#ecology

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

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

At 1.24 am on 26 April 1986 Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor exploded after staff disabled safety systems and performed an ill-advised experiment to check – ironically enough – the reactor’s safety. ↗

— Mark Lynas

#ecology #pragmatism #science #experience

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

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. ↗

— Rachel Carson

#ecology #reality #universe #wonder #wonder

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#inspirational-quotes #nature #trees #inspirational

The paradox of life lies exactly in this: its resources are finite, but it itself is endless. Such a contradictory state of affairs is feasible only because the resources accessible to life can be used over and over again. ↗

— I.I. Gitelson

#recycling #science #life

...we need to remind ourselves that natural systems are much more finely tuned than we think, and if we like the way they currently work, then we should try very, very hard to not screw with them. ↗

— Rowan Jacobsen

#nature

...It's not that the worm forgives the plough; it gives it no mind. (Pain occurs, in passing.) (lines 37-39 in the poem 'Fantasia on a Theme from IKEA') ↗

— Philip Gross

#poetry #wales #forgiveness