#ecology

We depend on this planet to eat, drink, breathe, and live. Figuring out how to keep our life support system running needs to be our number-one priority. Nothing is more important than finding a way to live together - justly, respectfully, sustainably, joyfully - on the only planet we can call home. ↗

— Annie Leonard

#conservation #earth #ecology #environment #environmentalism

Morning sir, or madam, or neuter," the thing said. "This your planet, is it?" "Well, er. I suppose so," Newt said. "Had it long, have we sir?" "Not personally. I mean, as a species, about half a million years. I think." The alien exchanged glances with its colleague. "Been letting the old acid rain build up, haven't we sir," it said. "Been letting ourselves go a bit with the old hydrocarbons, perhaps?" "I'm sorry?" "Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you, sir, but your polar ice caps are below regulation size for a planet of this category, sir." "Oh, dear," said Newt. "We'll overlook it on this occasion, sir." The smaller alien walked past the car. "CO2 level up nought point five percent," it rasped, giving him a meaningful look. "You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you? ↗

— Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (Good Omens)

#ecology #humor #humor

To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them. At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world? ↗

— Derrick Jensen

#ecology #economics #environment #sustainability #dreams

Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life. ↗

— George Monbiot

#ecology #environment #progress #life

The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else. ↗

— Barry Commoner

#else #everything #first #first law #law

I forced myself to think what is the new concept and it became clear to me that it was risk, not only in technology and ecology, but in life and employment, too. ↗

— Ulrich Beck

#clear #concept #ecology #employment #forced

If I could go back to a point in history to try to get things to come out differently, I would go back and tell moses to go up the mountain again and get the other tablet. Because the Ten Commandments just tell us what we are supped to do with one another, not a word about our relationship to the earth. Genesis starts with these commands: multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it. We have multiplied very well, we have replenished our populations very well, we have subdued it all too well, and we don’t have any other instruction. ↗

— David Brower

#environmental-conservation #environmentalism

By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet. ↗

— Thich Nhat Hanh

#peace #vegetarianism #change

The ears were large, flaring forward, the eyes limpid amber, in which the pupil floated like a glittering jewel, changing color with shifts of the light:  obsidian, emerald, ruby, opal, amethyst, diamond. ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#lemurs #madagascar #change

I'd like to issue a call to realism for those of us in so-called developed industrial nations, who indulge in great horror at the gradual collapse of our own pathologically unsustainable mode of existence while ignoring the reality of the majority of this planet’s residents, who do not in fact share the same dread or anxiety about losing what most of them, frankly, never had to squander in the first place. ↗

— Brian Awehali

#climate-change #collapse #ecology #change