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Air Quotes

“In the rich world, the environmental situation has improved dramatically. In the United States, the most important environmental indicator, particulate air pollution, has been cut by more than half since 1955, rivers and coastal waters have dramatically improved, and forests are increasing.”

“Time after time we're told corporations should have freedom from pesky job safety regulations, environmental protections and labor standards - giving working people the freedom to be crushed in collapsing mines, choke on filthy air and get paid too little to live on.”

People Giving Should Littles Jobs Air Mines Standards Labor Should Have Paid Safety Environmental Protection Corporations Regulation Crushed Choke Filthy Environmental Protection

Author:Richard Trumka

“Our work on light bulbs wasn't an arbitrary mandate. We didn't just pick a standard out of the air, or look for a catchy sounding standard like 25 by 2025 not based in science or feasibility. Instead, we worked with both industry and environmental groups to come up with a standard that made sense and was doable.”

Looks Made Light Groups Air Industry Standards Picks Environmental Come Up Arbitrary Mandates Bulbs Catchy Light Bulb Feasibility

Author:Fred Upton

“Environmentalism is not an upper-income issue, it's not a white issue, it's not a black issue, it's not a South or a North or an East or a West issue. It's an issue that all of us have a stake in. And if I can do anything to make sure that not just my daughter but every child in America has green pastures to run in and clean air to breathe and clean water to swim in, then that is something I'm going to work my hardest to make happen.”

“How often are the beauties of nature unheeded by man, who, musing on past ills, brooding over the possible calamities of the future, building castles in the air, or wrapped up in his own self-love and self-importance, forgets to look abroad, or looks with a vacant stare.”

“Is it not easy to conceive the World in your Mind? To think the Heavens fair? The Sun Glorious? The Earth fruitful? The Air Pleasant? The Sea Profitable? And the Giver bountiful? Yet these are the things which it is difficult to retain. For could we always be sensible of their use and value, we should be always delighted with their wealth and glory.”

Thinking World Should Mind Use Earth Values Heaven Easy Difficult Wealth Sun Air Sea Glory Fairs Environmental Pleasant Glorious Sensible Profitable Giver Delighted

Book:Centuries of Meditations

Source: Centuries of Meditations

“Our air, water, soil, forests, oceans, rivers, lakes, scenic beauty, wildlife habitat, minerals, that is the wealth of the country.”

Country Water Wealth Air Ocean Rivers Environmental Forests Soil Lakes Wildlife Minerals Habitat Scenic

Author:Gaylord Nelson

“The effort to improve the conditions of man, however, is not a task for the few. It is the task of all nations-acting alone, acting in groups, acting in the United Nations, for plague and pestilence, plunder and pollution, the hazards of nature and the hunger of children are the foes of every nation. The earth, the sea and the air are the concern of every nation. And science, technology and education can be the ally of every nation.”

“The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world-the very nature of its life.”

Source: Silent Spring

“The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.”

Men Earth Environment Air Sea Dangerous Materials Rivers Environmental Pollution Ecology Assault Irreversible Silent Spring Contamination Environmental Pollution

Book:Silent Spring

Source: Silent Spring

“None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer. Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.”

Source: JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays

“Perhaps the profession of doing good may be full, but every body should be kind at least to himself. Take a course of good water and air, and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you. Some have strange, morbid fears as soon as they find themselves with Nature, even in the kindest and wildest of her solitudes, like very sick children afraid of their mother-as if God were dead and the devil were king.”

Source: STEEP TRAILS: California - Utah - Nevada - Washington - Oregon - The Grand Canyon: Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Essays and Wilderness Studies from the author of The Yosemite, Our National Parks, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf & Picturesque California

“They have poisoned the Thames and killed the fish in the river. A little further development of the same wisdom and science will complete the poisoning of the air, and kill the dwellers on the banks. I almost think it is the destiny of science to exterminate the human race.”

Thinking Humans Littles Science Race Destiny Air Development Rivers Scientist Environmental Fishes Human Race Pollution Poisoning Dwellers Thames

Author:Thomas Love Peacock

“If man has not found ways to deal with environmental problems such as water and air pollution by 1998, it will be too late. The future is not determined and it lies in our own hands.”

Ifs Men Way Problem Hands Lying Found Water Deals Air Late Environmental Determined Too Late Pollution Biodiversity Air Pollution Environmental Problems

Author:Margaret Mead

“Instead, we have found ourselves gasping for air in a sea of corruption, dysfunction, environmental degradation, waste, disenchantment and inequality—and the harder we compete, the more unequal we become.”

