Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value. R Buckminster Fuller
I did a filmstrip on pollution in the Davison [Michigan] area as my Eagle Scout project and showed it around town. Businesses who were the polluters were mad at me. Michael Moore
I don’t want to wait 20 or 50 years for something to be done about petrochemical pollution. Jack Herer
What I loathe is the multinational conglomerates who must take responsibility for the degradation and pollution of so much of our landscape with their factory farming and greed. Fay Godwin
It’s not the ... oil and the filth and the poisonous chemicals that are the real cause of pollution, Brigadier. It’s simply greed. Doctor Who
Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea. George Carlin
Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do. Ronald Reagan
Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources. Ronald Reagan
As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life – a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring 1962
Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song. ibid.
Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal? ibid.
Clinical ecology – a new branch of medicine aimed at helping people made sick by a failure to adapt to facets of our modern, polluted environment. Adverse reactions to processed foods and their chemical contaminants, and to indoor and outdoor air pollution with petrochemicals, are becoming more and more widespread and so far these reactions are being misdiagnosed by mainstream medical practitioners and so are not treated effectively. Richard Mackarness
In a recent speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, I proposed a world-wide program to protect land and water, forests and wildlife, to combat exhaustion and erosion, to stop the contamination of water and air by industrial as well as nuclear pollution, and to provide for the steady renewal and expansion of the natural bases of life. John F Kennedy
The next decade will perhaps raise us a step above despair to a cleaner, clearer wisdom and biology cannot fail to help in this. As we become increasingly aware of the ethical problems raised by science and technology, the frontiers between the biological and social sciences are clearly of critical importance – in population density and problems of hunger, psychological stress, pollution of the air and water and exhaustion of irreplaceable resources. H Bentley Glass, New York Times 12 Jan 1970
The United States at this moment occupies a lamentable position as being perhaps the chief offender among civilized nations in permitting the destruction and pollution of nature. Our whole modern civilization is at fault in the matter. But we in America are probably most at fault ... We treasure pictures and sculpture. We regard Aztec temples and Roman triumphal arches and Gothic cathedrals as of priceless value. But we are, as a whole, still in that low state of civilization where we do not understand that it is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird. Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals, not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. Theodore Roosevelt
It is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird. Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals – not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people were awakening. Theodore Roosevelt
Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked. Ralph Nader
Unfortunately, our affluent society has also been an effluent society. Hubert H Humphrey
People ‘over-produce’ pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it. Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism
[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs – whatever – just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game’s outcome. Slavoj Žižek
Our planet is warming due to pollution from human activities. And a warming climate increases the likelihood of extreme weather. Gloria Reuben
The environmental effects of the automobile are well known: motor vehicles cause, for example, as much as 75% of the noise and 80% of the air pollution in our cities, and the industry must face mounting pressure from environmentalists. Stewart Udall
Shattering underground rock to get natural gas has opened up a hidden treasure trove. It’s also ignited a major controversy. Fracking: Shattered Ground, PBS 2015
750 chemical compounds are used in fracking fluids including carcinogens and air pollutants. ibid.
Another problem – earthquakes. ibid.
1952 Smog: Over Four thousand people were dead, and hundreds of thousands more had been hospitalised. The cause of the catastrophe was this – coal. In the winter of 1952 for the first time in years we were burning astronomical amounts of the stuff. Iain Stewart, Planet Oil: The Treasure that Conquered the World II, BBC 2015
Excelsior reports a study by environmental groups, presented to President Salinas, claiming that 100,000 children die every year as a result of pollution in the Mexico City area, along with millions suffering pollution-induced disease, which has reduced life expectancy by an estimated ten years. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
‘To the air and to the water of a lot of nasty chemicals.’ Koch Brothers Exposed, 2014
‘Koch is using natural streams to transport waste.’ ibid.
‘Koch Industries is one of the primary sources of pollution in the United States.’ ibid.
‘The Koch brothers are killing me and my family.’ ibid.
The Amazonian Indians – it is they who are paying the price of oil. The Curse of Oil I: Rich and Poor, BBC 2004
‘Texaco left 627 open-air pits. It is the worst ecological disaster in the hemisphere.’ ibid.
Fashion today is the number two most polluting industry on Earth, second only to the oil industry. The True Cost, 2015
We live in a golden age of fashion. A time when almost anyone can buy the glamour and the lifestyle of the latest trends. Clothes are cheaper than ever, and last year we spent nearly £50 billion on them. But there’s a problem: all this cheap fashion is damaging our planet … The industry is accused of being one of the biggest polluters on the planet. Stacey Dooley: Fashion’s Hidden Secrets, BBC 2018
Uzbekistan: These dust storms are so vast they can be seen from space. They contain huge quantities of pesticides that have been washed into the Aral from the cottonfarms and left on the seabed. ibid.
Cotton: Here is like just a regular shirt and a pair of jeans, right: it’s likely that it could have taken up to 20,500 litres [of water]. ibid.
Some in this industry are working to clean up fashion. ibid.