Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

We need a philosophy for humans and nature to live together.

The old rules may say we can’t protect our environment and promote economic growth at the same time, but in America, we’ve always used new technologies - we’ve used science; we’ve used research and development and discovery to make the old rules obsolete.

My mission is to create a world where we can live in harmony with nature. And can I do that alone? No. So there is a whole army of youth that can do it. So I suppose my mission is to reach as many of those young people as I can through my own efforts.

People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better... They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.

I realize the answer is not to create wilderness and walk away.

With the world's human population now at seven billion and growing, and the demand for technology and modern conveniences increasing, we can't control all our negative impacts. But we have to find better ways to live within the limits nature and its cycles impose.

The very fact that we find it hard to conceive of an alternative to limitless economic growth is an indication of our spiritual condition.

We learned that economic growth and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand.

Unless we connect directly with the earth, we will not have the faintest clue why we should save it…. Only if we understand the beauty of nature will we love it, and only if we become alerted to learn about the planet's disease processes can we decide to live our lives with a proper sense of ecological responsibility.

We must subject the machine—technology—to control and cease despoiling the earth and filling people with goodies merely to make money.

Only when the last tree has withered, and the last fish caught, and the last river been poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits - they may still be very distant - God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

With the observable fact that scientific knowledge makes our lives better when applied with concern for human welfare and environmental protection, there is no question that science and technology can produce abundance so that no one has to go without.

Everything depends on our ability to sustainably inhabit this earth, and true sustainability will require us all to change our way of thinking on how we take from the earth and how we give back.

I have hope that humanity will be cured of our collective ecological insanity and that we adapt to living within the boundaries of the laws of ecology.

Facts have proved that prosperity at the expense of the environment is only delaying disaster. We cannot passively protect our environment by simply stopping economic development.

Sustainability is especially ripe for political controversy and opposition because fundamentally it is a new paradigm that represents significant challenges to the status quo. The paradigm of sustainability, with its notions of limitations and carrying capacities confronts dominant paradigms of progress which do not recognize limits to unchecked growth

Sustainability is an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations. It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule for the restorative economy: Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.

We have the technology to build a global paradise on earth, and at the same time, we have the power to end life as we know it. I am a futurist. I cannot predict the actual future - only what it can be if we manage the earth and its resources intelligently.

If we've learned any lessons during the past few decades, perhaps the most important is that preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge; it's common sense. Our physical health, our social happiness, and our economic well-being will be sustained only by all of us working in partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our natural resources.

Global warming is not only the number one environmental challenge we face today, but one of the most important issues facing all of humanity... We all have to do our part to raise awareness about global warming and the problems we as a people face in promoting a sustainable environmental future for our planet.

Environmentalists and clean energy champions should stop telling people that we are working for "sustainability," which nobody understands.

Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family.

Economy without ecology means managing the human nature relationship without knowing the delicate balance between humankind and the natural world