“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”
Paul Hawken
more infosource: University of Portland commencement speech, May 3, 2009, full speech here
category: commencement speech, earth, environment, global warming, planet
medium: commencement speech
notes: Paul Hawken's website here
“This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken.”
Paul Hawken
more infosource: University of Portland commencement speech, May 3, 2009, full speech here
category: commencement speech, earth, environment, global warming, overpopulation, planet
medium: commencement speech
notes: Paul Hawken's website here
“Falling leaves return to their roots.”
Adeline Yen Mah
more infosource: Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (London: M. Joseph, 1997), 271.
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category: compost, cycle of life, environment, leaf, nature, proverb, root, tree
medium: memoir
via: Louise Buckley“Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000.”
Rob Watson
more infosource: Thomas L. Friedman’s quotes Watson in “We’re Gonna Be Sorry,” The New York Times, July 24, 2010.
view online
category: environment, global warming, nature, reality check
medium: Op-Ed
“The good Earth—we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.”
Kurt Vonnegut
more infosource: A Man Without a Country (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 122.
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view on Google Books
category: cheap, earth, environment, global warming, humanity, lazy
medium: nonfiction
environment