Quotessence
Home / Topics / Natural Resources Quotes

Natural Resources Quotes

Browse 285 quotes about Natural Resources.

Related topics

PeopleCountryWorldEnvironmentIfsThinkingUseWaterChildrenConservationEnvironmentalHumansLandNationsDevelopmentEconomyMenBelieveHumanityNeedsOilLongTodayWayEnergyGenerationsProblemStatesWellsAmericaEarthEconomicImportantInterestKnowsPlanetsBenefitsIncludingMadeMeanSocialTechnologyTryingValuable

Natural Resources Quotes

“The United States inherited a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in natural resources, yet it has responded to its environment with a dismaying mixture of materialism and inertia. The nation was virtually founded upon a ubiquitous desire for access to land and its contents. Its amazing growth during the nineteenth century was based directly upon the exploitation—immediate, unplanned, full use of soils, minerals, forests, and rivers. Equitable access to these natural bounties rather than constitutional guarantees would be the practical basis for democracy. Subsequently, political institutions were shaped in such a way that they could facilitate the disposition of the public domain. But that expectation, as later generations ruefully observed, did not materialize. The combination of economics and government had instead produced a handful of owners and policy makers who were beyond the control of the ballot box.”

American HistoryNatural ResourcesEnvironmental History
Book:Dams, parks & politics;: Resource development & preservation in the Truman-Eisenhower era
Create image

“When governments talk of truth and reconciliation, and then push unwanted infrastructure projects, please remember this: There can be no truth unless we admit to the 'why' behind centuries of abuse and land theft. And there can be no reconciliation when the crime is still in progress. Only when we have the courage to tell the truth about our old stories will the new stories arrive to guide us. Stories that recognize that the natural world and all its inhabitants have limits. Stories that teach us how to care for each other and regenerate life within those limits. Stories that put an end to the myth of endlessness once and for all.”

Social JusticeStorytellingNatural ResourcesStorytellersEconomic JusticeNative LandIndigenous PeoplesGreen New DealNarrative Theory
Book:On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal
Create image

“Since the early seventeenth century we’ve been fervently digging up this buried ancient carbon that cook tens of millions of years for the Earth to slowly stockpile, and we burned a great deal of it in just a few centuries. While there are concerns over peak oil and the diminishing supply of crude, there is plenty of accessible coal still underground – certainly another few centuries’ worth at current consumption rates. In this sense, then, we’re not currently facing another energy crisis but a climate crisis, born as a result of our past solution to our energy hunger”

Climate ChangeWeatherNatural ResourcesDepletionIndustrial Complex
Book:Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History
Create image

“Plastic should be a high value material... [It] should be in products that last a long time, and at the end of the life, you recycle it. To take oil or natural gas that took millions of years to produce and then to make a disposable product that last minutes or seconds, and then to just discard it--I think that's not a good way of using this resource. (Robert Haley)”

PlasticNatural ResourcesRecycling
Book:Plastic: A Toxic Love Story – An Engaging Analysis of Cultural Dependency and the Resulting Environmental Crisis
Create image

“The animacy of the world is something we already know, but the language of animacy teeters on extinction-not just for Native peoples, but for everyone. Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion-until we teach them not to. We quickly retrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into "natural resources." If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.”

LifeNatural ResourcesPlantsForestry
Book:Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
Create image

“In families one can’t choose one’s siblings. Within regions one doesn’t choose one’s neighbors. And if you are one of the world’s leading producers of a critical industrial resource like copper, in the end you can’t really choose your customers. China and Zambia will just have to get along.”

EconomicsChinaAfricaNatural ResourcesZambia
Book:China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa
Create image

“We are coming to recognize as never before the right of the nation to guard its own future in the essential matter of natural resources. In the past we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit. In fact, there has been a good deal of a demand for unrestricted individualism, for the right of the individual to injure the future of all of us for his own temporary and immediate profit. The time has come for a change. As a people, we have the right and the duty, second to none other but the right and duty of obeying the moral law, of requiring and doing justice, to protect ourselves and our children against the wasteful development of our natural resources, whether that waste is caused by the actual destruction of such resources or by making them impossible of development hereafter.”

