on the last shreds of nature may not be the wisest course… We’re melting the ice caps, ripping up the rainforest, and vacuuming the oceans of everything that wriggles. George Meyer
• Put simply, the crises we face is that we are too many people consuming too many of the natural resources available to us. Drew & Lorimer
• Consuming three planets’ worth of resources when in fact we have one is the environmental equivalent of childhood obesity – eating until you make yourself sick.  David Miliband

.

… resources that are becoming increasingly limited

• The era of ‘abundance’ is over. The future will see our natural resources, from oil to food, having some level of restriction placed on them. Andy Bond
• We’ve embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil. Mike Bowlin, Chairman
• In a race for limited resources, it is the energy efficient that will win the race. David Cameron

.

Our technology has made us into a force of nature…

• Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people. Steven M. Greer
• Our society lacks a feedback loop for controlling technology: a way to gauge intended effects from actual effects later on. Kevin Kelly
• Our new technologies, combined with our numbers, have made us, collectively, a force of nature. Al Gore
• Our tools are better than we are, and grow faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides. But they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it. Aldo Leopold
• Technology

.

… and the destruction we have done to the environment is untold …

• Destroying green belt agricultural land for immediate economic gain is like burning your children’s inheritance to cook a single meal.  Phil Harding
• Destroying rain forest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal. Edward O. Wilson
• Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day. Anton Chekhov
• Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. Albert Schweitzer
• My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first. Ursula K. Le Guin
• Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with trees, lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of junk, garbage, slime pits, and debris. Edward Abbey
• So bleak is the picture that the bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century. Philip Shabecoff

.

… in large part driven by nothing but greed and gluttony

• A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs. Mark Twain
• The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed. Mahatma Gandhi
• Consuming three planets’ worth of resources when in fact we have one is the environmental equivalent of childhood obesity – eating until you make yourself sick.  David Miliband
• Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites. William Ruckelshaus
• Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.  Cree Indian Proverb
• Greed,  Gluttony

.

The way humans have plundered the earth really doesn’t put our kind in a good light …

• Man is a blind, witless, low brow, anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth. Ian McHarg
• Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom – and lakes die. Gil Stern
• I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. Oscar Wilde
• Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have? Jane Goodall
• It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. Henry David Thoreau
• The magnificence of mountains, the serenity of nature – nothing is safe from the idiot marks of man’s passing. Loudon Wainwright
• Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease. Andy & Larry Wachowski
• Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We’re not the brain, we are a cancer on nature. Dave Foreman
• The human race will be the cancer of the planet. Julian Huxley

.

… and questions just how civilised mankind is to have done the damage it’s done

• The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized. Rachel Carson
• If you really want to define civilization it should be a culture that doesn’t destroy its environment. If you burn down the kitchen one day and expect to eat the next, it is not even intelligent, let alone civilized. Sting

.

Civilised or not, there can be no doubt that civilisation has taken a very heavy toll on the planet indeed …

• Forests precede civilizations, deserts follow.
• Civilisation wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere. Richard Bach
• The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet. Terence McKenna
• If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age. Jaques Barzun

.

… and has come at a high price to all forms of life, including our own

• All I want is to stand in a field and to smell green, to taste air, to feel the earth want me, without all this concrete hating me.  Phillip Pulfrey
• For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death. Rachel Carson
• How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?  Charles A. Lindbergh

.

.

Nowhere is that price more evident than in the form of climate change

• All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long- running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster. Barack Obama
• Climate change will affect the basic elements of life for people around the world – access to water, food production, health, and the environment. Hundreds of millions of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world warms.  Sir Nicholas Stern

.

Climate change poses a huge threat to us all

• Climate change is a risk-multiplier. It has the potential to take all the other critical issues we face as a global community and transform their severity into a cataclysm. HRH The Prince of Wales
• Climate change is the greatest threat to our common future. We have a very short period of time to tackle the problem before it becomes irreversible and out of control. Chris Huhne
• Climate change: It’s here. If we don’t react, war, pestilence and famine will follow close behind.  R K Pachauri
• A stable climate is the most fundamental resource of all. No one has yet built a civilisation in an unstable climate. Tom Burke

.

It could well be the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced

• Climate change is not an environmental problem. It is a civilizational problem. Climate change is not just another issue. If it is not addressed in very short order, it will swamp every other issue facing us today. Ross Gelbspan
• Climate change is probably the greatest long-term challenge facing the human race.  Tony Blair
• Climate change is the biggest issue for us to face this century. It’s manmade. The science is done. It’s complete. It’s a matter of political understanding. Sir David King
• Climate change represents the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen.  Sir Nicholas Stern
• Climate change: the greatest challenge to face man. HRH The Prince of Wales

.

Climate change is at a tipping point beyond which there is no redemption

• We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption. James Hansen
• Climate change: We have never faced a more critical time on our planet.  Dr Richard Leakey
• We’re not at the point of trying to stop global warming; it’s too late for that. We’re trying to keep it from becoming a complete and utter calamity. Bill McKibben
• We’re putting 70 million tonnes of pollution into the atmosphere every day, trapping an enormous amount of extra heat from the sun inside the earth’s atmosphere. It’s threatening to push the planet past a tipping point beyond which climate change would be difficult to stop. Al Gore

.

We have to take serious action now and give it everything we’ve got

• Dangerous climate change… It’s important not to be alarmist but it is very important to be alarmed. David Miliband
• Climate is an angry beast and we are poking at it with sticks.  Wallace Broecker
• The era of procrastination…is coming to a close…we are entering a period of consequences. Winston Churchill

.

.

We need to make the environment our foremost priority

• I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defence of our resources is just as important as defence abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? Robert Redford
• We have a military policy instead of an energy policy. Barry Commoner

.