Found Air Sea Waste Harder Environmental Corruption Inequality Degradation Dysfunction Environmental Degradation Disenchantment

Book:A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better than the Competition

Source: A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better than the Competition

“Besides, the sense of safety offered by bottled water is a mirage. It turns out that breathing, not drinking, constitutes our main route of exposure to volatile pollutants in tap water, such as solvents, pesticides, and byproducts of water chlorination. As soon as the toilet is flushed or the faucet turned on-or the bathtub, the shower, the humidifier, the washing machine-these contaminants leave the water and enter the air. A recent study shows that the most efficient way of exposing yourself to chemical contaminants in tap water is to turn on a dishwasher.”

“Inanimate objects are sometimes parties to litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole - a creature of ecclesiastical law - is an acceptable adversary, and large fortunes ride on its cases... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life.”

“It is therefore absurd to approach the subject of health piecemeal with a departmentalized band of specialists. A medical doctor uninterested in nutrition, in agriculture, in the wholesomeness of mind and spirit is as absurd as a farmer who is uninterested in health. Our fragmentation of this subject cannot be our cure, because it is our disease. The body cannot be whole alone. Persons cannot be whole alone. It is wrong to think that bodily health is compatible with spiritual confusion or cultural disorder, or with polluted air and water or impoverished soil.”

Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

“The Captains of Industry have always counseled the rest of us "to be realistic." Let us, therefore, be realistic. Is it realistic to assume that the present economy would be just fine if only it would stop poisoning the air and water, or if only it would stop soil erosion, or if only it would stop degrading watersheds and forest ecosystems, or if only it would stop seducing children, or if only it would stop buying politicians, or if only it would give women and favored minorities an equitable share of the loot?”

Source: In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World

“And the desire to own property, to take for ourselves things which in no way belong to us, does not stop short at the sun. The air is already bought and sold as a commodity, by health resorts. And what of water? Or waterpower? Why should the earth be parceled out into private hands? Is it any different from the sun? No; the earth belongs to the people who live on it. God intended it for them, but it has been taken over by private individuals. Privare means to steal. Thus private property is stolen property - property stolen from God and from humankind!”

Source: Eberhard Arnold: Writings Selected with an Introduction

“The message from all quarters is the same: our undisciplined consumption must end. If we continue to gobble up our resources without any regard to stewardship and to spew out our deadly wastes over land, sea, and air, we may well be drawing down the final curtain upon ourselves.”

Ifs Wells May Ends Air Sea Land Waste Messages Resources Regard Environmental Finals Drawing Quarters Consumption Curtains Stewardship Undisciplined

Author:Richard J. Foster

“There is a growing threat to the environment, to the vegetation, animals, water and air. Sacred Scripture hands us the image of Cain who rejects his responsibility: 'Am I my brother's keeper?' The Bible shows the human person as his brother's keeper and the guardian of creation which has been entrusted to him.”

“We have not wondered enough at the delights God has given us to appreciate them, and be good stewards. We have overworked the land, poured pollutants into river and stream, fouled the air we breathe with gas fumes and chemical smoke spiraling up from industrial chimneys. We have sown the wind. We are reaping the whirlwind.”

Enough Given Air Land Wind Appreciate Rivers Environmental Delight Breathe Be Good Smoke Streams Gas Chemicals Stewardship Chimneys Stewards Whirlwind

Book:A Stone for a Pillow

Source: A Stone for a Pillow

“... laws governing pollution tend to move pollutants from one medium to another. So, for example, we scrub SO2 from power plants only to dispose toxic sludge on land. We "clean" water only to disperse toxic-laced solids on farmland or landfills. Pollution control becomes a kind of giant shell game by which we move pollutants between air, water, groundwater, and land.”

Source: Hope Is an Imperative: The Essential David Orr

“Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements-the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern city itself-are, in the environment, failures.”

Cities Environment Air Modern Industry Achievement Threat Plant Environmental Planes Pollution Technological Reminders Automobile Jet Nuisance Power Plants Air Pollution Jet Planes

Author:Barry Commoner

“As currently written, the laws require certain manufacturers and users of such chemicals to report any and all environmental releases-either accidental or routine-to air, water, or soil. The Toxics Release Inventory is the main registry of such events, and it is available to the public through the Environmental Protection Agency. It is hardly comprehensive. Toxic emissions reported to the federal government are thought to account for only 5 percent of all chemical releases.”

“Brothers and Sisters: Our ancient homeland is spotted today with an array of chemical dumps. Along the Niagara River, dioxin, a particularly deadly substance, threatens the remaining life there and in the waters which flow from there. Forestry departments spray the surviving forests with powerful insecticides to encourage tourism by people seeking a few days or weeks away from the cities where the air hangs heavy with sulphur and carbon oxides.”

“Man, especially in our time, has without hesitation devastated wooded plains and valleys, polluted waters, disfigured the earth's habitat, made the air unbreathable, disturbed the hydro-geological and atmospheric systems, turned luxuriant areas into deserts and undertaken forms of unrestrained industrialization, degrading that 'flower bed'-which is the earth, our dwelling place.”

