Ecological Decline Quotes

For 200 years we've been conquering nature. Now we're beating it to death.

The loss of global biological diversity is advancing at an unprecedented pace.

The climate continues to deteriorate.

An animal that is very abundant, before it gets extinct, it becomes rare. So you don't lose abundant animals. You always lose rare animals. Therefore, they're not perceived as a big loss.

If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment - is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times.

Way up high in the Shenandoah Mountains where I live, it is difficult to maintain illusions about the natural world. It is dying.

What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.

The resources of nature, like those of spirit, are running out, and all that a conscientious man can aspire to be is a literal conservative, hoarding what remains of culture and of natural wealth against the fierce appetites of modern life.

The modern world is devoted to vanishing species, vanishing weather and vanishing capacity for wonder.

I've accepted the fact that there's a beginning and end to everything. All species are born, evolve, and then die off. We're going through the 6th great extinction and the large mammals are going first and, you know what - we're large mammals!