#ecology

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

We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another. ↗

— James E. Lovelock

#ecology #gaia #hope #science #communication

Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do. ↗

— William McDonough (Author) Michael Braungart (Author)

#nature #design

Nothing is more important to human beings than an ecologically functioning, life sustaining biosphere on the earth. It is the only habitable place we know of in a forbidding universe. We all depend on it to live and we are compelled to share it; it is our only home... the earth's biosphere seems almost magically suited to human beings and indeed it is, for we evolved through eons of intimate immersion within it. We cannot live long or well without a functioning biosphere, and so it is worth everything we have. ↗

— Joseph Guth

#conservation #earth #ecology #environment #environmentalism

No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species. ↗

— Daniel Quinn

#ecology #philosophy #life

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

— George Monbiot

#ecology #environment #progress #life

The grassland is a big life, but it's thinner than people's eyelids. If you rupture its grassy surface, you blind it, and dust storms are more lethal than the white-hair blizzards. If the grassland dies, so will the cows and sheep and horses, as well as the wolves and the people, all the little lives. ↗

— Jiang Rong

#life

Labels bias our perceptions, thinking, and behavior. A label or story can either separate us from, or connect us to, nature. For our health and happiness, we must critically evaluate our labels and stories by their effects. ↗

— Michael J. Cohen

#ecology #health #labels #nature #psychology

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#nature #the-woods #nature

If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#ecology #environment #science #science