Hope Jahren Quotes

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

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

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.

As a nation we have not yet come to have a proper respect for the forest and to regard it as an indispensable part of our resources—one which is easily destroyed but difficult to replace; one which confers great benefits while it endures, but whose disappearance is accompanied by a train of evil consequences not readily foreseen and positively irreparable.

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.

We're busily wrecking the chances for future generations at a rapid rate of knots by not recognizing the damage we're doing to the natural environment, bearing in mind that this is the only planet that we know has any life on it.

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.

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.

I'm not an extreme tree-hugger. I do believe trees grow and are a useful agricultural product that can be harvested without damaging the ecology and wildlife.

Sumatra has these lush forests and huge, amazing creatures like elephants, orangutans, and tigers. They're disappearing because of industry coming in and cutting down the forests.

If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.

The rain forest has Sting. Now Siberia has Jack Dee. Someone had to draw the short straw. In this case it was the rain forest.

For centuries, building materials were free. You want to build a house, you cut down some trees. But we haven't been thinking about the cost to the planet.

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.

Even if one tree falls down it wouldn't affect the entire forest.

We're not environmentally doing very good things to this planet, and we might not be around too long.

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

Putting our ecosystem in great peril is certainly not a part of Chinese culture that I know.

You have to focus on what you're passionate about. For me it's the forests and of course, because I'm concerned about the forests, I'm concerned about the way paper is made.

What I have experienced over time is that environmental problems are easier to deal with in ways that don't go into their interconnections to the rest of what we are.

I watch people throw aluminum cans in the trash, and I think of all the stories I've heard about the over-mining of aluminum, the erosion that happens, and the trees that fall down.

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 …

It is shocking to smite down trees for mere decorations.

Every time there is an economic intensification, there is an ecological impact.

It is not enough to celebrate the earth and all its inhabitants, we must restore what we have destroyed.