We need to realise that saving the planet is not something we can delay doing until it is too late

• History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. Abba Eban
• Do we have to wait until a disaster overwhelms us before we make the radical changes necessary to protect our world for future generations? That is the vital challenge of sustainable development. If we act now there is much that can be saved which will otherwise disappear forever. John Gummer
• That’s human nature. Nobody does anything until it’s too late. Michael Crichton
• Perhaps catastrophe is the natural human environment, and even though we spend a good deal of energy trying to get away from it, we are programmed for survival amid catastrophe. Germaine Greer

.

We also need to realise that the “environment” is not some abstract scientific concept.  It is our home…

• No settled family or community has ever called its home place an “environment.” None has ever called its feeling for its home place “biocentric” or “anthropocentric.” None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as “ecological,” deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of “ecology” and “ecosystems.” But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes roads, creatures, and people. Wendell Berry
• Nature is not a place to visit. It is home. Gary Snyder
• Home

.

… and it is the only home we have

• We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to. Terri Swearingen
• What good is a house, if you haven’t got a decent planet to put it on? Henry David Thoreau
• Out of all those millions and millions of planets floating around there in space, this is our planet, this is our little one, so we just got to be aware of it and take care of it. Paul McCartney
• The frog does not drink up the pond in which it lives.  Chinese Proverb
• Treat the Earth as though we intend to stay here. Sir Crispin Tickell

.

The state of the environment today is akin to our home being on fire …

• Our house is burning down and we are blind to it. The earth and humankind are in danger and we are all responsible. It is time to open our eyes. Jacques Chirac
• If you really want to define civilization it should be a culture that doesn’t destroy its environment. If you burn down the kitchen one day and expect to eat the next, it is not even intelligent, let alone civilized. Sting

.

… and we only have to look down onto the earth from space to appreciate how fragile our home is

• When we look down at the Earth from space we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet; it looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also, at the same time, looks extremely fragile. Ron Garan
• Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension… Fred Hoyle, Astronomer and writer (1948)
• It was not until we saw the picture of the earth, from the moon, that we realized how small and how helpless this planet is – something that we must hold in our arms and care for. Margaret Mead

.

.

A concern about the environment is a concern about the future …

• The future will be green, or not at all. Jonathon Porritt
• The future has no shelf life. Warren Bennis
• The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there’s a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I’ve been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species. Sir David Attenborough
• The past does not equal the future. Tony Robbins
• Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten. Neil Armstrong
• This is the first age that’s paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one. Arthur Clarke
• We should all be concerned about the future because we have to spend the rest of our lives there. Francis Kettering
• Who heeds not the future will find sorrow at hand. Confucius
• Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now. Alan Lakein
• My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. Charles F. Kettering
• The future

.

… a concern whether humankind will even have a future

• Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species – least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.  Ayn Rand
• Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. HG Wells
• The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The more we exploit nature, The more our options are reduced, until we have only one: to fight for survival. Morris K. Udall
• To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival. Wendell Berry
• Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet. Terence McKenna
• Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative. H G Wells
• Few problems are less recognized, but more important than, the accelerating disappearance of the earth’s biological resources. In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched. Paul Ehrlich
• I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself. José Ortega Y Gasset
• We, the generation that faces the next century, can add the solemn injunction that if we don’t do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable. Petra Kelly

.

Saving the environment is about protecting the interests of future generations…

• I feel that our planet is in peril and that creating a sustainable planet for my children and my children’s children is the most important thing I can do in this lifetime. Kyra Sedgwick
• The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard. Gaylord Nelson
• We need to defend the interests of those whom we’ve never met and never will. Jeffrey D. Sachs
• We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time. Theodore Roosevelt
• It is our task in our time and in our generation to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us. Theodore Roosevelt

.

… balancing our needs without denying future generations a healthy society…

• Building a world where we meet our own needs without denying future generations a healthy society is not impossible, as some would assert. The question is where societies choose to put their creative efforts. Christopher Flavin, Worldwatch

.

… not leaving our children and their children with a terrible, impoverished world …

• This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.  President Barack Obama
• 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. Theodore Roosevelt

.

… not being remembered by future generations with contempt

• If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it. Lyndon B. Johnson
• Because we don’t think about future generations, they will never forget us. Henrik Tikkanen
• Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum. Kurt Vonnegut

.

It is a clique but it is a fact we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children

• The World we all share is given to us in trust. Every choice we make regarding the earth, air, and water around us should be made with the objective of preserving it for all generations to come. August A. Bush III
• Treat the Earth well. It is not inherited from your parents, it is borrowed from your children. Old Kenyan proverb
• We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. Native American Proverb
• We must strive to become good ancestors. Ralph Nader
• This earth is not willed to you by your ancestors. It is loaned to you by your children. Hopi Proverb
• A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children. John James Audubon
• I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn. Nigerian Chief

.

.

We need to love, cherish and revere nature a great more than we do…

• In wilderness, I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. Charles Lindbergh
• Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another. Juvenal
• The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. Rachel Carson
• We need to love and respect the Earth with the same intensity that we give our families and our tribe. James Lovelock
• We should judge every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity. O. Wilson
• I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. E. B. White
• Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we. Michel de Montaigne
• He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. Theodore Roosevelt
• If we do not permit the Earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food either. Joseph Woodkrutch
• In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught. Baba Dioum
• To those devoid of imagination, a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part. Aldo Leopold
• Love,  Reverence

.

… and have compassion and respect for all living creatures

• Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I undertake to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals.  Thich Nhat Hanh
• Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Albert Einstein
• As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love and compassion. Richard Gere
• The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. Mahatma Gandhi
• Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life. The Dalai Lama
• Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. Henry David Thoreau
• I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior. Chief Oren Lyons
• Sikh tradition begins with the simple premise that all the universe is sacred and worthy of respect. Every bush, ant and tree is, in its own way, engaged in worship. SikhNet.com
• Compassion,  Respect

.