IndividualismNatural Resources
Book:Roosevelt's Writings: Selections from the Writings of Theodore Roosevelt
Create image

“Seit Jahr und Tag ist notorisch, daß unsere Erde das vorausberechenbare Wachstum der Bevölkerung, die Erschöpfung der natürlichen Ressourcen und die Auszehrung der Umwelt nicht lange erträgt. Wir leben seit geraumer Zeit auf Kosten kommender Generationen. [...] Die Gefahr, daß die Menschheit sich selbst zerstört, ist auch dann nicht gebannt, wenn der Atomkrieg ausbleibt." ("It has been an obvious fact for the longest time that our earth will not be able to sustain for long the foreseeable growth of its population, the exhaustion of its natural resources, and the emaciation of its natural environment. We have been living for quite a while at the expense of our future generations. [...] The absence of a nuclear war does not, by itself, diminish the danger of humanity's self-destruction.")”

HumanityEnvironmentFutureNatural ResourcesSelf DestructionNuclear WarEnvironmental ProtectionPopulation GrowthFuture GenerationsNuclear Threat
Book:Erinnerungen
Create image

“The earth had granted me a lifeline, by letting me siphon off some of the water that was on its way somewhere else. Because of me, there would be less water flowing into the Chattahoochee River: less for the speckled trout, less for the wood ducks, less for the mountain laurel that drop their white petals into the river every fall. There would be more water flowing into my septic tank, laced with laundry detergent, dish soap, and human waste. At that moment of high awareness, I promised the land that I would go easy on the water. I would remember where it came from. I would remain grateful for the sacrifice.”

WaterConservationNatural Resources
Book:Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
Create image

“James hoped the newsletter would garner support from Bahana, or white people, to stop a town well that the Bureau of Indian Affairs wanted to dig and a tower it wanted to erect to store the water. The Hotevilla elders were willing to lay down their lives in this battle. They’d done it before, preventing the BIA from bringing electricity to the village by lying down in front of bulldozers. If that well went in, James explained, people would waste water. Their spring would dry out- an unthinkable tragedy, as it would make it impossible for them to live there any longer. Could two cultures be any different? I now wondered. We were taking federal money to mine water and would do so until the unlikely day that same government made us stop. The Hopi had been trying to prevent the government from giving them a well in the first place.”

WaterWildernessNatural ResourcesHopi
Book:The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning
Create image

“Nous consommons ressources naturelles, énergie et matières premières comme si elles étaient des biens gratuits. Vous pourrez constater à la lecture de cette brochure que tel n’est pas le cas. Dans notre alimentation, notre habitation, nos moyens de transports, nos loisirs, bref dans notre vie de tous les jours, nos gestes de consommation peuvent aider à protéger, conserver ou améliorer notre environnement. Par nos gestes quotidiens, nous pouvons bâtir notre milieu de vie. La protection de l’environnement n’exclut pas le progrès. Mais le progrès ne doit pas aller à l’encontre de la qualité de l’environnement. C’est un équilibre que je vous invite à respecter.”

EnvironmentProgressConsumerismNatural ResourcesEnvironmental ProtectionEnvironmental Conservation
Book:L'environnement consommé à crédit
Create image

“most human endeavours, unless checked by public dissent, evolve into monocultures. money seeks out a region’s comparative advantage, the field in which it competes most successfully, and promotes it to the exclusion of all else. every landscape or seascape, if this process is loosed, performs just one function. this greatly taxes the natural world”

EnvironmentPolicyExploitationEcologyNatural ResourcesClimate CrisisRewilding
Book:Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life
Create image

“On a larger scale-be it our need for precious metals, hydroelectric power, or marine resources- we will all face the same decisions, feel under the same pressure to perform and produce. We will always be tempted to take a little more, push the land and its limits just a little bit harder. Do one or two birds matter? Will one more mineral mine or a few more drilling platforms alter the delicate balance? No, not on their own. But person by person, decision by decision, year by year, we will either nurture and protect this natural treasure for future generations, or we will not and our world will be profoundly diminished.”

