Gaylord Nelson Quotes
The fights in future will not be over whether we ought to do something, but over how we ought to do it, and that's a reasonable debate.
Quotes to Explore
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Every person has the inalienable right to a decent environment.
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The issues are by some geometric number - 100 or 200 or 500 - times more complicated today than we appreciated them to be when Franklin Roosevelt was around.
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...Your company...will send drugs to all the underdeveloped countries of the world, and since they do not have any standards, we will fool them all and can make a great big profit and never tell the doctors that there is a risk.....You will meet the standards of the country in which you are advertising, not the...proper standard...I would think that you would not sleep at night....I do not think this country will not stand for it.
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The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become... We have to address the population issue. The United Nations, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population. It can be done. But in this country, it's phony to say 'I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration.'
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The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture.
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John McConnell may have used the phrase Earth Day before we did, (but) he knows our events were not similar. Ours was a political exercise. His was a peace exercise.
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Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.
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The threat of nuclear war isn't nearly as important as the threat of the destruction of our resource base which sustains us.
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Our air, water, soil, forests, oceans, rivers, lakes, scenic beauty, wildlife habitat, minerals, that is the wealth of the country.
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I think the internal combustion engine will disappear from the streets of our cities in the next thirty years because transportation will be mass transportation, or probably electrical power.
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There is no domestic issue more important to America in the long run than the conservation and proper use of our natural resources, including fresh water, clean air, tillable soil, forests, wilderness, habitat for wildlife, minerals and recreational assets.
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All nations are degrading and consuming their environment to a point beyond capacity. In the past 15 years in the U.S. we have added 1300 cities with populations over 100,000. When the environment is forced to file Chapter 11, the ecology collapses. Nations recover from war but not from a failed eco-system. The status of our environment is more threatening than all wars. It is forever.
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President Bush calls himself an environmentalist. I think his heart's in the right place, but he hasn't demonstrated any leadership.
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The fate of the living planet is the most important issue facing mankind.
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Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty. The objective is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures.
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Teddy Roosevelt of course was a great outdoorsman all his life.
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The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity... that's all there is. That's the whole economy. That's where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world.
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All economic activity is dependent upon that environment and its underlying resource base of forests, water, air, soil, and minerals. When the environment is finally forced to file for bankruptcy because its resource base has been polluted, degraded, dissipated, and irretrievably compromised, the economy goes into bankruptcy with it.
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We're going to have to do a whole lot more, and give nature at least a chance to repair some of the damage we've done.
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The month of April 2000 will provide an unprecedented showcase for the clean energy options available to individuals, businesses and the government, .. As tens of millions of people take action to support clean energy during Earth Month, the 'New Energy for a New Era' campaign will catapult us toward a clean and affordable energy future.
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We must realize that we're all part of a web of life around the world. Anytime you extinguish a species, the consequences are serious.
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It was truly an astonishing grassroots explosion, ... The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy.
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Franklin Roosevelt was very concerned about environmental issues.
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The fights in future will not be over whether we ought to do something, but over how we ought to do it, and that's a reasonable debate.