If we kill off the wild, then we are killing a part of our souls

• Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness’.  Luther Standing Bear
• 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. Wallace Stegner
• We can never have enough of Nature. Henry David Thoreau
• Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, as vital to our lives as water and good bread. Edward Abbey
• If we kill off the wild, then we are killing a part of our souls. Jane Goodall
• To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. John Muir
• In wilderness, I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. Charles Lindbergh
• In wilderness is the preservation of the world. Henry David Thoreau
• What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from the great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. Chief Seattle
• The animals of the planet are in desperate peril… Without free animal life, I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen. Alice Walker
• Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction. Edward O. Wilson
• One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken. Leo Tolstoy
• The soul

.

The more apart we live from nature, the more we lose touch with it and the harder we become

• For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports. Sandra Postel
• I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness. Aldo Leopold
• Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard. Standing Bear
• Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values…God made life simple. It is man who complicates it. Charles A. Lindbergh
• The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. Chief Luther Standing Bear
• The hills and groves were God’s first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. John Muir

.

We need to stop seeing nature as something to conquer and control

• Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of sceptically and dictatorially. E B White
• Modern man talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side. E F Schumacher
• The control man has secured over nature has far outrun his control over himself.  Ernest Jones
• The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself. Gregory Bateson
• The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves. Rachel Carson

.

We need to start living according to nature’s laws …

• A margin of life is developed by Nature for all living things – including man. All life forms obey Nature’s demands – except man, who has found ways of ignoring them. Eugene M. Poirot
• Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Francis Bacon
• Nature’s laws affirm instead of prohibit. If you violate her laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman. Luther Burbank
• The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them. Paul Hawken
• The goal of life is living in agreement with nature. Zeno
• The major problems in the world are the result of the differences between the way nature works and the way people think. Gregory Bateson
• Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations. David Gerrold
• We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. Francis Bacon
• He who knows the activities of Nature lives according to Nature. Chuang Tzu

.

… co-operating with nature …

• Even when the pioneer didn’t rape Nature, he divorced her a little too easily: he missed the great lesson that both ecology and medicine teach – that Man’s great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes. Lewis Mumford
• I have no other wish than a close fusion with nature and I desire no other fate than to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws. Claud Monet
• Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we. Michel de Montaigne

.

… in harmony with nature and part of it rather than apart from it

• Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish. Confucius
• The future will be green, or not at all. This truth lies at the heart of humankind’s most pressing challenge: to learn to live in harmony with the Earth on a genuinely sustainable basis. Sir Jonathon Porritt
• The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. Carl Sagan
• Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment. Oscar Wilde
• One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken. Leo Tolstoy
• …the future of mankind can be assured only if we rediscover ways in which to live as a part of nature, not apart from her. HRH The Prince of Wales
• The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.  Barry Commoner
• Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. Aldo Leopold
• It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. Oscar Wilde

.

We need to realise that what we do to nature, we do to ourselves …

• What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another. Mahatma Gandhi
• Whatever we do to nature, we do to ourselves. Kurt Heidinger
• When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves. David Orr

.

… and if we continue to abuse nature, nature will inevitably strike back

• How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can’t destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don’t they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us? Paulo Coelho
• Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. Rene Dubos
• Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place. Rene Dubos
• The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. Marya Mannes
• We’re reaching the point where the Earth will have to end the burden we’ve placed on her, if we don’t lift the burden ourselves. Steven M. Greer
• Nature is what wins in the end. Abby Adams

.

We need to treat nature as a capital asset to preserve, not a credit card to sponge off

• It seems to me self-evident that we cannot have capitalism without capital and, very importantly, that the ultimate source of all economic capital is Nature’s capital. HRH Prince Charles
• Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates. Vandana Shiva
• After all, sustainability means running the global environment – Earth Inc. – like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital. Maurice Strong
• The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired in value. Theodore Roosevelt
• Humanity is living off its ecological credit card and can only do this by liquidating the planet’s natural resources. Mathis Wackernagel

.

.

We need to stop treating the planet in a violent way

• An act of violence against nature should be judged as severely as that against society or another person. Dr. Michael W. Fox
• A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes the power of the Earth to sustain it and piles up ever more insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can only be called violent. F. Schumacher
• For 200 years we’ve been conquering Nature. Now we’re beating it to death. Tom McMillan
• I am the earth. You are the earth. The Earth is dying. You and I are murderers. Ymber Delecto
• In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops. Paul Brooks
• It is very sad to me that some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world, that they don’t care if that mark is a scar. John Green

.

We need to create less waste …

• We do need a ‘new economy,’ but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy. Wendell Berry
• From my travels around the world I have seen how much damage and pollution is done by the careless disposal of waste. It is also evident that we in the West produce far more and throw away far more than the developing world, almost without thinking.  Michael Palin
• Waste

.

… and stop treating the world as a garbage heap

• And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: “Look at this Godawful mess. Art Buchwald
• The packaging for a microwaveable dinner is programmed for a shelf life of maybe six months, a cook time of two minutes and a landfill dead-time of centuries. David Wann
• The whole world is our dining room, but be careful: it is also our garbage can. Ashleigh Brilliant
• Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans. Jacques-Yves Cousteau
• Beauty dies where litter lies.

.

We need to see the land as something that we share rather than as a commodity we own

• How do we live in a way that shows an understanding that we genuinely live in a shared world, not one that simply belongs to us? Dr Rowan Williams
• Humans merely share the Earth. We can only protect the land, not own it.  Chief Seattle
• You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter. Carol Bishop Hipps
• I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn. Nigerian Chief
• The world is a sacred vessel. It should not be meddled with. It should not be owned. If you try to meddle with it you will ruin it. If you try to own it you will lose it. Lao Tzu
• 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 see it with love & respect. Aldo Leopold

.

We need to preserve the soil

• A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• When the soil disappears, the soul disappears. Ymber Delecto

.

We need to preserve the water

• We never know the worth of water ’til the well is dry. Thomas Fuller
• Water,  Rivers,  Lakes

.

