Chen Shui-bian Quotes

You should issue demerits for tree cutting or the destruction of humus.

There's a general culture in this country to cut all the trees. It makes me so angry because everyone is cutting and no one is planting.

The world breaks a little bit every time we cut down a tree. It's so much easier to cut one down than to grow one. And so it's worth interrogating every time we do it.

Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest.

For millions of years, this world has been a great gift to nearly everything living on it, a planet whose atmosphere, temperature, air, water, seasons, and weather were precisely calibrated to allow us - the big us, including forests and oceans, species large and small - to flourish.

Right now there should be a moratorium on the cutting down of old growth in this country. That is a small thing to ask at this point. There is only four percent of old growth left. Ninety-six percent of it has been cut down.

And I think that the environment is one very strong way to counterbalance the chaotic nature of our life.

Over the long haul of life on this planet, it is the ecologists, and not the bookkeepers of business, who are the ultimate accountants.

We are aware only of the empty space in the forest, which only yesterday was filled with trees.

You can cut a tree down, and it grows back. Once a species goes, it's gone forever.

If you cut down a forest, it doesn't matter how many sawmills you have if there are no more trees.

I've always liked trees. And then, growing up, I took an interest in ecology, hedges being destroyed, the landscape being turned into prairies.

Our government has done nothing effective with its forests, though the best in the world, but is like a rich and foolish spendthrift who has inherited a magnificent estate in perfect order, and then has left his rich fields and meadows, forests and parks, to be sold and plundered and wasted at will …

Most of our political support for forest preservation comes from the Northeast where there are few forests. The Americans back East realize that they have made a historical mistake and failed to preserve and protect their original forests, and they don’t want the rest of the country to make the same mistake.

If a man farms his land to the waste of the soil or the tress, he destroys not only his own assets but Nature's assets.

A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe. ... What a terrible future!

Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain.

Environment is of supreme importance. It is greater than will power.

I never lose an opportunity to speak about my obsession: humankind and the environment.

The environment, what surrounds you, is so alive and delightful and complex.

Natures' curriculum cannot be changed.

I could have bought a pristine part of Tanzania. But I saw a beautiful mountain, game that could come back, and country that could be rich again.

The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

I think there are changes in the environment. There are a lot of items to contribute to it.

We must recognize that we're all part of a web of life around the world. Anytime you extinguish a species, the consequences are serious.