WorldEarthNatural ResourcesArcticPrecious
Book:North to the Night : A Spiritual Odyssey in the Arctic
Create image

“As the United States chains itself down with greater debt, China is building relationships across the globe to bolster its trade, its access to natural resources, and its energy consumption. In far too many cases, this means lost opportunities for America and our businesses.”

MeanStatesAmericaOpportunityEnergyLostNaturalUnitedCasesUnited StatesGreaterBuildingResourcesTradeChinaDebtAccessChainsConsumptionGlobesNatural ResourcesLost OpportunityBuilding RelationshipsEnergy Consumption
Author:Reince Priebus
Create image

“Business often does a good job supporting communities: the arts, universities, and scientific enterprises... But that philosophy has rarely reached poor countries. Even businesses that are enlightened in their home bases see Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia as places to exploit natural resources or use cheap labor.”

DoeArtCountryPhilosophyUseHomeJobsAmericaCommunityNaturalPoorResourcesLaborBasesUniversityEnterpriseEnlightenedLatinAsiaGood JobExploitsLatin AmericaNatural ResourcesPoor CountriesCheap LaborHome Base
Author:Jeffrey Sachs
Create image

“If we do not change our negative habits toward climate change, we can count on worldwide disruptions in food production, resulting in mass migration, refugee crises and increased conflict over scarce natural resources like water and farm land. This is a recipe for major security problems.”

IfsProblemWaterNaturalLandSecurityHabitConflictMajorsMassResourcesNegativeCrisisClimateClimate ChangeProductionsFarmsRefugeeRecipesScarceNatural ResourcesDisruptionMigrationRefugee CrisisFood ProductionScarce Resources
Author:Michael Franti
Create image

“In Texas, years ago, almost all of the oil came from surface operations. Then someone got the idea that there were greater sources of supply deeper down. A well was drilled five thousand feet deep. The result? A gusher. Too many of us operate on the surface. We never go deep enough to find supernatural resources. The result is, we never operate at our best. More time and investment is involved to go deep but a gusher will pay off.”

YearsWellsIdeasEnoughTimeResultsPayFiveGreaterFeetSourceInvolvedThousandResourcesYears AgoInvestmentDeeperSurfaceOilOperationsMore TimeTexasNatural Resources
Author:Alfred Armand Montapert
Create image

“The production of natural resources in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, stable natural hydrological cycles, fertile soils, a balanced climate and numerous other vital ecosystem services can only be permanently secured through the protection and sustainable use of biological diversity.”

UseNaturalDiversityResourcesClimateProductionsProtectionSoilCyclesStableBalancedAgricultureNatural ResourcesEcosystemsFertileSecuredFertile SoilFisheries
Author:Sigmar Gabriel
Create image

“Our supplies of natural resources are not finite in any economic sense. Nor does past experience give reason to expect natural resources to become more scarce. Rather, if history is any guide, natural resources will progressively become less costly, hence less scarce, and will constitute a smaller proportion of our expenses in future years.”

IfsGivingYearsDoeReasonPastNaturalEconomicResourcesGuidesProportionExpensesFiniteSuppliesScarceNatural ResourcesPast Experiences
Author:Julian Simon
Create image

“Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”

MeanDoeUseNatureNaturalGenerationsLandDutyDevelopmentWasteResourcesProtectionConservationDinosaursNatural ResourcesThis GenerationNature ConservationLand ConservationSmart GrowthProtect Nature
Book:The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations
Create image

“If there is any one duty which more than another we owe it to our children and our children's children to perform at once, it is to save the forests of this country, for they constitute the first and most important element in the conservation of the natural resources of this country.”

IfsFirstsChildrenImportantCountryNaturalTreeDutyElementsResourcesOur ChildrenForestsConservationNatural Resources
Book:Presidential addresses and state papers
Create image

“The earth will continue to regenerate its life sources only as long as we and all the peoples of the world do our part to conserve its natural resources. It is a responsibility which every human being shares. Through voluntary action, each of us can join in building a productive land in harmony with nature.”

WorldHumansLongActionEarthNatureNaturalHuman BeingsResponsibilityShareLandBuildingSourceResourcesHarmonyProductiveConservationNatural ResourcesNature Conservation
Author:Gerald R. Ford
Create image