We need to preserve the trees

• God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. John Muir
• I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. Dr. Seuss
• If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down. Jack Handey
• The best friend of earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the earth.  Frank Lloyd Wright
• Trees

.

We need to preserve the air …

• Let the clean air blow the cobwebs from your body. Air is medicine  Lillian Russell
• No issue is more compelling than the air we breathe, be it hot or cold, be it hawk or human. Jack Nicholson
• There’s so much pollution in the air now that if it weren’t for our lungs there’d be no place to put it all. Robert Orten
• We live not, in reality, on the summit of a solid earth but at the bottom of an ocean of air. Thales of Miletus
• Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans. Jacques-Yves Cousteau

.

… for there is nothing more fragile than the earth’s paper-thin atmosphere

• In 1966 Rolf Edberg wrote “This is mankind’s home”, “in the narrow borderland between the deathly heat beneath our feet and the coldness of space above us”. He describes the fragility of our existence in poetic terms: “The atmospheric layer is so thin that it cannot be represented on any globe with even the finest brushstroke. At its thickest, it is only a few fractions of a millionth of the Earth’s radius. This thin layer is what makes the difference between our planet and the sterile landscape of the moon.” After reading that, one does feel the need to take better care of this fragile layer. Margot Wallstrom

.

To do all of this, we need to live and develop in a more sustainable way …

• Having enough for now, while not harming the future. Adam Werbach
• If something is sustainable, it means we can go on doing it indefinitely. If it isn’t, we can’t. Jonathon Porritt
• Sustainable development is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Gro Harlem Brundtland
• Sustainability is treating ourselves and our environment as if we are to live on this earth forever. Arron Wood
• Sustainable development: Enjoying the Earth’s resources without jeopardising the welfare of future generations. James Jones
• Sustainable living on the planet: We have to learn to live simply to allow others to simply live.
• We cannot hope to create a sustainable culture with any but sustainable souls. Derrick Jensen
• I think when sustainability begins to drive business practices instead of greed, we’ll evolve as a species. Tom Kay
• Sustainability

.

… and that applies not just to people, but businesses too

• Marketing needs to define what sustainability means for their company and then decide how to express those values in their offerings. Companies should stop trying to appeal to green consumers by building green myths into the products they have and start creating something real—products that tell their environmental story for them. Steve Bishop
• I think when sustainability begins to drive business practices instead of greed, we’ll evolve as a species. Tom Kay
• Who are businesses really responsible to? Their customers? Shareholders? Employees? We would argue that it’s none of the above. Fundamentally, businesses are responsible to their resource base. Without a healthy environment there are no shareholders, no employees, no customers and no business. Yvon Chouinard

.

Sustainability can bring great benefits to economies and businesses …

• Far from being a drag on growth, making our energy sources more sustainable, our energy consumption more efficient, and our economy more resilient to energy price shocks – those things are a vital part of the growth and wealth that we need.  David Cameron
• I always make the business case for sustainability. It’s so compelling. Our costs are down, not up. Our products are the best they have ever been. Our people are motivated by a shared higher purpose — esprit de corps to die for. And the goodwill in the marketplace — it’s just been astonishing. Ray Anderson
• If you are clever, you make sustainability the first factor for your growth. This gives you years of advantage over other economies. Philippe Joubert

.

… but the real reason to do it is it is the right thing to do

• It’s not just the business case you need to focus on; it’s the moral case. Al Gore
• The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong. John Muir
• A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. Aldo Leopold

.

We need to wean ourselves off our dependence on fossil fuels …

• Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago. The chemical energy within them is a kind of stored sunlight originally accumulated by ancient plants. Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives. Carl Sagan
• Unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels… we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe – President Barack Obama
• We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the maths. Bill McKibben
• We must rapidly wean ourselves off our dependence on coal and fossil fuels. Richard Branson
• What we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return – President Barack Obama
• We need to profoundly revise all of our taxes and charges. The aim is to tax pollution – notably fossil fuels – more, and tax work less. Nicolas Sarkozy

.

… by making more efficient use of energy …

• In a race for limited resources, it is the energy efficient that will win the race. David Cameron
• We can create a more sustainable, cleaner and safer world by making wiser energy choices. Robert Alan Silverstein
• Far from being a drag on growth, making our energy sources more sustainable, our energy consumption more efficient, and our economy more resilient to energy price shocks – those things are a vital part of the growth and wealth that we need. David Cameron

.

… and looking to renewable sources of energy like solar energy

• I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun’s energy… If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago. Sir George Porter
• I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait ’til oil and coal run out before we tackle that. Thomas Edison
• The 21st Century is likely to become the solar-hydrogen-energy efficiency century. Charles Secrett
• The sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away. Stephanie Mills
• The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. Ralph Nader
• There are jobs, money and survival in renewable energy. Our only safe future is sun power. Dave Hampton
• We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy—sun, wind, and tide. I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. Thomas Alva Edison

.

.

However, none of the above will work if we don’t curb population growth at the same time

• Large carbon and resource savings arising from efficiency and renewable energy programmes will be completely cancelled out by the added resource needs of even small population increases. Action is urgently required on both fronts to protect our life on earth. Phil Harding
• Like our finances, humankind is living with a growing ecological deficit but the solution is different. The deficit will worsen with dangerous consequences unless we address population growth sooner rather than later. Efficiency improvements, increased use of renewable resources and less waste in themselves are no longer sufficient to put us back into credit.  Phil Harding
• Low carbon, resource efficient solutions and halting then reversing population growth are two sides of the same coin.  Phil Harding

.

The world’s population continues to rise at a rapid rate…

• One always returns to the fact that there are just too many of us, the population continues to rise and it’s unsustainable. Jeremy Irons
• …a population larger than that of the UK is being added to the planet each year, with the equivalent of one new city added every single day. optimumpopulation.org

.

