Barton Seaver Quotes

I believe in a sound, strong environmental policy that protects the health of our people and a wise stewardship of our nation's natural resources.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

What makes 'The Lorax' such a powerful fable is partly its shamelessness. It pulls no punches; it wears its teacher heart on its sleeve.

We all live downstream

The bat­tle we have fought, and are still fight­ing for the forests is a part of the eter­nal con­flict between right and wrong, and we can­not expect to see the end of it. …So we must count on watch­ing and striv­ing for these trees, and should always be glad to find any­thing so surely good and noble to strive for.

That whole thing has been overstated by environmentalists. First of all, what is it, rocks and snow? C'mon, what is that, you want that? Go to Canada my friend. Believe me, rocks and snow are overrated. I've seen otters - they look better covered in oil.

We do not have to choose between a healthy environment and a healthy economy.

We have an obligation to live in harmony with creation, with our capital... with God's creation. And we need to administer and work that very carefully.

Humans merely share the earth. We can only protect the land, not own it.

Unless we keep this planet healthy, everything else is for naught.

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.

The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth.

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.

The images of Earth's delicate biosphere, contrasting with the sterile moonscape where the astronauts left their footsteps, have become iconic for environmentalists: these may indeed be the Apollo programme's most enduring legacy.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

I think we need to take responsibility for the things we put on this planet, and also take responsibility for the things we take off the planet. We need to have limiters on how far we allow ourselves to go - ethical, moral limiters.

Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term.

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.

But now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.

We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways.

Sooner or later we've got to tie the saving of the natural world to our own public welfare.

The idea that we're somehow centrally important to the planet's existence is pretty comical - although I'd like us to be.

The Anthropocentic Age - the first age in which humankind is the dominant species on the planet - cuts both ways: it is up to us to destroy or save the planet. We certainly have the ability.

Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.

'The Skeptical Environmentalist' was much more the idea of the scientific argument of realizing that we need to be skeptical about a lot of these stories that we hear and to put them in context.