“We are committed to cleaning up the air and cleaning up the water. But we also are committed to a strong economy, and we are not going to allow the environmental issue to be used sometimes falsely and sometimes in a demagogic way basically to destroy the system-the industrial system that made this the great country it is.”

Way Made Country Sometimes Used Strong Water Economy Issues Air Environmental Committed Pollution Cleaning Great Country Cleaning Up Environmental Issues Strong Economy

Author:Richard M. Nixon

“We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throw-away paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil - all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation at an order of magnitude beyond all reckoning.”

“We can decide that the presence of cancer-causing substances in our air, water, and food is too expensive. A 2009 study, for example, has found that coal miners in Appalachia costs the region five times more in premature deaths, including from cancer, than it provides to the region in jobs, taxes, and economic benefits. In California, the production and use of hazardous chemicals cost the state $2.6 billion in 2004 alone in lost wages and health-care expenses to treat workers and children with pollution-linked diseases.”

“We know that to wage a nuclear war today, for example, would be a form of suicide; or that to pollute the air or the oceans in order to achieve some short-term benefit would be to destroy the very basis for our survival.”

Knows War Would Be Today Form Order Term Air Achieve Example Ocean Benefits Survival Bases Suicide Environmental Nuclear Pollution Short Term Nuclear War

Book:Path To Tranquility

Source: Path To Tranquility

“You know that the air and water are being polluted, as is everything we touch and live with, and we go on corrupting the nature that we need. We don't realize we have a commitment to God to take care of nature. To cut down a tree, to waste water when there is so much lack of it, to let buses poison our atmosphere with those noxious fumes from their exhausts, to burn rubbish haphazardly-all that concerns our alliance with God.”

Knows Needs Care Water Realizing Cutting Air Tree Goes On Waste Commitment Concern Environmental Take Care Atmosphere Poison Bus Pollution Alliances Commitment To God Rubbish Air And Water

Author:Oscar Romero

“Children whose developing lungs are particularly vulnerable suffer the most from air pollution. For children, breathing the air in cities with the worst pollution, such as Beijing, Calcutta, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tehran, is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.”

“Corporate polluters, their phony think tanks and political toadies like to marginalize environmentalists as tree huggers, or radicals. But there is nothing radical about clean air or water.”

Thinking Political Water Air Tree Clean Environmental Radical Corporate Pollution Tanks Phony Environmentalist Clean Air Toady

Author:Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Draconian limits on economic growth and on the use of the automobile should not be necessary in order to give Americans clean air at levels they are willing to pay for, but it will require significant Federal, State, and local leadership and innovative approaches from government and industry.”

“If you visit American city, You will find it very pretty. Just two things of which you must beware: Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Pollution, pollution, They got smog and sewage and mud. Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud. See the halibuts and the sturgeons Being wiped out by detergents. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, But they don't last long if they try. Pollution, pollution, You can use the latest toothpaste, And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.”

“Of all the problems of conservation, none is more urgent that the polluted air which endangers the American people. We have been fortunate so far. But we have seen that when winds fail to blow, the concentrations of poisonous clouds over our cities can become perilous.”

People Has Beens Problem Cities Failing Air Wind Environmental Clouds Blow Fortunate Concentration Pollution Conservation Urgent Poisonous

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969

“Air pollution is a threat to health, especially of older persons. It contributes significantly to the rising rates of chronic respiratory ailments. It stains our cities and towns with ugliness, soiling and corroding whatever it touches. Its damage extends to our forests and farmlands as well. The economic toll for our neglect amounts to billions of dollars each year.”

“The American people today are involved in a warfare more deadly than the war in Vietnam, but few of them seem aware of it and even fewer of them are doing anything about it. This is a war that is being waged against the American environment, against our lands, air, and water, which are the basis of that environment.”

People War Seems Today Water Environment Air Land Involved Bases Environmental Vietnam Fewer Pollution Warfare Air And Water

Author:Norman Cousins

“The air is full of a farewell- deserted by the silver lake lies the wild world, overturned. Cities rise where the mountains fell, the furnace where the phoenix burned”

World Lying Cities Air Mountain Environmental Lakes Silver Pollution Burned Farewell Phoenix Deserted Furnaces Wild World

Book:Selected poems

Source: Selected poems

“Better use of space, improving the insulation, getting more daylight into the buildings, reducing the energy consumption of the air conditioning and heating systems, making sure that the internal air quality is good, that we have increased natural ventilation opportunities in the mid seasons. You know these are some of the things we can do.”

“The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialisation, mechanisation, urbanisation and exploding population.”

Earth Air Increase Environmental Population Pollution Rapids Accord Wwii Extremist Environmentalist Exploding Cooling Air Pollution

Author:Reid Bryson

“We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?”

Needs Funny Asks Fun Air Stupid Ignorance Clean Environmental Dumb Pollution Pauses Assessment Clean Air Air And Water

Author:Lee Iacocca