… putting enormous pressure on the earth’s resources …

• There’s no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we’re not addressing the one single factor that’s putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other, namely the ever- increasing size of the world’s population Chris Packham
• When my parents were growing up the world’s population was under three billion. During my children’s lifetime, it is likely to exceed nine billion. You don’t need to be an expert to realise that sustainable development is going to become the greatest challenge we face this century. Tony Blair, March 2001
• Overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organise peace on this planet. Albert Einstein
• Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment. Sir David Attenborough
• When animals breed out of control it’s called overpopulation. When humans breed out of control it’s called “economic growth.”

.

… making the earth burst at its seams

• Can you think of anything that can get better if we crowd more people into our cities, our towns, into our state our nation or on this earth? Dr Albert Bartlett
• Our challenge, our generation’s unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecedented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It’s bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms. Professor Jeffrey Sachs
• Can a growing human population still leave space for wildlife? Sir David Attenborough

.

Population growth is the issue no one wants to talk about or do anything about …

• Population growth – it’s environmentalists’ elephant in the room. But we ignore it at our peril. Nick Reeves
• Human numbers are a crucial element of ecological sustainability and the biggest underlying cause of many environmental problems…Yet population has become the issue no one wants to talk about – ignored by governments, politicians, environmental groups and the media because it’s too ‘sensitive. ‘   Optimum Population Trust
• Year after year population figures are released that must spell increasing crisis for all of us and yet they are met with a deafening silence. Everything we manage to achieve for the natural environment is being wiped out by the nearly 80 million extra people each year who need to use up space and resources. Optimum Population Trust, 2007
• Everybody talks about population growth and its disastrous effect on climate change, food security and resource depletion, but nobody does anything about it. Phil Harding
• It is environmental illiteracy and a complete lack of forward thinking to ignore the need to halt and then reverse population growth in the context of climate change, travel congestion, unaffordable housing, and resource depletion. Phil Harding

.

… yet the greater the population, the greater the environmental problem becomes

• All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder, and ultimately impossible to solve, with ever more people.  Sir David Attenborough
• Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today. Jacques Cousteau
• There is a clear connection between population growth and virtually every challenge facing our planet. Population Connection
• I have no doubt that the fundamental problem the planet faces is the enormous increase in the human population.  Sir David Attenborough

.

If we don’t curb population growth, nature will end up doing it for us in a far more brutal fashion

• Either we limit our population growth, or the natural world will do it for us. And the natural world is doing it for us right now.  Sir David Attenborough
• Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.  Maurice Strong
• The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrollable way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us and it is the poor people of the world who will suffer most. Sir David Attenborough
• Is it better that we manage population growth responsibly or should we to wait for nature to cull our numbers? Phil Harding
• If we do not design policies to halt, and then reverse population growth, Nature by default will soon exact a most punishing solution. Fred Thompson

.

.

We need to let go of our myopic focus on economic growth …

• Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. Kenneth Boulding
• Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad or an economist. Sir David Attenborough

.

… and our obsession with quantity and speed over quality and well being

• It’s time to slow down and consider the true cost of choosing quantity over quality. Kate Fletcher
• There is more to life than increasing its speed. Gandhi
• Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.  Albert Einstein
• Economists are behavioural psychologists, but they think more is better; they want to make everyone richer. They should pause. More’s not necessarily better.  David Hemenway
• There is a great need for the introduction of new values in our society, where bigger is not necessarily better, where slower can be faster, and where less can be more. Gaylord Nelson
• Slow down,  Haste

.

We need to realise that striving for economic growth at all costs does not guarantee progress and quality of life

• Government must realise economic growth does not guarantee quality of life. UK Sustainable Development Commission (2003)
• It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB – general well-being – David Cameron
• Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress. John Clapham
• Gross national product measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. GNP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. Senator Robert Kennedy

.

The reality is that perpetual economic growth is simply not sustainable on a finite planet

• Economic growth won’t feed a growing population living on this finite planet.  Phil Harding
• As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse. Buchwald’s Law
• Economics and a reliance on science and technology to solve our problems has led to an unsustainable situation where continued growth in consumption is required for governments and business to be considered successful. This is a form of insanity. Economics is at the heart of our destructive ways and our faith in it has blinded us.  Dr David Suzuki
• Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. Edward Abbey
• What we call ‘economic growth’ is in fact a growth in waste and a decline in the health of natural habitat.  Satish Kumar
• Sustainability

.

We need to realise that what is unenvironmental will turn out to be uneconomical

• In the long term, the economy and the environment are the same thing. If it’s unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is the rule of nature. Mollie Beatty
• It’s not a choice between our environment and our economy; it’s a choice between prosperity and decline. President Barack Obama
• The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around. Gaylord Nelson
• There is no business to be done on a dead planet. David Brower
• Unless we can ensure that the economy is kept subservient to our ecology, we will self-destruct. Roger V Short
• Without environmental sustainability, economic stability and social cohesion cannot be achieved. Phil Harding

.

.

One of the environment’s greatest problems is our unsustainable consumption…

• If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is plausible to decrease waste, to make better use of stocks available, and to develop substitutes. But what about the appetite itself? The major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialized countries. John Kenneth Galbraith
• Living in an orgy of unrestrained consumption and economic growth accompanied by population expansion that ignores the carrying capacity of local environments will lead to disaster. Phil Harding
• Consumerism,  Materialism

.

… driven in large part by our obsession with consuming and possessing …

• In our rich consumers’ civilization, we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions. Max Lerner
• If the hole we’ve dug ourselves into is consumerism, it doesn’t particularly help that your shovel is a fashionable shade of green. Earon Davis
• I think the human race has squandered its gift, and I think this country has squandered its promise, for the sake of cell phones and Jet Skis. George Carlin
• I’m not afraid of a world with less consumerism, less ‘stuff’ and no economic growth. I’m far more frightened of the opposite. Rob Hopkins

.

