Leo Joseph Ryan Jr. Quotes

The most important question we have to deal with is a combination of population control and the control of our environment - how to utilize the world in as effective a way as we can for the future of mankind.

The destruction of our environment and resources cannot be stemmed unless the growth of the world's population is stemmed and ultimately reduced.

All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people.

We've got to take care of the resources we have on this planet, because there's no resupply possible.

People who are not addressing the issues of population control are not seriously addressing the environment.

We know it is impossible to go on finding, moving and wasting oil, leveling forests, paving land, dumping poisons, and multiplying our numbers. A new way of life, a new set of thoughts must be found.

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?

Unless we practice conservation, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day.

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.

The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources.... By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

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

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

We can choose to address the twin issues of population and consumption to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption.

If you're a Conservative, why aren't you behind conserving the land?

I think the greatest challenge in environmentalism and the most rewarding challenge is trying to figure out how humans can meet their needs while protecting the environment.

Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever.

Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment.

Governments at all levels and the whole society should act more vigorously to protect the land our lives depend on.

Environmental activism against the resource industry is widespread all over the world, but at the same time we have to realise that these are basic materials on which civilisation depends. We need to tap natural resources in a sustainable manner.

So often we talk about saving the planet, but what we really mean is to save the planet the way it is, so we can live here. So that is can sustain us.

I wouldn't want anyone to destroy the earth.

Over and over, the economy has determined the extent of our response, but how much value does it place on breathable air, drinkable water, edible food and stable weather and climate? Surely the economy is the means to a better future, not an end in itself. Surely it must be subordinate to a rich, diverse ecosphere that sustains all life.

We can survive as a population only if we conserve, develop sustainably, and protect the world's resources.

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.