… a movement that is ingrained and encouraged in political and economic circles

• Most politicians (and many economists) still regard consumption as sacrosanct, as a cure-all for economic growth, and vital to their re-election.  Drew & Lorimer
• Many ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet. Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of society. More powerful than any religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism. Jonathon Porritt
• Politics

.

We need to break the treadmill of consumption and live more sustainably…

• Innovation is premised on force-feeding people more junk; on fuelling artificial needs for super- size meals, Hummers, and a new pair of sweatshop-produced fast-fashion jeans every weekend. Sustainability, on the other hand, is premised on helping people finally step off that creaking treadmill of consumption. Umair Haque
• My hope is that we come to see consumption as slightly naff, something you only do when you have to. Chris Goodall

.

… by re-examining our values and lifestyles …

• There is a great need for the introduction of new values in our society, where bigger is not necessarily better, where slower can be faster, and where less can be more. Gaylord Nelson
• Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle. Pope John Paul

.

… and no longer defining personal success by how much we consume and own

• How are we going to stop defining ourselves by how much stuff we consume? Ben Tuxworth
• Is consumption our primary purpose? Are we consumers or citizens? Do we live to shop or do we shop to live, in order to fulfil our individual purpose.  Aldersgate Group
• Reducing our levels of consumption will not be a sacrifice but a bonus if we simply redefine the meaning of the word ‘success.’  David Wann

.

.

Appreciate that you, yourself, can make a real difference to the planet

• Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. William James
• Nobody made a bigger mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. Edmund Burke
• What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Jane Goodall
• One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.  John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito. Bette Reese

.

Don’t wait for others to take action, especially leaders …

• Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. Mother Teresa
• They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.  Andy Warhol
• I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody. Lily Tomlin
• Leadership

.

… for the environment is too important to be left to politicians

• A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation. James Freeman Clarke
• Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians. Chester Bowles
• If they don’t act, we will. Shame on them but we cannot sit around and watch our environment deteriorate and put this world in jeopardy. We are willing to stand up, we think it is one of the seminal issues of our time. Michael Bloomberg
• It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. Ansel Adams
• What politician ever thinks beyond 4 or 5 years? But such thinking is hopelessly inadequate for the big questions that involve the fabric of the world we live in. Simon Barnes
• You maybe able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere. Donella Meadows
• Politics

.

Speak out …

• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

.

… but most of all, resolve to take action personally…

• Action is the antidote to despair. Joan Baez
• Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.  Carl Sagan
• Be content to act, and leave the talking to others. Baltasar Gracian
• Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations. Jean Paul Richter
• You have to hold yourself accountable for your actions, and that’s how we’re going to protect the Earth. Julia Butterfly Hill
• How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. Anne Frank
• Never mistake motion for action. Ernest Hemingway

.

… no matter how small or insignificant that action may seem …

• There are many things to do – we must do some of them. Knut Gjertsen
• No one person has to do it all but if each one of us follow our heart and our own inclinations we will find the small things that we can do to create a sustainable future and a healthy environment. John Denver
• I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. Edward Everett Hale
• Start where you are. Use what you have.  Do what you can. Arthur Ashe

.

Little actions taken collectively add up enormously …

• Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. Archbishop Desmond Tutu
• Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead

.

… and will influence others to take action too

• You can’t lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself. Gene Mauch
• Be the change you wish to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi
• My life is my message. Mahatma Ghandi
• If we go around clearing up our own mess and being positive about our own lifestyle, other people will start copying us and picking up their own carbon ‘litter’ too. Dave Hampton

.

A simple action is infinitely more valuable than any sentiment or words

• I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. John Locke
• Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. Edward Abbey
• Well done is better than well said. Benjamin Franklin
• When deeds speak, words are nothing. African Proverb

.

Inaction, as easy as it is to slip into, is not even worth considering

• All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Edmund Burke
• To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values, there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally, and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing. Isaac Asimov
• Everyone who considers themselves a realist will be forced to justify their behavior in light of their contribution toward the preservation of the environment.  Ernst von Weizacker
• There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. Marshall McLuhan
• If we go on using the Earth uncaringly and without replenishing it, then we are just greedy consumers. Satish Kumar

.

.

Saving the environment is not just the job of politicians but a job for all of us

• The preservation of biodiversity is not just a job for governments. International and non- governmental organisations, the private sector and each and every individual have a role to play in changing entrenched outlooks and ending destructive patterns of behaviour. Kofi Annan
• The solutions of tomorrow are not stashed behind the walls of bureaucracy or political halls. They are in the minds of engineers, designers, innovators, researchers, environmentalists, geographers and other spirited individuals. Stuart Barea

.

Resolve to make changes to the way you live

• Each and every one of us can make changes in the way we live our lives and become part of the solution to climate change. Al Gore
• To tackle climate change, you don’t have to reduce your quality of life, but you do have to change the way you live – Ken Livingstone

.

Resolve to consume less, share more

• If we use less, if we consume less, we’re going to have more. Colin Baker
• How to be green? Many people have asked us this important question. It’s really very simple and requires no expert knowledge or complex skills. Here’s the answer. Consume less. Share more. Enjoy life. Derek Wall
• It’s unselfish and really quite ‘cool’ to care for the environment with a ‘less is more’ lifestyle.
• You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. Vernon Howard
• Live simply that others might simply live. Ghandi
• My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants. Brotherton
• There must be more to life than having everything!
• You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.  Eric Hoffer
• Consume less; share better. Hervé Kempf
• The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous and enduring and thus more intelligent, even competitive.  Paul Hawken
• We are such spendthrifts with our lives, the trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out. Paul Newman
• We have to cultivate contentment with what we have. We really don’t need much. When you know this, the mind settles down. Cultivate generosity. Delight in giving. Learn to live lightly. In this way, we can begin to transform what is negative into what is positive. This is how we start to grow up. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
• The scale of our homes should be derived from the real needs of our daily lives, not from vanity, insecurity, or a need for public display. Home should be the setting for life, not the measure of it. James Gauer
• The most patriotic thing you can do is to take care of the environment and try to live sustainably. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
• Simple living

.

Make more conscious choices about what you consume and where you spend your money

• I feel more confident than ever that the power to save the planet rests with the individual consumer. Denis Hayes
• Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need. Frances Moore Lappé
• I try to be environmentally responsible in everything I do and everything I bring into my life. Every time I make a decision, I think, “How is this going to affect the environment? Alicia Silverstone
• Live consciously (with conscious awareness),  Choice

.

Use water efficiently

• There are tiny choices that everyone can make that profoundly affect our collective water use. Like not having the tap on while brushing your teeth, not starting your shower ten minutes in advance, not doing laundry until you have a full load. In this particular issue, education really is power. Kristen Bell
• Water,  Waste

.

Recycle religiously

• Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours. Denis Hayes
• The case for recycling is strong. The bottom line is clear. Recycling requires a trivial amount of our time. Recycling saves money and reduces pollution. Recycling creates more jobs than landfilling or incineration. And a largely ignored but very important consideration, recycling reduces our need to dump our garbage in someone else’s backyard. David Morris
• You can tell how high a society is by how much of its garbage is recycled. Tahanie
• To achieve true sustainability, we must reduce our ‘garbage index” – that which we permanently throw away into the environment that will not be naturally recycled for reuse – to near zero. David Korten

.

Use recycled products

• If you’re not buying recycled products, you’re not really recycling. Ed Begley, Jr.

.

Reuse products

• The purpose – where I start – is the idea of use. It is not recycling, it’s reuse. Issey Miyake

.

Prevent waste wherever you can

• I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use. Mother Teresa
• Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. New England proverb
• Waste is a tax on the whole people. Albert W. Atwood
• Waste not the smallest thing created, for grains of sand make mountains, and atomies infinity. Knight
• Why do we send valuable items like aluminium and food waste to landfill when we can turn them into new cans and renewable energy? Why use more resources than we need to in manufacturing? We must now work together to build a zero waste nation – where we reduce the resources we use, reuse and recycle all that we can and only landfill things that have absolutely no other use. Hilary Benn
• Waste,  Sustainability

.

Eat less meat, or better still, become a vegetarian

• Forests and meat animals compete for the same land. The prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat means that agribusiness can pay more than those who want to preserve or restore the forest. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet – for the sake of hamburgers. Peter Singer
• In order to satisfy one human stomach, so many lives are taken away. We must promote vegetarianism. It is extremely important. The Dalai Lama
• Vegetarianism

.

Have fewer children

• When I see babies, not only do I see the beauty, joy and miracle of life, I also see nappies, landfill waste, vast amounts of food and money needed, and a very shaky, unpredictable future. Joanna Benn
• The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children. Paul R Ehrlich
• Reducing consumption is imperative, but it’s pointless to cut out meat and cars while having lots of children. Madeleine Bunting
• Having one less child is the biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet.  Prof John Guilleband
• Birth control is a green option.  Times headline
• What will use more finite resources? That 3rd or 4th child you have or driving a large car? We all need to think about the choices we make. Phil Harding
• Who is going to be the first to face up to the need for self-restraint in the number of children brought into the world? HRH Prince Philip
• The most effective personal climate change strategy is limiting the number of children one has. The most effective national and global climate change strategy is limiting the size of the population. Population limitation should therefore be seen as the most cost-effective carbon offsetting strategy available to individuals and nations – a strategy that applies with even more force to developed nations such as the UK because of their higher consumption levels.   Optimum Population Trust, May 2007
• I think still it is very fine not to want children. There are far too many people in the world. It is my contribution to ecology. Helen Mirren
• The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet. John Guillebaud

.

Raise your children to be friendly to the environment

• There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children. Marianne Williamson
• It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honour nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever. bJimmy Carter

.

Plant trees

• A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit. Elton Trueblood
• A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. Greek Proverb
• He that plants trees loves others beside himself. Thomas Fuller
• If I thought I was going to die tomorrow, I should nevertheless plant a tree today. Stephan Girard
• It takes a noble man to plant a seed for a tree that will someday give shade to people he may never meet. David Trueblood
• It will never rain roses; when we want to have more roses, we must plant more trees. George Eliot
• Plant trees for the future, even if you won’t be the one to sit in the shade
• The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. Chinese proverb
• The planting of trees is the least self-centred of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children. Thornton Wilder
• The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. Nelson Henderson
• You can make a lot of speeches, but the real thing is when you dig a hole, plant a tree, give it water, and make it survive. That’s what makes the difference. Wangari Maathai
• Trees

.

Embrace practical, active environmentalism

• I’m not an environmentalist. I’m an Earth warrior. Darryl Cherney
• I am not a veteran environmentalist. I don’t live in a house made of recycled tires, I’ve never handcuffed myself to a tree, and I don’t grow my own organic rutabaga. Christie Matheson
• I feel that working environmentalists are, in the main, happier than armchair environmentalists. Jonathan Franzen
• If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one. Barry Commoner

.

.

We’re all in this together for we all share the same planet

• All of life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.  Martin Luther King Jr.
• For in respect of the fate of man and the fate of beast, they have one and the same fate: as the one dies so dies the other; all share the same breath of life. Kohelet [Ecclesiastes] 3:19
• For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s futures, and we are all mortal. John F. Kennedy
• The earth is what we all have in common. Wendell Berry
• Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the people of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Chief Seattle
• Our environment is like a patchwork quilt. Each “patch” is dependent on those around it. If one part unravels, it affects the rest. Hemeon
• When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. John Muir

.

Have faith that we can do it for mankind can be ingenious when it needs to be

• No matter how complex global problems may seem, it is we ourselves who have given rise to them. They cannot be beyond our power to resolve.  Daisaku Ikeda
• The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us.  Ralph Waldo Emerson
• When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. Martin Keogh
• One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery. Wallace Stegner
• Modern man’s capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity’s capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction. George Will

.

It will require massive co-operation

• If there’s reason for hope, it lies in man’s occasional binges of cooperation. To save our planet, we’ll need that kind of heroic effort, in which all types of people join forces for the common good. George Meyer, writer for The Simpsons
• Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Mohandas Gandhi
• The world must learn to work together, or finally it will not work at all. General Eisenhower
• Cooperation,  Teamwork,  Unity

.

It will require a willingness to think differently and adopt radical new approaches

• If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed. Chinese Proverb
• If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. Tim Robbins
• It’s not sufficient to do things better, we need to do better things. Mark Shayler
• The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far, has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them. Albert Einstein
• The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation. Albert Einstein
• Today’s problems cannot be solved if we still think the way we thought when we created them. Albert Einstein
• Unless we change direction, we are likely to end up where we are going. Chinese proverb
• We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. Albert Einstein
• You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.  Buckminster Fuller
• Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them. Albert Einstein
• At every level, the greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different. Roberto Unger
• Explore new approaches

.

It will require closing our ears to the sceptics for they are taking an enormous gamble on the future of all of us

• In reality, those who deny climate change and demand a halt to emissions reduction and mitigation work, want us to take a huge gamble with the future of every human being on the planet, every future human being, our children and grand children, and every other living species. Ed Davey
• If we really are wrong about climate change, we will have created a better world for nothing. USA Today cartoon
• If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done. Peter Ustinov
• Men occasionally stumble over truth but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. Winston Churchill

.

.

Saving the environment is a social, economic and political issue …

• There are no environmental solutions to environmental problems, only social, economic and political ones. Charles Secrett
• We are seeing the birth of a new perspective of the world, where ecology and economics are two sides of the same coin. Leif Johansson

.

… and should not be seen to be in conflict with tackling poverty

• All our efforts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated. Kofi Annan
• Forget about making poverty history. Climate change will make poverty permanent. Nazmul Chowdhury
• Those who consume far more resources than they require destroy the life chances of those whose survival depends upon consuming more. George Monbiot
• Poverty

.

.

Here are some questions to reflect on

• Can a growing human population still leave space for wildlife? Sir David Attenborough
• Can you think of anything that can get better if we crowd more people into our cities, our towns, into our state our nation or on this earth? Dr Albert Bartlett
• What will use more finite resources? That 3rd or 4th child you have or driving a large car? We all need to think about the choices we make. Phil Harding
• How are we going to stop defining ourselves by how much stuff we consume? Ben Tuxworth
• Is consumption our primary purpose? Are we consumers or citizens? Do we live to shop or do we shop to live, in order to fulfil our individual purpose.  Aldersgate Group
• Do we have to wait until a disaster overwhelms us before we make the radical changes necessary to protect our world for future generations? John Gummer
• How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?  Charles A. Lindbergh
• How do we live in a way that shows an understanding that we genuinely live in a shared world, not one that simply belongs to us? Dr Rowan Williams
• What good is a house, if you haven’t got a decent planet to put it on? Henry David Thoreau
• Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have? Jane Goodall
• Is a park any better than a coal mine? What’s a mountain got that a slag pile hasn’t? What would you rather have in your garden–an almond tree or an oil well? Jean Giraudoux
• Why is it so easy to save the banks – but so hard to save the biosphere? George Monbiot

.

• Global thinking and local action both require understanding of ecological systems, but ecological management can be effective only if it takes into consideration the visceral and spiritual values that link us to the earth. Therefore ecological thinking must be supplemented by humanistic value judgments concerning the effect of our choices and actions on the quality of the relationship between humankind and earth, in the future as well as in the present. Ren
• Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people. Steven M. Greer
• There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of them, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet. Brooke Medicine Eagle

.

• After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say “I want to see the manager.” William S Burroughs
• Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum. Kurt Vonnegut
• Don’t blow it – good planets are hard to find. Time Magazine
• Every day, I am torn between the desire to save the world and the desire to savour the world. This makes it very hard to plan the day. E.B. White
• I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty. George F. Burns
• I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. Oscar Wilde
• If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age. Jaques Barzun
• If the earth was an apartment, we wouldn’t be getting our security deposit back. Jim Shubert
• If the hole we’ve dug ourselves into is consumerism, it doesn’t particularly help that your shovel is a fashionable shade of green. Earon Davis
• If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done. Peter Ustinov
• If we really are wrong about climate change, we will have created a better world for nothing. USA Today cartoon
• In an underdeveloped country, don’t drink the water; in a developed country, don’t breathe the air. Changing Times magazine
• Kindly leave this planet as you would wish to find it.
• Modern technology owes ecology an apology.
• Opie, you haven’t finished your milk. We can’t put it back in the cow, you know. Aunt Bee Taylor
• Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time. Baltimore Grotto
• Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. Bill Vaughn
• The Bible declares that on the sixth day God created man. Right then and there, God should have demanded a damage deposit. Jim Hightower
• The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children. Paul R Ehrlich
• The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton. Al Gore
• Environmentalists say that every day an area the size of Wales is destroyed. Why is it never Wales?   Jimmy Carr
• The whole world is our dining room, but be careful: it is also our garbage can. Ashleigh Brilliant
• There’s so much pollution in the air now that if it weren’t for our lungs there’d be no place to put it all. Robert Orten
• They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers. James G. Watt
• We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone’s arguing over where they’re going to sit. David Suzuki
• Why is it so easy to save the banks – but so hard to save the biosphere? George Monbiot
• Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible – or even sinful – that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes! Paul MacCready, Jr.
• Americans trying to convince Asians to conserve more is like a] nation of SUV drivers trying to tell a nation of bicyclists not to drive mopeds. Edward Glaeser
• Women dream of world peace, a safe environment, and eliminating hunger. What do men dream of? Being stuck in an elevator with the Doublemint twins.

.